“I wanted it to be a combination of weird electronic music and my Grateful Dead roots,” Tom Hamilton explains of the latest studio release from his American Babies project. “The goal was to make an album that sounds like Jerry Garcia was in Stereolab.” Such an aspiration reflects the span of Hamilton’s career, which began with the indie-electronic band Brothers Past and, lately, has found him revisiting the Dead material he enjoyed during his formative years, while performing in Joe Russo’s Almost Dead and Billy & The Kids.

Comedian Robin Williams’ suicide provided the impetus for Hamilton’s new record, An Epic Battle Between Light & Dark, which he wrote and recorded with Peter Tramo at Philadelphia’s Lorelei Studio. “As somebody who has struggled with depression my whole life, to see somebody like that throw in the towel was a hard thing to deal with,” Hamilton explains. “It became the catalyst for starting the conversation about the record’s subject matter.”

SYNTH DRIVER

“Synth Driver” was the first song we finished where, when we listened to the playback, we thought, “Holy shit, I think we found our sonic signature. I think we found the tonal palette of the record.” By this point, we probably had seven other tunes in various degrees of completion but, once we got through this one, we said, “This is where we want to go,” and we started combing through the other tunes to make sure they fit with what we were doing.

It’s a great welcoming track—it draws you in. I like the beginning of the song, the way it starts with the pedal steel and the synthesizers, and how that drumbeat just creeps in on you—“Let’s see what’s going to happen.” Lyrically, it was the last song that we wrote because we didn’t have the idea completely fleshed out yet as far as what we were going to say and how we were going to say it. We finished “Synth Driver,” went through the rest of the record and, when we finished, I circled back around and wrote the lyrics.

OH DARLING, MY DARLING

“Oh Darling, My Darling” was the second song we finished. The reason those are the first two tunes on the album is because, after we finished “Synth Driver,” I came home, and while I was just lying around, the chords for the opening bit came into my brain. I ran over to my mini recorder and I dropped it down really quickly. It made complete sense—this is the continuation of “Synth Driver,” this is the beginning of chasing it down the rabbit hole.

“Oh Darling, My Darling,” lyrically, is a play off of “Oh Captain! My Captain!” from that Robins Williams picture [Dead Poets Society]. When I get into those really dark places, what works for me is to just let it happen. If I feel the anxiety is on its way, fighting it is like quicksand. I strap in and say, “Look, it’s not going to kill you. It’s going to suck, but put on your seatbelt and the ride will be over soon.” So that’s where the song is lyrically— “Oh darling, my darling, let the darkness in, live for the light of another day.”

ALONE IN THE HOUSE

One thing that really got me thinking about mental illness is that I had a relationship that didn’t go very well about a year and a half ago. It was a really intense relationship. My ex-girlfriend had a lot of problems, and I was there for her—I was right there on the frontline with her. Then, one day, I came home from the road and she was gone—no note, all of her stuff just gone. Looking back, she was definitely doing me a favor—I didn’t have to deal with the extra baggage that came with her life—but it didn’t suck any less. It was a rough situation, and I was alone in the house.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE?

Since I’ve crossed over into my 30s, I have been living this existential crisis of trying to accept my mortality, which I just can’t wrap my head around. I talk to people about it all the time, and it’s weird how many people are so blasé about it. I have a very hard time accepting and comprehending the idea of not existing anymore. It’s not something that I am able to process, necessarily.

I was 35 when I wrote this song. It’s a weird fucking age. I’m nothing—I’m not young, I’m not old—no one is really impressed with anything at that point. I have an older brother, who just turned 40, and he’s got a home, a wife and kids. And I have a younger sister who is 19, and she might as well be a kitten—throw some yarn in front of her and she’s occupied. It’s weird being in the middle— middle of my family, middle of my lifetime, middle of my career. That’s where that song comes from lyrically and emotionally.

FEVER DREAMS

“Fever Dreams” was as important as “Synth Driver” was for the direction of the record because I don’t like making records that sound the same. I don’t need to hear the same song 12 times—I try to have an arc, like a movie. There should be a storyline—not only lyrically, but also sonically. I want there to be some kind of difference and bend in the sound. “Synth Driver” has more of an electronic, European vibe, whereas “Fever Dreams” felt more North American—more indie rock, more alt-country. Musically, when we were finished, it was like, “This is the other sonic side of the rainbow here. We have the real European sexy sound with “Synth Driver” and “Oh Darling” and now this other stopping point, “Fever Dreams.”

