Live This Way is a glimpse into the inner turmoil and growth that all of us have experienced in our lifetimes, especially in the last few years.

It's a story of feeling down on yourself, realizing that so many other people feel the same way, and banding together to find a new way to live. What that will look like, it's hard to say right now- but we'll find out together.

This song was inspired by the music of Lumpy, who agreed to be a featured trumpet player on the track. You can hear him laying down the chorus horn line (that he came up with) and busting a gnarly solo over the bridge. The other trumpet parts were recorded by our resident player Sam Copernicus. Thanks Lumpy, the song wouldn't be the same without you!

A note from Atlas:

We are now entering phase two.

It's been quite a year. Jubilee took a long time to pull together, and a long time to release. I had a lot of fun, and learned a ton.

I also listened to new music. A lot of new music. Mostly new ska.

When Jubilee was being written, I hadn't been listening to new ska in a few years- I was behind. So the music was influenced by what I had been listening to more of, and flavored by my not knowing a guitarist and being too dysfunctional to pick it up myself.

But there was always a plan to include guitar in the last song- just power chords, I could handle that- and to see what happened from there.

What happened is, I continued to be influenced by what I was listening to, but what I was listening to changed. And now we've got a delightful few songs in the vault that we'll be working on releasing next year.

We're still going to explore the sound of synth ska, because I think it's cool and because we've got a whole EP written and mostly recorded already. But we're also going to explore all sorts of sounds that I think are cool. And I hope you think they're cool as well!

This song also introduces two new members to the A&O fold- trombonist Don Jupiter (also featured in the Walls Come Crashing music video) and guitarist/bassist Juno Grey. I met Juno via ska twitter- but their secret identity is safe with me. Welcome to the collective, we're happy to have you!