No Good Left To Give

"We never want to be pigeonholed into a band that only can do one thing," Movements vocalist Patrick Miranda tells Apple Music. "And I think that people who want bands to stay the same forever, in my opinion, it's a selfish way of thinking about things." Produced by Will Yip, No Good Left to Give showcases the California-based quartet expanding into darker territory on their second full-length, both socially and thematically. Tracks like "In My Blood" and "Don't Give Up Your Ghost" introduce a Cure-like wrinkle to the band's post-hardcore sound, while "Skin to Skin" and "Santiago Peak" highlight Miranda's improved vocals. "If fans don't like how we've changed, that's fine," Miranda says. "But you can't expect us to continue to do the same thing just because it's what they like." Here, Miranda takes us through No Good Left to Give track by track.

In My Blood
“I think a lot of bands try and hit the ground running right off the bat with their openers being a really banging, upbeat, fast-paced song, and we were like, let's do the opposite, and kind of like a slow burn, because there is one part where it does open up into a cool upbeat part, but you expect there to be more, and then you actually end up getting less, because it just goes back into this drone.”

Skin to Skin
“I think it's to me it's the most entertaining, it's the catchiest in my opinion, and it just gives off a fun, cool vibe to me. I find myself getting that song stuck in my head all the time, which is crazy because I usually can't stand to listen to my own music, and I'm like, 'This is crazy, I wrote this, why am I singing it like it's a fucking song on the radio.'”

Don't Give Up Your Ghost
“This was another one of those scenarios in which we were like, ‘You know what, let's do something that goes against the grain of what you would expect.’ We wanted the first look of the album to be, again, not like your typical first single. Everybody always drops the first single being a banger that's upbeat, fast, and boppy. And we were like, no. Let's do the opposite, let's release the slowest song on the record as the first single, because it's so different and so cool. We wanted the first single of the album to be something weird, and we knew going into that that it was going to be something where fans were going to be like, 'What the fuck is this?' We knew people were going to talk about it, we knew people were going to be kind of weirded out by it. In my opinion, that's the best way to get hype started about your new record.”

Tunnel Vision
“This is the crowd-pleaser. It is very much like its roots are still very much in vintage Movements. You got the screaming in it, you have the heavier kind of chorus, and it's very much like sort of paying homage to what Movements has always been.”

Garden Eyes
“We co-wrote that song with Andrew Goldstein, and he's more into the pop realm of things. He writes with artists like blackbear, All Time Low, Katy Perry—he's done some really big stuff in the pop world. The melody choices were very much inspired by early-2000s kind of rock and stuff that was on the radio at the time. And that to me was really cool because it was a new perspective that we didn't necessarily have on Feel Something, because we didn't really do many co-writes for that record, and this record we got to explore that realm a little bit more.”

12 Weeks
“This is a different one for sure. That's one of the songs that to me feels very fresh and different as far as anything that Movements has done before. It's a song about, again, grappling with these ideas of 'would things be better if you were gone?' Would life be different for someone else in a more positive way if you had never existed or you died, or if you never were a part of their life, that sort of idea.”

Living Apology
“What we’re trying to accomplish is to make sure that each one of our songs is distinct in some way or another. That song originally was extremely upbeat. It had a fast kind of driving chorus to begin with; the verses were in a higher register. And the more that we listen to it and the more that we listen to the record as a whole, we were like, ‘This almost feels out of place, because it seems like it's already been accomplished on the record.’ That's when we came up with the idea of taking that chorus and instead of having it be a typical driving chorus, we decided to give it a swing and downtempo. It's almost to me hip-hop-inspired in some ways. And I know that sounds weird, because it doesn't sound like hip-hop at all, but just the vibe of it feels kind of like R&B kind of vibey different sort of sound.”

Santiago Peak
“There's always the fucking punks that are like, 'Oh, I hate my hometown, I want to get out.' And I think for a while when I was writing music, that was a theme that I also agreed with was, man, I just feel so stuck where I am. It wasn't until we started touring that I started to really have a better appreciation and understanding for how good I had it where I grew up. I grew up extremely privileged, I grew up in a really nice area, I had a good upbringing and a good childhood, and that's so much more than what so many people can say about their own childhood, and to me, doing anything that talked ill or would be speaking badly about the place where I grew up just feels so disrespectful.”

Seneca
“Everybody has that one person who is the one that got away, and there was a theme that one of my friends was telling me about, like a term for that person. And he calls the one who got away a white buffalo. And I liked that sentiment, but I hated ‘buffalo.’ It's such a dumb word to put into a song. I came across an article about a specific breed of deer called the Seneca white deer. The fact that they were white deer, which kind of goes along the same vibe as the white buffalo, it was a cool-sounding name, it was something I could incorporate into the song.”

Moonlight Lines
“This is another song that I think shows our progression, or at least my progression as a vocalist. The things that I was writing about when I was 19 are not the same things that I experience today. And as I've gotten older, and as I've become more of an adult, I've had different experiences—whether that be with people or just in general, I've had more experiences. And this particular song is essentially about a one-night stand, and the feeling of shame or regret that comes after it.”

No Good Left to Give/Love Took the Last of It
“The entire idea is that they go hand in hand. The lyrics in ‘No Good Left to Give’ are the title and the theme of the next song. That interlude was part of the final, and we were like, that's going to make this song six minutes long, we should switch it up, we should make it a little different, we should have this song be its own song, which is cool, because it's only a minute and a half and it works really well. It's just a really cool interlude into the final track of the album, which to me is the perfect closer. I feel like 'Love Took the Last of It' has such a strong epic chorus to end the album on. It feels very fucking 'roll the credits,' you know?”