Today, Chicago-based Dendrons shares “Same Spot. Dendrons formed in Chicago, Illinois, on New Year’s Day 2018. They are finishing their second full-length LP 5-3-8 written and recorded during the Pandemic, at Sonic Ranch near El Paso, TX, working alongside engineer/producers Sonny DiPerri (Protomartyr, DIIV, Nine Inch Nails, Animal Collective, Emma Ruth Rundle) and frequent collaborator, Tony Brant.
The band has toured extensively throughout the US + CAN + MEX and in the process of re-booking shows for late summer. They are currently represented by the indie label Earth Libraries.
What inspired the song?
Lyrically this song started with a few vague images, as do many lyrics I come up with, and I pieced them together. The whole band ultimately helped edit.
Originally, I pictured a sort of a sprawling, dystopian city—a kind of rusty city hell.
In it, I imagined two main characters, possibly a couple (or friends), looking down from a rooftop into smog and the industrial rat race. They are bolstering one another, speaking as if they are separate from it when in reality they are destined to be a part of it—Destined to repeat patterns + identify with them.
The characters find comfort in each other, not in the world; it would seem. But they are of the world. They are worldly.
I was reading Dante’s Inferno a lot. Dante’s rings of the underworld + different circles of hell was something I was thinking about. Circle imagery is sprinkled liberally throughout the song—I kind of thought of circles and how it relates to the Ouroboros. The lyrics “ You watch impalas move doughnuts around the lot. They all move backwards. They all move back.” Is my wink and nod to Circle 8, Bolgia 4 from Dante.
The charters in the song talk in circles and keep cycling through a wide spectrum of talking points. They do this until they land on something they both intrinsically agree on, forgetting the lot of their disagreements——Feelings of understanding overshadowing anything else. That can be distorting. I imagined the two characters in the song on some amphetamine.
I kept thinking about Politicians like Trump, who are constantly speaking on every side of an issue as a manipulation tactic, so his base will eventually zone in on what they wanted to hear from the beginning. He will affirm and denounce the same subject in one ramble. I think about how often I’ve known people who work like this.
The song is kind of a hodgepodge, for sure.
What do you want people to take away from the song?
Everyone’s interpretation of the song is true and valid. I don’t want to tell anyone what to take away or feel from it. If someone gets something totally different from what I originally intended, that’s beautiful. A lot of things are open-ended, and language is flexible.
Anything else noteworthy?
The band made the music video to “Same Spot”, and a lot of it was recorded with a junker surveillance camera one of our band members bought online.
Watch the video for ‘Same Spot’ – BELOW:
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