“You know the movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby?” singer Brett Emmons asks Apple Music as he settles in to discuss The Glorious Sons’ fourth album, Glory. Admittedly, it’s not the first reference you’d expect to pop up when discussing a record that reckons with death, heartbreak, and existential crises, but given that his band has been batting a perfect three-for-three when it comes to chart-conquering Canadian rock records, it’s worth entertaining his loopy logic. “There’s that scene where they’re all having a nice dinner at Applebee’s and the dad starts an argument with the waitress,” Emmons continues, “and he says something like, ‘I just see nice things and I want to fuck ’em up!’ Sometimes I get that feeling too, I’m not gonna lie!” Emmons is speaking specifically about the sentiment behind Glory’s centerpiece track, "House Lights," a slow-burning ballad about coming back home after a long time away and not knowing if you belong there anymore—or even if you want to. Certainly, it’s a feeling the band can relate to after spending much of their twenties on the road, logging thousands of miles and gigs en route to joining Canada’s arena-rock elite. But while Glory isn’t exactly an act of provocation from the Papa Bobby school of self-sabotage, it will nonetheless give pause to fans who turn to the Kingston, Ontario, band for amped-up Saturday-night pint-smashers like “S.O.S. (Sawed Off Shotgun)” and “Panic Attack.” True to the confession-booth nature of Emmons’ lyrics, Glory is a more grounded and graceful affair that digs into earthier influences like folk, country, and gospel, while keeping the raucous riffs to a minimum. Here, Emmons reveals the inspirations behind each track. “Glory” “Bands can get bloated and they can get too used to each other, and that causes them to be desensitized to one another—you stop impressing each other, and you’ve got to find a way to keep doing it. So this song is a call to action to the band to take stock of what we’ve done with one another, and appreciate it. That final line—‘This could all be gone’—is a real warning: We could be doing anything else and none of us would be as happy. This is the life for us—a pirate’s life.” “Mercy Mercy” “The chorus goes, ‘Mercy, mercy/I’m sick of my war,’ because in your twenties, you're waging war against the world and thinking you're right about everything, and in a way, that almost magically disappears from the year of 29 to 30, which is wild! Being 30 has felt a lot more reassuring than 20, I don't know why.” “Celluar” “This is about my family, and growing up in Amherstview [Ontario]. It's mainly about my grandfather and my grandmother, and the way that somebody can affect a lineage for generations to come, and how you kind of weigh yourself up to that. The conclusion of that song says, 'I want to know where did we start/I want to know what's in my heart,' because I come from a normal, working-class background, so to measure that up against your life as a traveling circus monkey is a really interesting juxtaposition. To keep both sides in my life is really important to me, but it's also been one of the main struggles.” “Dream” “This is really all about living in the present when you're faced with the sadness of the past every day. It was written for my ex, Jordan [Miller of The Beaches]. There's that line 'See the pixelated screen in the middle of the square,' you know, 'that's you up there'—that's me saying, 'Live in the now, look at yourself, look at what you're doing.' It's about staying present and shooting yourself out of the past, because you can always go back to the numbing comfort of nostalgia.” “House Lights” “There's a house where I used to live in Kingston with my buddy, and I guess that was the main inspiration to write this song. [Guitarist/pianist] Josh [Hewson] explains this one better than me—he says it kind of feels like coming home off of tour and being detached from the life that goes on without you while you're away. That's a really interesting take, but for me, it's also about fear and loss and being afraid to become the person that you want to be.” “Speed of Light” “You always hear negative shit about people nowadays. We're bombarded with it constantly. And I just felt like writing a song that celebrated the perseverance of us on a daily basis. A lot of times, the things that are happening to people are just completely out of their control. And yet they still wake up and still go to work. They still try to do things for themselves and for others. This existential stuff that we're faced with every day is really affecting people, and nobody wants to talk about how amazing it is that we're still holding it together. We're told every day that the world's gonna end, and yet humans just continue to march forth. I think that's a beautiful thing. I think we should maybe get back to being a little more positive about what we're able to accomplish.” “Lightning Bolt” “On this one, I'm singing to a guy—and maybe that guy is me—and he's putting these expectations on a woman, but the truth is, that was never the role she was supposed to fulfill in his life. It's like, 'Get over it—this girl's gonna do what this girl's gonna do.' And it recognizes that that situation is hard for her, too. She's a person that everybody wants to be around, and that everybody falls in love with, and that's not always an easy place to be in, and it can be a very lonely place, too. But it's a little bit of a celebration of this female protagonist, and somebody who’s living their life by their own terms.” “You Stay Young” “This is one big song about loss. I'm just singing to one of my friends, and there's nothing more I can say other than he changed. It's not something I can really discuss the details of, but he changed in a way that just absolutely blew my mind. He was my best friend. The narrator of the song is talking about a death, because that's what this situation felt like to me. This song goes back to a dream I used to have where there's a house standing at the end of a driveway, and it's just in shambles, and everybody's in there, but you can't do anything. You're just on the outside, looking at it, and you start to think maybe it was all fate in the first place.” “Time Will Reign Down on Me” "You probably can tell by listening to the album that we really did get ambitious, but an important thing for this song for me was to never push it into 'explosion' world. With this kind of song, you really need to resist the urge to turn it into that grandiose, gigantic thing. To me, it's almost like the Eagles on codeine—I wanted to keep it kind of dark and slow and scary and brooding.” “Cosmic Beam” “This one felt to me like a Band song, but mixed in the modern world with Queen. It's a eulogy, in a way, but it's almost like a warning too. The most important line—because it hits you straight on where everything else is kind of metaphorical—is 'Don't let him think that he's living the dream.' And that to me is all about friendship and being a good friend and not letting them stray off. It's like—you were there with them at one point, and you egged them on just like they egged you on, but then one day, when they're faced with the reality of their situation, you can try to help them but it might be too late. And in this song, I don't really know if they're in heaven or hell, but I still love ’em.”