As mentioned, Lansing, Michigan emo band The Weak Days are releasing their new concept EP The Fabric of Our Lives this Friday (10/30) via Deep Sea Records (pre-order). The EP was recorded, produced, and mixed by TWIABP's Chris Teti, it features guest vocals by Looming's Jessica Knight on one song ("The Seams"), and one song was written by Koji ("At The End of It All"). "The Fabric of Our Lives is a low-fantasy story of a Bard and a Botanist, whose marriage is failing and whose love is changing," the band says. "It’s about their long-fated intersection in and with the magic of their world, and how it influences their views of self, duty, and love. It is as much about their world as it is our own; as much about them as it is about us."

Musically, the EP channels the yearning emo of '90s-era Mineral, Promise Ring, Rainer Maria, Jimmy Eat World, Appleseed Cast, and other stuff in that realm, and there's a little more of a modern Modern Baseball kind of vibe too. It's familiar-sounding stuff, but it never feels exactly like any other band.

Ahead of Friday's release, we're premiering a full stream of the EP, and the band gave us a track-by-track breakdown, explaining how the story unfolds throughout the EP. Listen and read on for what they had to say…

THE WEAK DAYS' TRACK-BY-TRACK

The setting is a dilapidated village, mostly of older folks, a few kids, but no more than 40-50 total people. The village elder is the “mayor” or something, and overall the village is dying. It is set in the relative wilderness, but is marked to the east by a bunch of stone structures that obviously at one point were a town, but has since died.

Bard and Botanist are married, childhood friends but they're going through a rough patch. Let's say they're in their mid twenties or so. When they were kids, the village elder (the seamstress, but her name is probably different) says these two kids have a shared destiny and whatever. So everyone just interpreted that as like… they are destined to be together, and they always liked each other so they kinda hung out forever and realized they were in love and got married or something.

Botanist is really connected with nature, has regrown the forest around the village and has really been the person that has rehabilitated not only the plants but also the animals around them allowing the slowly dying village to mildly prosper. They are able to eat due to the work that she has done even though the community has been slowly dying.

Bard is the only person to keep them entertained, they are a musician and often make songs to cheer people up and go around doing kind acts and singing, lifting spirits. Bard is also the person that will do any job asked of them, will help out because that’s just who they are.

“No One Can Live Forever”

Bard is kinda disillusioned with their relationship and wants to leave despite how much they love Botanist, and they want to make it work but feels like they can’t, so they decide they wanna leave. A feels like they want to experience other things and leave, they think that they’re breaking apart.

Botanist is really upset with the way Bard has been treating them and has finally had it with their shit and wants to end the relationship because of that. Botanist wants nothing more than to fix it but is upset with the way that Bard has been treating it.

One night, the Seamstress passes their house as they are fighting, and overhears them; unbeknownst to her they have just told each other that they want a divorce, so she goes back to her place and gets a tapestry that she had sewn when they were little. It was the thing she referenced when she said that they had an interwoven fate; it was of like… idk the kids holding hands and then light rays around them, the whole village had seen it but no one knew like the REAL meaning behind it except the seamstress. So anyways, she is like, “okay I’m gonna go drop this off on their doorstep, they will know that I did this, and then they will come talk to me 'cause I’ve had this shit hanging up forever.” So she goes to their house, drops it on their porch, and ding dong ditches them.

They stop fighting when they hear the door knock, they go outside, and stop fighting when they see the tapestry.

“Your Shoulder”

They agree to go see her but don't know how to like…reconcile past the point that they're at. They don't know what they’re supposed to do cause they both; 1. never thought they would get to this point, and 2. thought that this would be the end and one of them would leave and they would stop the conversation there. However something fills them with hope for the future, across the walk they are reminded of how they got so far anyway. How their commitment to each other had seen them through so much; and how the light from that tapestry hasn’t show itself. Maybe they could become stronger, maybe they could find what that means.

“The Seams”

The next day they go to see her and she takes them on a walk and explains to them what she really meant when she said their fates were interwoven. She explains who she is and what her role has been the last few however many hundred years.

She is a human, like them, but was given a gift by “the gods” of everlasting life, but she had a partner up until two hundred or so years ago (the events of the LP) and [she explains] that she and her partner, the clockmaster, were tasked together a thousand years ago to keep and record time. Her partner’s role as Clockmaster was to protect actual time itself and keep the world on a steady pace forward, a task given by the gods so they didn't have to. And she was given the task of recording that time and making note of the things that happened, remembering it all and recording it in her tapestries so that she could access any memory of history that someone may need, whether a society or the gods. They were tasked together in love so that they would keep to their task and live for as long as they could (they won't die of old age but if some shit like what happened in the LP happens they can just die by someone killing them), and keep the task.

The bummer is the Clockmaster died, and she too is slowly dying; but her last act is to find someone to replace her, as was done to her. She asks them if they will accept this task, but explains also that there are some drawbacks, a luxury not afforded to her by her predecessors. Only once a year are they able to see each other face to face, for one hour (the daylight savings time festival thing from the LP); she and the clock master talked through the pond below the clock tower (where they currently are) and she would see him in the reflection and was able to talk to him. (He also did not have a body except for that one day a year.) But she was not able to enter the clocktower at all.

"Intermissing"

The couple take a bit to debate whether or not they will take up the task; it ends with the Botanist asking the Bard to be honest.

“Til Then”

The Bard responds "how honest do you want me to be?" and starts a heated argument. They say that this will give them the space they need but link them forever, and they are each all that the other has ever known REALLY so they say yes.

Botanist is tasked as the Keeper of Time, to grow a new tree to be the next clock tower, to have it grow to see over the land and to have it keep time for the world so it can ever march forward and grow and give new life.

Bard is tasked as the Recorder of Time, to write songs as history and to sing events to fables so that they can always be remembered; to be the life of the party and to keep the people lively, to have them live their lives to the fullest.

“At The End of It All”

Our story ends on a small vignette of the Bard, singing about how they really miss the Botanist and that they are happy they chose this path, as to never be too far away from their love, but that the bittersweet nature of their relationship wears heavy on them; that staying together was the right choice, but that it cost them being as close as they want to be.

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