Just before Christmas, we got together to run together a list of songs for the second album, whose plans I hinted at in an earlier post. Originally, we mooted the idea of a 4 track EP (if such things even exist any more!) but as we played through demo recordings and strummed our way through some of the tunes, we suddenly found ourselves with… 19 songs!
Well what the hell, right? Just record them all!
Instead of a simple blast through some well-established live tracks, we’re going to go all Pink Floyd on your ass. We’ve drawn up what amounts to a 19 song medley, where each tune will seque into the next – hopefully seamlessly and with some kind of wit. I had a feverish 4am-can’t-sleep-til-I’ve-written-this-down spasm, where I worked out how we could get each song to run into the next via keychanges, instrumental interludes and sound effects.
It will be very interesting to see how much of that idea actually comes to pass.
Anyway, as part of the exercise, we did some very very rough video recordings of some of the songs. For the sake of posterity and a little amusement, here we are futzing our way through Bottles of Pills – a country-ish ballad I first penned about a decade ago. Played electrically, it has a pretty cool lo-fi vibe about it, but this is just a rough acoustic cut in which I forget the lyrics and you can’t hear Den’s splendid country-twanging lead guitar for some reason. Enjoy.
The purpose of doing little things like this is to get a rough version of each track laid down, with the correct structure. This is important because when we record, we’ll be doing it the hard way: essentially a series of live takes of drums, guitars and bass.
The plan is to learn each song so well that we can play through it blindfold, with no singing. This will let us get down backing tracks in the fastest way and give us the chance to overdub extra parts and the vocals at our leisure later. Last time round, we ended up fannying about for the thick end of 18 months on this process, but this time round we’re more seasoned and should get through it all with a little more alacrity!
Now that we are all, to a greater or lesser extent (curse you Dave, and your perpetual youth!) grey, balding, overweight and wrinkly, it’s cherishable to find some old recordings from the mid 90s when we were still bouncy, bushy-haired and irritatingly chirpy. It’s funny listening back to these songs for me. As I pretty much wrote them in their entirity, they’ve still got some kind of personal resonance, even though clearly they are dated and pretty slight with retrospect.
One thing they certainly bring back is the memory of our optimism around that time. We recorded these track in a place in Castleford under the watchful eyes and ears of Pat Grogan – whose credits included producing Terrorvision and Smokie (the walls were adorned with Smokie’s gold records). This seemed to be highly legitimate and almost like we were on the fringes of actually being something. We even broke off recording one song in order to do a photo shoot. Ha!
In our heads, we wanted to capture “our live sound” – i.e., a kind of exuberant mess recorded live in one or two takes. Grogan, probably wisely, insisted on a proper process, with drums and bass played to a click track and everything else overdubbed later. Technically he was right – and we probably couldn’t have pulled out a convincing enough live version anyway – but even now I kind of resent the overly-polished feeling of these recordings – especially the way the guitars are so muted and weak in the mix and Brendan’s drums so coralled. Live, we’d have played everything twice as fast, with masses of improvisatory drumming.
Anyway for your aural pleasure…
Planet Monday
My mate recently pointed out to me that this seems to be a distinct play off from the Monkees’ Pleasant Valley Sunday. He’s certainly got a point. Lyrically, it is set in roughly the same kind of workaday milieu, taking its observations from the humdrum nature of suburban life. Musically too there’s an obvious reference in the intro with the chiming guitar parts.
At time, in fact, I don’t remember consciously doing any of this, but it could have been on my mind as I did (and do) have a respect for the Monkees output. My main inspiration was though, I think, the bubblegum end of the Britpop pool – Wake Up Boo by the Boo Radleys and Dodgy’s Good Enough awakening some kind of sick instinct for a catchiness within me that informed a good 3 years worth of songs.
