Unwrapped: Male Bonding / Nothing Remains + Pirate Key

"'Nothing Remains' was a song I wrote on acoustic guitar in my room. It's only three chords I think. It was transformed a little in the practice room - it originally sounded a little more joyful, although the over riding theme in Nothing Hurts (the album) and especially this song is far from joyous. As far as I'm concerned anyhow.

I was always a little bummed out about how this song turned out after we recorded it. The guitar lines don't flow as much as I'd imagined they would. Lyrically, as I touched on, it's about being hung out to dry without understanding why. Very sad. Truly very, very sad.

''Pirate Key' could possibly be one of the first songs we wrote together as a band. I remember coming up with the guitar line at practice one Friday evening. We were all joking about how it sounded like Lady Smith Black Mambazo.

It was named 'Pirate Key' because the band we shared that practice space with had locked all our amps and guitars in a elevator shaft for some reason. I think they were having a tidy up and thought it would be best to hide our stuff behind lock and key. We phoned the band and they were in a recording studio somewhere writing some very powerful, contemporary love songs. They were annoyed with us for bothering them, but I think they understood that they had put us in quite a tight spot.

Anyhow, they cabbed the key to the practice space so we could release our very expensive equipment. The key in question looked very much like an old pirate key - Goonies style. At the end of that practice we had written the Lady Smith Black Paul Simon song, which we then decided to name 'Pirate Key'.

Lyrically it's about knowing someone is screwing you around, but being unable to do anything about it. A very deep, and beautiful topic for a song.

- John Arthur Webb