There’s so much to explore in an album inspired by the druid class in Warcraft/Diablo. It’s all about transformation — cat form, bear form, travel form, flight form. You’re a whole kaleidoscope of different animals and even a tree sometimes.
“Back to the Wild” sets the stage for our main character to begin training as a druid.
“La-da-da-da leaf, la-da-da-da leaf.”
The cornerstone of the Warcraft druid is getting to transform into different animals, and if you imagine what it’d be like to really be that character — to know you were about to unlock the ability to change your very shape — it would be overwhelming.
My favorite part of “Better to Be a Cat” is:
“I shift back and sit down by the fire with empty hands,
(Nothing to carry, nothing to wear)
And they look at me like how is that fair?”
This is the absolute heart of druids. So overpowered.
In Warcraft, druids can’t actually transform into horses for travel form, but I decided to go with horse form for this album anyway—it provides the most direct contrast to what every other class has to do, saving up for a mount and stopping to summon it.
Have you ever played with a druid and they’re zipping around all over the place, shifting into flight and underwater form, always moving faster than anyone else can keep up and just launching themselves off of cliffs and not dying?
Yeah, that’s druids.
Another way druids are overpowered is how they use their special grove as some sort of highway crossroads, beaming there & then having portals to half the world…
Anyway, “Welcome to the Enclave” is a song about druids hanging out in their special grove.
I love animals, but there’s something extra cool about druids turning into trees that can walk around and cast healing spells. So, tree form had to get a song, and I think “Let Me Be Your Shade” turned out to be one of the strongest songs on the album.
“What Do You Need Me to Be” is very specifically about a druid playing different roles—tank, healer, DPS—but it also has the most universally poignant line in the album:
“But freedom isn’t being anything that’s needed
Freedom is choosing — and nobody’s asking me”
Sometimes you get a ridiculous idea in your head… and there’s nothing for it but to write a whole book called Otters In Space… or in this case, create a whole druid album to include one song called… “Choose the Bear.”
Anyway, when I play a druid, I’m a glowing, lime green bear.
I try to give each of these albums an emotional arc, so for the druid, that means after discovering all the different facets of themself — cat, horse, bird, fish, tree, bear — coming to a cohesive understanding of themself as all of those things together.