At the time, we were so confident of getting signed and perhaps getting this out as a signal that I consciously designed the end of the track to be friendly for DJs – a swinging 5/4 fade out over which Simon Mayo or Bruno Brookes could effortlessly overlay some smarm. We clapped and laughed during the first playback and I mooted sending it to Noel Gallagher with a note saying “this is songwriting – no fuck off”. Ultimately, I suppose I was proved wrong!
Wasting Your Time
While apparently cut from the same kind of bouncy wellspring that informed Planet Monday, this was supposed to be (and perhaps actually is) a little bit more sophisticated.
Firstly, the lyrical content is probably a bit cleverer. I’ve never especially enjoyed writing lyrics and don’t particularly like reading them back, but in this case I’m still relatively satisfied with them. Is it trite to attack the fashion industry? Well, duh. But I like to think this slice of gently humourous joshing still passes muster.
Musically, a lot more thought went into this track. There’s a proper arrangement of guitars… a smattering of hand-clapping percussive goodness, and a stop/start structure that we rehearsed endlessly until we could carry off a one-take recording of the backing track with real crispness, which I think you can still hear in the recording. Sadly, my favourite bit of guitarwork (a lovely counter melody over the descending bit of the chorus) is a bit buried in the mix.
Since then, a load of people have said “haha this is Shed Seven’s riff” regardless of the fact that this was definitely recorded before Shed Seven, and the riff itself is actually a pop staple – check out I’ve Got a Feeling by the Beatles or Suspicious Minds by Elvis to name but two obvious examples.
The Weatherman
I’ve billed this as “the 1997 version” on YouTube, but in reality I’ve no idea when we recorded it. It was the second bite at this particular cherry, and (we thought) a critically important one.
An earlier version of this song, much slower and with a picked riff a little bit like Dear Prudence had been called “interesting” be Alan McGee’s Creation Records and so we’d decided to rock it up a little bit, thicken the guitar sound and blast through it at a higher speed.
Maybe the wrong decision, with hindsight, but this was the form that became the standard live version that was one a fans’ favourite throughout almost the whole time we played together. There’s nothing much to say about this recording, as it’s technically quite dull and short of it’s one interesting feature – a queer ascending, atonal riff I used to tack onto the end to add a touch of drama. From memory Grogan couldn’t figure out a way for us to record it properly and we were running out of time so it got binned. A pity.
Sequels are a bitch. Scientific and unscientific explanations for the phenomena abound, but the principle is really this: you generally blow your artistic wad on whatever you do first and then discover there’s not as much in the tank second time around.
In music in particular, this leads to the “difficult second album” syndrome. Personally, I think the mechanics behind the phenomena work like this:
Spend years toiling in obscurity writing a batch of songs which you’re very passionate about
Suddenly ‘make it’
Throw your all into making an album out of your songs
Go on tour for a year to promote the album
Find yourself under pressure from the record company to get a second album out
Churn out noticeably less-inspired songs because you’re under pressure and writing on the road
Of course, not every band falls into this trap – but there’s plenty that do. In recent years The Fratellis, The Stone Roses, Franz Ferdinand, The Kaiser Chiefs and a raft of similar acts have followed a stellar debut with a record that doesn’t quite scale the same peaks.
And, of course, with success the subtle personal dynamics in a band begin to shift. The singer gets the attention and the guitarist resents it. The rhythm section don’t think they’re getting their share of the cash. The singer sees his attempts at songwriting get turned down.
So with all this going on, when a second album fares less well than the first, it’s relatively easy for a band to implode. Again: not a hard and fast rule, but certainly a noticeable trend. Oasis lost their rhythm section… Suede lost Bernard Butler… The Stone Roses lost their drummer…
Truly exceptional bands, of course, weather these storms and turn into massive sellers/perennial cult favourites, but the second album is definitely a trial of fire that many bands don’t survive.
Anyway, that doesn’t mean shit to us because we’re still not successful in any way you could scientifically measure. Nonetheless, it’s time for a second album….