Bolts From Out Of The Blue

Cris Cohen: I found this quote where you said, “This is the song that made ‘Lagoon’ feel like a real album.” Which is a lot to say about a particular tune, especially one that appeared so late in the process. So how did “Sleeper Agent” have that much influence over this album?

John Brodeur of Bird Streets: I hadn't written a song since the pandemic started. I hadn't written a song and I was just walking around. I was trying to figure out the bridge to another song, but I hadn't written a new song in months and months and months. And then this melody and some lyrics just sort of started coming while I was walking around at night… you know, on one of my four-mile, nightly, peacekeeping walks <laugh>. Like, “Don't lose your brain.” <laugh> “Good luck.”

And that's a song about trying to hold it together basically. So it felt like it sort of summed up the two other major topics that were going on in the record and sort of brought them together in a way that made it feel like a statement, rather than just a bunch of songs.

Cris Cohen: I love when I hear stories like that. Something comes along so late in the process and yet it all kind of ties it together. It makes me wonder about the whole idea that your brain gets in a certain space and then – even when you've stopped physically working on the album – your subconscious is kind of working on it. And I'm wondering if that's kind of part of what brought this song into being.

John Brodeur: Yeah, I guess. It wasn't intentional. It just sort of was. It just sort of manifested itself. It needed to happen <laugh>. I don’t know what else to say about it. It was one of those sorts of bolts from out of the blue that was like, “You’ve got to go after this one.”