Album notes:

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Latitude was written during a period of depression and soul-searching and employs imagery from nautical cartography. Several lyrics reference globes, maps, the ocean, lines of latitude and longitude, ships, anchors, and navigation. Song titles reference locations ("Tropic of Cancer" and "Northfield") and utilize Latin phrases  to mimic old maps. The album title comes from the song "Latitude," which uses sailing the oceans as a metaphor for life, specifically for soul-searching. A person lives their life traveling along a line of latitude, crossing lines of longitude as they go. Each line of longitude is, in the song, a metaphor for a religion or faith (lines of longitude travel north, up towards God), and the traveler struggles to determine which line of longitude is "true." The rest of the songs on the album fit into struggles the traveler experiences on their journey: depression, confusion, doubt, fear, change, broken relationships, etc.

Latitude is a recording departure from my previous albums. I tracked the piano and vocals separately (but recorded them simultaneously) and took time to go back and edit each part with compressors, equalizers, reverb, etc. I also went back and fixed some mistakes during recording. Looking back several years on, Latitude could have been mixed better. At the time, however, it was a huge step forwards. (Compare the recordings on Latitude and Death and All Her Pretty Little Monsters to hear the change.) Lyrically and musically the album also takes a step forward. There is a lot more imagery on Latitude than on my previous albums, and the piano parts are, in general, more fleshed out.