Opening Changes is a thirteen minute R&B/prog opera called “Change.” While unassuming at first, it rapidly develops with many twists and turns, establishing a number of references and setups for the rest of the album.
It starts with verses sung by Stu, featuring a chord progression later used in “Hate Dancin’”. Here, Stu questions the purpose and power of change — specifically calling on listeners to create social change and to bring equality through mobilization. The second section is “Astroturf”/“Short Change”-esque and is sung by Cook. The lyrics question change but rather than focusing on its influence, ask if the change we currently have is actually enough.
Following this is Ambrose’s section with an instrumental similar to “No Body” and “Exploding Suns.” Noticeably darker than the rest, his verse deals with “heroes wearing fake capes” who claim they’re creating change when they’re really searching for power. His answer to this is to expose them, although this is described morbidly, with the lyrics comparing Ambrose to a sniper in a tower picking off targets before they can cover up their lies and make excuses.
Joey’s section is synth-based with touches of “Gondii,” and brings up how what we view as truth can be completely changed based on circumstance and new information, coming to the conclusion that our own significance is in vain.
Following this, we return to Stu’s verse where he proposes a solution: the creation of an ark to take everything good on Earth and protect them, leaving the rest of humanity to die. Stu sings along to the melody after this, with Ambrose adding in the lyrics “burnin’ up,” bringing to mind climate change. The final section continues this with distorted guitars and high energy, referencing the album’s closer “Short Change.”
In its epic runtime, “Change” features all lead vocalists in the band’s discography up to that point, motifs and chord changes found in all the rest of the songs on the album, and also provides a poignant, powerful message about our ability to cause change and to create a better world.
Originally Changes was conceived as a concept album with one long song, but the band ended up abandoning this idea and opting for “Change” instead. The song was performed by Stu (drums/electric guitar/bass/vocals/Mellotron), Cavs (drums), Ambrose (keyboards/vocals/percussion), Cook (synthesizer/keyboard/vocals/guitar) and Joey (synthesizer/guitar/vocals).
Dedicated members of the weirdo swarm heard segments of the song as far back as May 7th, 2021, when sound engineer Nico Wilson uploaded a string of videos to their Instagram story showing the band playing new material while being filmed by John Angus Stewart of PHC Films. At the time, there was much speculation over two songs found in the ASCAP ACE repertory called “Timeland”, and “Smoke and Mirrors.” After a Reddit AMA featuring the band answering through the account u/MadeInTimeland, it was deduced that there was a new album on the way, leading many to believe that what Nico had shown was actually a peek at Made In Timeland. The safer (and correct) assumption was that, whatever it was, it would be part of an upcoming documentary that Joey had mentioned in an NME article.
A twist came in January of 2021 when Made In Timeland leaked online, compounded by the leaker who had added a clip of Ambrose’s segment from Nico’s Instagram story to the end of “Smoke and Mirrors” — a part that was not on the actual release. In April of 2021, the mysterious film was given a name, Sleeping Monster, and was meant to debut alongside Chunky Shrapnel on May 8th, 2021 at the Astor Theatre in St Kilda. However, when the showing came, Sleeping Monster was not played. Both the film and “Change” disappeared until September 7th, 2022, when the band opened pre-orders for their three October 2022 albums, one of them being Changes. A month later on October 19th, 2022, the band revealed (alongside a snippet of “Change”) that Sleeping Monster would be released on Vimeo for a limited time, confirming that Nico’s Instagram footage showed sessions for this documentary. It was finally released on October 26th, 2022, and fans finally got to hear “Change” in all its glory, synced to footage of the band playing the song live in studio. Sleeping Monster also contains demos of the song and other material from Changes. Sleeping Monster was followed two days later by the release of the album.
Of the demos heard in Sleeping Monster, the first is a slightly faster and brighter version of Stu’s verses with noticeably rougher parts. The second is similar to the first, but has a bass intro. The third is the only known demo of Ambrose’s section, and has a sound closer to Stu’s verses than the darker vibe of the final version.
In a Stereogum interview, Stu said that “Change” was the heart of everything on Changes. “‘Change’ is the genesis of the whole record. And then ‘Hate Dancin’ is built out of one of the chord progressions from ‘Change.’ And then ‘Astroturf’ is built out of one of the chord progressions in ‘Change’ as well. And so is ‘Short Change,’ the last song. Every song on the album is built out of a section of ‘Change.’ So yeah, it’s funny how it worked like that. ‘Change’ is this sort of big monster, [this] genesis of little ideas, and the shorter songs on the album are like its children that it gave birth to over five years.” The studio version of the song was recorded by Stu and Nico, and is the only song on the album to have this credit as mostly everything else was done by Stu alone in various locations over five years.
On 2023-03-01 before their Highway Holidays performance of “Gaia”, Stu is seen rehearsing “Change” on synthesizer, with Ambrose filming his hand movements. A month later on April 24th, Lucas uploaded a video playing the song’s bassline with the caption “V fun bassline” — signaling that the song was on the way to the stage.
“Change” saw its live debut on 2023-06-13 at The Salt Shed in Chicago, with Stu exclaiming afterwards that it was difficult to play. The song was played two other times in 2023.
Unlike the studio version lasting thirteen minutes, the live versions nearly hit the twenty-minute mark, with more time spent transitioning between sections. In the band’s 2023 Reddit AMA, Ambrose responded to a question asking how hard “Change” was to rehearse and said “it took quite a few rehearsals than normal. So glad its in the mem bank now though!”