"More Dark Than Light" was an attempt to write a very simple song about a fairly complex emotion using the fewest words possible and some of my favorite open chords. It's about the moment you realize that certain people and places in your past no longer have an emotional hold on you. It's a liberating feeling, yet there's some melancholy involved, because you realize you're also leaving behind a big part of yourself. You've changed.

The tune emerged pretty quickly one winter night after I'd moved to Cincinnati from Cleveland. It was a big transitional year for me, and, as you might expect, I was reflecting a lot on what I was leaving behind as much as what lay ahead. I later realized that, while the chorus has a lot to do with no longer looking to another person as an emotional barometer, "more dark than light" also describes the weather in Cleveland pretty well.

This is anecdotal evidence, but a friend of mine once told me that during World War II, the government scouted locations for a munitions factory, searching for a site in the U.S. with the heaviest year-round cloud cover, to protect the factory from detection and aerial bombardment. The winning city? Ravenna, Ohio, a half-hour southeast of Cleveland. Today, the National Guard trains on the site.

When we recorded "More Dark Than Light," we remained true to my original intent—or, more precisely, what the song wanted—and kept the arrangement fairly simple, allowing the words and melody to do their thing. Everyone staked out their unique territory in the arrangement, so even though there's only five of us—or maybe despite the fact—there's a lot of space in the song. In my mind's eye, the arrangement seems to create a horizon line off in the distance, a vanishing point.

Encouraging this direction was the fact that we were listening to AC/DC on the way to the studio that day. Calvin, bless him, whipped out a copy of "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap," and, as we drove up Martin Luther King Dr. toward Camp Washington, we were awed, per usual, by the band's nuts-and-bolts style—totally kick-ass and not a note wasted (although there were likely a few very wasted notes, since Bon was still in the band).

Andrew took the approach to heart, and built the song up from the most basic elements of a beat. The first verse is just kick drum and snare, and then he brings in the hi-hat on the chorus. It never gets more complicated than that but it's so effective. I could be wrong, but I think John captured the kit with a minimum of mics, too (three?), letting the room sound—those high ceilings at Ultrasuede—fill out the mix.

Calvin, meanwhile, had discovered John's vintage mandolin at the studio, and felt it fit the song's mood—and it does, to me it almost sounds like a line arranged for violin. On the second verse, you can hear him double the mandolin line with a backwards electric guitar. His guitar line on the chorus—played through an Electro-Harmonix Memory Man—is very Roxy Music circa "Avalon." Never a bad thing, in my mind, but an interesting choice in combination with the more acoustic instruments.

And then Paul really took the song to a whole other place with his bright oohs and ahhs on the chorus, plus the harmony part he sings, doubling my last lines in the chorus--"I can leave it all behind..." etc. I recommend playing it the next time you're driving out of town on a rainy night.