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A quiet Canadian winter night. In this neighborhood of snow-covered homes and
corner markets, the old church in the middle of the block was an unlikely venue for a recording studio. There was no indication that inside three men were toiling to record a song. Tensions were running high as Bill McCarthy sang the vocal track into the microphone, his breath visible from the glacial cold of the studio. When McCarthy and Eric Sanderson arrived from New York the night before to work with renowned indie rock producer Dave Newfeld, best known for his work with Broken Social Scene, they were eager to see where he'd push the music. With their band, Pela, now defunct, and their new project, Augustines, not yet named or fully realized, the musicians were in limbo. The track they'd come to record was "Book of James", the final song to be written and recorded for the album Rise Ye Sunken Ships. After two years of struggle everything was riding on what would happen at Newfeld's studio. The quality of the work was a kind of litmus test to see if Rise would ever see the light of day.
"We had no idea what his process was," Sanderson said, while discussing the recording session over coffee months later in Brooklyn. "We arrived late at night and talked until maybe three in the morning. Billy and I woke up the next day at ten ready to work but we had to wait for Dave who didn't wake up until twelve or something. We sat around while he had breakfast, coffee. Finally, sometime in the afternoon, we went into the studio."