Daiana Feuer on August 22nd, 2017

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Conditioner’s Riley McCluskey came up with the lyrics to “Dates & Names” while daydreaming during a European history class in college. They were studying World War I. He remembered a trip to France he took in high school. The bus pulled over for a break in the countryside and there happened to be a little stone monument indicating that this beautiful locale had been the site of a major battle where 100,000 soldiers died. In that moment, he felt the ubiquitous nature of time. He says, “It had been a town, then a horror show, and now it’s a pretty rest stop for our tired bus driver – that transformation completely tripped me out. … This song is about finding comfort in the fact that the arc of time is completely confounding to idiots like us.”

He kept the song on a shelf for four years, then fleshed it out with bandmate Aaron Kirkbride when they formed Conditioner. The result is a dreamy, pseudo-tropical meditation on how strange it is to inhabit time and place.

||| Stream: “Dates & Names”

||| Previously: “That’s Not Me”