Lyrically, it’s just that point of where you are so down that you are hallucinating. You are having fever dreams—trying to wrap your head around the lowest points. It’s a little disassociated and weird, and that is what the first part of the tune is—the disassociation and the shit that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Then when it breaks down and goes into the “Fever Dreams” thing, you snap out of it for a second and realize what is going on.

A lot of people are selfdestructive when they are down—they’ll go out and party harder or do drugs or be promiscuous or whatever they do to make themselves feel alive. It is not necessarily autobiographical but, one time, I did start smoking again because I was depressed, which was a bad idea. You do stupid shit because you think it means something even though it doesn’t—the person who goes out and gets that tattoo after a bad breakup or starts smoking. Nobody cares that you’re doing this stuff except yourself. Fucking get it together.

NOT IN A MILLION YEARS

I had written the phrase “Not in a Million Years” down on my phone and I always knew I wanted it to be a song title. So when we were putting together this record, I poured over my notes and I said, “This totally makes sense to me to be a song title on this record.” We were starting to piece together the album and, sonically, we had the two ends—the arc I was talking about. All the way on the left is “Synth Driver” and all the way on the right is the title track and, at the peak of the arc—in the middle—was “Fever Dreams.” I needed something to bring us back and bring the arc down toward the title track—something to bridge “Fever Dreams” and “Bring It in Close.” I didn’t know what it was going to be.

Pete had this machine—a little box. It’s a cube that is about 8-inches big that they sell in India to people practicing the sitar. You can tune the drone to whatever note you want it to be and you can change the voicing. He said, “I just dug this thing up—see what you can do with it.” We’d had a lot of long days and nights, so he basically threw this thing at me and then went and took a nap on the couch. While he was napping, I took this machine and built the track that turned into “Not in a Million Years.” The song feels like anxiety—the uneasiness. I have a lot of nervous tics. My fingers move a lot and my feet keep time with things that don’t exist. I am an anxious individual, and I wanted to convey that to bridge “Fever Dreams” and the next song. “Fever Dreams” is the song that says, “I am going to do something that is not the smartest move,” and then there is that anxiety that brings us to the next track.

BRING IT IN CLOSE

I have had the skeleton of this song for maybe five years. A friend of mine was a heroin addict, and she couldn’t keep it together. Every time she would get clean, it was just a matter of time before a relapse happened. She was a younger kid, a really nice, smart person from the suburbs, who grew up with every opportunity but, for some reason, still ended up in the ghettos of North Philly buying dope. That’s what the beginning of the song alludes to—the person that wanted to go do something stupid and found themselves back in that place, in the shadows, doing the thing they think they should be doing but would never do in front of anyone they know.

I was sitting on this thing forever and, when we were still in the writing phase, I played it for Pete who said, “I really love the vibe, musically.” The opening lyric was the only line I had for the song. I looked at it within the context of the record and it made a lot of sense, so I was able to quickly finish the lyrics and write out that whole end bit. It is one of my favorite songs to play off this record.

AN EPIC BATTLE BETWEEN LIGHT & DARK

Pete and I both have folders full of bullshit things that we never completed. He was going through his, and he said, “You’ll never believe the song I found yesterday; I don’t even fucking remember writing it.”

He had a dark period a little while back and would record things that he wouldn’t remember. So we opened it up and I thought the groove was so fucking cool. I said, “Is this fair game? Can we use this?” He said, “Absolutely.” So we took the elements out of it that we liked—a lot of the stuff is from the original demo, including the strings and the keyboards. Then I replayed the drums and added a bunch of guitars and wrote lyrics over it.

It felt cinematic. I travel a lot, and I’m always in hotels and motels by myself, sitting and thinking. When I created the music, it took me right to that place of what happens in the middle of a tour when that darkness creeps in, and I ask myself, “What do I do?” That’s where the whole end bit, lyrically, comes from. As far as I know, this is the only life I’ve got. I might not always think it’s fair or the way I want it, but it’s still pretty fucking good, and if you want to be happy, you have to work for it. You have to claw for every single fucking inch of peace and happiness. That’s the thing, at the end of the day, that keeps me from spiraling into the abyss—the idea that if I work hard, I will find those little moments of happiness. That’s what keeps me going.