This is a digital version of the 7" record on Pavement/ Silver Jews member Bob Nastanovich’s Broker’s Tip Label. The record was released in the UK in collaboration with Sea Records. Limited edition vinyl copies are available at Schwervon! live shows and select record stores.

-Blood Eagle is kind of a dystopian stream of consciousness “Born To Run”. We had just moved in with my father in Kansas after living in New York for quite a while and I found this old book about Vikings. I read about an execution ritual called the Blood Eagle and it sounded like the most horribly poetic way to die that I could imagine. Feel free to look it up. The Vikings were really interesting. I had just started getting back into poetry. Vikings honored their poets almost like kings or prophets. I think it might be kind of like how we look at politicians or celebrities now. I took the Eagle as the American symbol of freedom of hope and mashed it up with the Viking version from the Blood Eagle. I was also going through some pretty heavy culture shock after moving from New York to Kansas. Nan and I also made the decision to tour a lot more as a band and this was putting some strain on our relationship. There’s some of that in there too. It’s pretty dark but I’m hoping people will get that the song is ultimately about survival.

-Wrath Of Angels was inspired by a church just down the road from us that operates a pretty big pre-school as well. Occasionally, they put up a large number of these little white crosses in the grass in their front yard with a banner that has some kind of Pro Life message. The connotation is that the little crosses are for all the aborted fetuses in the world. It’s on a busy intersection and we pass it quite a bit. I’m assuming a lot of kids have to walk by it as well. We find it incredibly offensive and insensitve. We feel like the issue of abortion is a personal issue between a woman and her own body. The fact that a Church, a tax-deferred institution that is typically centered around helping people with love and forgiveness, would feel the need to regularly put on such a horrible display is something that bothers us. I was always interested in the idea that sometimes when people think they’re doing something good that they’re actually hurting more people than they're helping. Nan wrote the melody and words to this one.