rockyourlyricsWhat’s the process of writing your lyrics?
I mostly rely on my subconscious, mumbling the tune until I get a few key lyrics that stand out to me, and then they act a bit like coat-hangers which I arrange the rest of the lyrics around.
I try to read a lot too, if I don’t read then my subconscious hasn’t got anything to mull over and give to me.
What inspired your new single “Caroline”?
My subsconscious gave me that “I’m so sorry Caroline” thing going into the chorus.
Then it was just about finding out what the character was apologising for, which was hard! For some reason I started thinking about my mum, who lost her dad to illness on Christmas Eve when she was in her early 20s.
I was also thinking about a character called Ethan Hawley from Steinbeck’s “Winter of Our Discontent” – that whole vibe of someone getting up in the night when the world is asleep was a good metaphor for what I was trying to get at with the lyrics.
What is the best verse you’ve ever written?
We’ve got a song called “Frightening” that we haven’t put out yet but the verse is a good one. It goes:
“Walking the line between the loved and scared
Through the candle lights we might never share
Years flicker by, paper lanterns in a dark sky
I was looking up, suddenly aware
They’re bearing down on life as we know it
Forget-me-not fears, filling these songs
Go love what ya leave before long”
When is last time you wrote lyrics for a song?
Yesterday! I was finishing some lyrics for a new demo currently called “Together” with a great line I’ve sort of stolen from Mad Men.
What is your favourite song (not written by you)?
Lyrically, it’d have to be a Smiths song. “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” is my favourite of their’s at the moment.
That line he repeats at the end, bloody hell it’s so heavy and affecting: “I’ve seen this happen, in other people’s lives and now it’s happening in mine” – it gives you enough but also leaves your imagination the room to make it your own.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEmsjyUrslk
Do you remember the day you wrote: “happy when you go”?
Haha yeh I actually had one of the only writing sessions outside of the band that I’ve ever done coming up.
I’d written some piano chords and then got in the shower and my subsconscious just gave me the whole chorus fully formed, it was great!
And “where we part”?
Not really – Where We Part took a long time to write.
It was only half finished at a time when I briefly tried to stop writing music and do something else, but that was inevitably never going to stick and then when I came back to it I stole the acoustic guitar rhythm from that song “Slow Show” by the National and then it started to really come together.
When will you release your new album/ep?
Plans never seem to stick but we want to release an EP that we’ve already finished in March 2018, and then follow up with the album later in the year.
What does music mean for you?
Im just so grateful that it exists at all. I love writing music, so completely. I love the struggle and the fight to do it, and how demanding and hard it is.
And I love listening to other artists in their moments of genius and unique communication.
When you bought your first record? Where was it?
I can’t remember.
I wasn’t that in to going out and buying music at first because my dad and my older brother were good at recording songs from the radio on to cassette tape, and they gave me my first favourite tapes.
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