by Future Generations

“Thunder In The City” was one of the last songs we wrote and recorded for the record, and we’re really stoked we made it before the deadline. “Thunder” has become one of our favorite songs and is perfect as the album’s closing song. We especially like the transition from “Thunder In The City” into “Grace” (the album opener).

Post-college, before we all lived together in Brooklyn, we were all scattered throughout the tri-state area. At the time, I was crashing out in Long Island with my aunt and uncle. There was a day I was walking the mile or so from the Long Island Railroad to their house and a storm was beginning to brew. It wasn’t raining yet that evening, but the wind was howling and the sky was pretty ominous. There was lightning and thunder in the near distance, and the coming storm had cooled the temperature. I felt super content with life at that moment. I was blasting music in my headphones, and I thought it was an interesting juxtaposition to be in, what most would consider awful or foreboding weather, yet see the positivity and beauty in it.

Considering how we normally write songs, “Thunder” was an anomaly. It is the only song on the record where I knew the title before any of the music or lyrics were written. Usually, we record a rough demo of a few instruments and that typically guides the melodies and lyrics. While walking back, I wrote “Thunder In The City” as a note on my phone. Once at the house, around 2AM, I started building the basic tracks in Logic. After crashing hard, I woke up the next day and fleshed out the chorus.

We thought the basic tracks recorded that day sounded pretty rad and had some character, so the instruments recorded in my aunt and uncle’s attic made it onto the record. Later on, we tracked live drums at Saltlands studio and replaced the original bass synth plug-in with a Juno 60 while recording at Eli Janney’s studio, which got us super stoked because the bass on the Juno sounded so phat. Since the Juno wasn’t built with midi capability, we had to send the CV Gate input a pulse at Thunder’s BPM to sync it, which was a blast to figure out.

We sent the mix of new and old stems to our mix engineer, Claudius, and were pretty blown away by what he sent back. We felt he was the last piece of the puzzle to bring our vision of the song to completion.