Zache (Maniac)
SPB: The title track on the new album is a bit of a departure in sound from the rest of the album. What’s the story behind this song?
Zache: My Dad died of cancer on October 29, 2013, two days after Lou Reed. Pretty quickly after I had the lyrics, “And we all join the dead dad’s club,” but nothing else.
Everything I wrote felt cheap and forced. I remember flying back to LA after visiting my family in 2016—something about flying always makes me emotional. I wrote a stream of consciousness about being in hospice with my Dad and watching him die, and that became the lyrics to “Dead Dance Club.”
My Dad had what some might call whacky eyebrows, and while I watched him die, he couldn’t talk but instead kept raising his eyebrows, almost apologetically. So I wanted to call the song “Elegy for Eyebrows,” which the other guys weren’t super stoked on. But they went with it because who’s going to fight you about the title of a song about your Dad dying? Right after we got mixes back, I sent the song to family and a few close friends. One of those friends was Alexandra in Puerto Rico and she said, “Dead Dance Club, I love it!” I told the band and we all agreed that was a much better name for the song and a pretty sick name for a record.
