It must've been some time in mid 2019 and the very first thing I remember about warmth was coming up with was the rhythm guitar line for the chorus. I was just messing around on the fretboard and then the riff came out and I thought it sounded cool so I went ahead and pulled out my recorder app. That was two phones ago from the time of writing, but I found that recording and it's here:
if memory serves me well, I think the next parts I came up with were the rhythm guitar and driving drum lines for the verses. Here I wanted to come up with something that segued into the chorus well and vice versa (probably including the section transitions which I definitely overthought, and in every iteration of this band lineup was a nightmare to teach to other people, especially before any recording existed for this song), and I specifically went out of my way to try to come up with something as "pop punk" as possible. It's worth mentioning that at this point I wasn't sure if (what is now) the verse riff was for the verse or chorus, and vice-versa. In fact, while we were recording this in 2020/2021 or so, we labeled the Verse as Chorus and the Chorus as Verse in the DAW. We know better now.
The next thing that came was the high guitar lead chords bit that shows up in the back half of Verse 2. For this, I just heard the line in my head and over the main riff and I tried basically every combination of notes until I could get the right chords out
from there, it must've been the bass and the single-note lead in the chorus next and the instrumental skeleton of the song was born. I don't really maintain my old soundcloud that much anymore, but this is probably the state the song was in when I uploaded the midi preview there
title and lyrics came next
the lyrics to warmth were primarily written by Max but I came up with the title first and tried to convey the 'prompt' I was getting at and he just ran with it. Stellarly in my own opinion.
the prompt was something along the lines of "the insidious warmth you feel when giving into vices/temptations or when failing to do the right thing". Maybe how I've explained that has changed over the years but that's more or less always been my intention.
i had even tried my own hand at writing a chorus on this prompt (over what's now the verse riff, mind) but I didn't like what was coming out so it got entirely scrapped.
but one day, Max came to practice with lyrics for the slow "In myy heeeeeaaaad" intro, verse 1, and choruses (if I recall correctly). And also the guitar part for the "In my head" intro bit. At the time, I think he was probably a little nervous about showing me an original intro to the other parts I came up with, but I was pretty instantly sold on it. and despite the slow tempo I felt it matched the rest of the song so well. I'm not even sure that people would guess different songwriters for the intro guitar and the verse/chorus/etc instruments without me clarifying from firsthand account.
from here, I was able to contribute a few lines, which I sometimes find easier once a starting point is established.
for this song's lyrics I came up with...
Let me go
the embrace is only holding me too close
you should know
that nothing's turning out the way I hoped
status quos
in every self-indulgence that/but i know
it's a home
...originally meant as backing vocals for (what is now) the chorus, but that didn't end up happening. Luckily, we ended up using these still, and Max had the idea to reuse "you should know nothing's turning out the way I hoped" for Verse 2.
the other main line I contributed to the song was
in the space behind my faces I can't hide,
that every fault I ever placed on you was always mine
and aside from that every other line in the song came from Max.
I can't say I perfectly remember how the bridge was written but I do remember that the higher single-note guitar line in the bridge before the drum machine bit came from Max and I came up with the chords and tappy bits that happen underneath that.
I also remember having practice one day and we both knew we needed lyrics for the bridge so I tried my backing vocals lyrics mentioned above but I felt that there was too much dead/awkwardly timed space so Max had the brilliant idea of doubling the lines like
the embrace is only holding me... the embrace is only holding me too close
from there, we just went back to main riff because I didn't know where else to go from there, and so I had the extremely original idea to add the cheapest drum machine sound I could find, forgo the bass, and make the guitars as trebel-ey as possible.
just as extremely original, I had come up with that lead that plays over the drum machine bit by improvising it during a runthrough of what we had come up with so far in a practice session (I recall by this point it was probably early pre-pandemic 2020 if not very late 2019) but it was pretty heavily inspired by similar lines from TTTYG-era Fall Out Boy songs like Dead on Arrival or Grand Theft Autumn (relevant timestamps linked)
it was probably during this very practice session that our drummer at the time John just started slowing down on the toms and we all just fucking went with it and thus the iconic slowdown was born. But it wouldn't become a scream breakdown until way later.
around this time march 2020 hit, maybe you've heard of it. And it halted all our practice and plans to play gigs and record pretty dramatically. And so without that collaborative aspect, we had most of this song complete but not the very end, even though I knew I wanted it to do the slowdown and go back to the main riff.
at the time, and idea I was really sold on that we didn't keep was to have the first part of the slowdown (which is now the scream breakdown) bring back lots of important lyrics from earlier in the song in a kind of Yes Britannia sort of way, but when we finally got to rerecording it, what we initially did instead is have Max do the intro lines twice "In myyyy heeeeeead" etc. And there's probably still a file of this demo version floating around somewhere.
but one day when we were already pretty deep into recording vocals for the song, Max came in and said he wanted to try something different, and that was the first time I ever heard the scream part. I wasn't sold initally, but it's definitely grown on me with repeated listens, and once we were able to figure out how to reconcile some of the tempo change shenanigans, the recording was pretty much solidified
if I had to guess, this is the most popular song under the sunday night anxiety umbrella. It regularly gets the most plays (like 6 per month vs 3 lol), but it could also be because it's first in the tracklist. It's positioning as first on the ep was pretty much unanimously agreed-upon by everyone, even though circumstance, nothing we could do, and vacant are all older. Whenever I burden random people with listening to my music, I pretty much always try to get them to listen to this one first too.
and then people who know me personally will quote "In myyyy heeeeaaaad" at me sometimes if that phrase ever pops up in conversation.