Good morning. Just a quick note from your favourite lead guitarist (unless you prefer our other guitarist Alex, as many of you do) to bring you up-to-speed on our album recording. A lot has happened since the last update – we’ve played a triumphant show at The Bowery, we’ve continued mixing songs, playing with the tracklisting, and perhaps most importantly, have been going through a pretty torturous process of trying to figure out what the album should look and sound like.
Writing and recording an album is a strange process – with our first LP ‘The Spirit of an Age to Come’, we literally just selected the best tracks that we’d managed to come up with to date, irrespective of their age or how different they were stylistically. And through happy coincidence (and about six months mixing) it worked – the album felt focused, musically consistent without being dull, and had the right balance of quiet and loud, fast and slow. That’s not to say we were happy with every element of it; even now, there are a few things that bug me about specific tracks, but all in all it was a pretty decent and pretty coherent first effort.
In contrast, this time round we entered the studio absolutely focused on the type of album we wanted to make, with a group of songs that were written specifically to fit this mould. And to our shock and horror, the reality has been completely and utterly different! It’s not that we haven’t been singing from the same hymn sheet – I think it’s more that we’ve all been totally taken aback by how different the resulting sound has been from our intentions. We’re now at stage where we definitely have nine tracks of a ten track record – but amongst them we have (no joking) a rock song, an r&b song, a synth pop song, a dance song, and several more that combine some or all of these elements! The range of influences on this record stretches from Robyn, Beyonce and Lady Gaga through to Depeche Mode, Bruce Springsteen, The Smiths, New Order, Oasis and Aqua (though the last two we may be imagining). As I’m sure you can understand, figuring out how to piece it together is pretty damn tough.
Why am I telling you all of this? Well, because for some strange reason I’m
quite excited about it all. I’ve just
listened to the latest mix of ‘American Girls’, which is certainly the
cheesiest song we’ve ever done, and I love it.
I’m actually quite surprised that we’ve proven ourselves capable of
making music so slick and radio-friendly...
Yet at the same time the track, to me at any rate, feels like it has a
lot more depth and intricacy than a lot of what’s happening in mainstream music
right now. As a band, this was always
our goal – accessible but not throwaway.
So, all-in-all, I’m excited because I now have no idea what the finished
record will sound like, what it will be called or how it will be received – but
I’m pretty sure it won't be dull...