Jet streams from Manchester airport coming over our t-lodge this morning.

Gregor has been hard at work the last couple of weeks making a video for our current single ‘Snakes in the Grass’ (out 23rd May). We think it looks awesome!! see if you can spot cameos from members of Glasgow bands The Phantom Band and John Knox Sex Club….?

The Pogues, Recording and learning the Trombone

Back in January we came back from our various Christmas holidays with our ears still ringing from the last night of that amazing Pogues tour at Brixton Academy in London. It was a great tour and the Pogues couldn’t have been more encouraging of us, they were warm, funny people with amazing stories who’d come chat whilst we soundchecked, or took photo’s in the pit whilst we played. We owe them everything for their taking us out on the road - and to Anton of the Brian Jonestown Massacre for introducing us to them!

Anyway, we had barely adjusted to the familiar surroundings of Govanhill when we were jostled by the unsettling feeling that we were meant to be doing something at the start of February. What we were meant to be doing, we suddenly remembered with the panic-stricken anxiety of the occasional procrastinator, was record our upcoming album with a very fine and talented gentleman by the name of Leo Abrahams (check out his fine fine work here ).. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had an IMDB page somewhere too…

Leo and myself had been introduced over the phone after he heard our demos back in October, they were really rough and recorded on a tiny 4x2” dictaphone but he seemed to like the resulting crackling noise and even suggested using the thing for recording tracks properly, which seemed like an insane and equally sensible idea to us. SO, after a bit of phone bonding and then meeting the man in person and recording one of our tracks with him in mid-December, we fell in love with Leo.  You could say we bonded like Elmer’s glue to construction paper. So we agreed that our band would present ourselves at the Distillery (a lovely studio down in Bath built by our label) in the beginning of February to properly record our demos with Leo. But back to the beginning of January…So there’s the three of us, slightly fatter by way of too many profita rolls, concerned looks on our faces thinking, shit. Album. shit. Must prepare.

It wasn’t as bad as I make it seem, though, because we already had most of the songs written over the prior couple of months. But we didn’t want this album to lack the continuity that we felt, in all honesty, our first album lacked, so we spent a month rehearsing and arranging the tracks in Berkeley rehearsal studios in Glasgow cutting the ones out that seemed disjointed and stopped when we settled on 10 tracks that had a nice sense of flow and, of course, anger and moodiness to them. Thankfully this process took just under a month, we didn’t want to lose the energy of the songs so it was good that we had a deadline. So at the beginning of February we brought our ten tracks down to the Distillery and spent the next while recording them with Leo. He was the perfect person to work with, calm, patient, willing to entertain our crazy ideas and armed with a suitcase full of FX pedals.

He would record us during the day with the engineering help of a lovely Matt Tait (on the right here) who was always equipped with really dirty stories which came in handy when we got cabin fever…So pretty much everything was done live in one room, with the exception of a few really tricky tracks where I could not possibly sing and play my guitar with my teeth at the same time….

So after getting the right sound for our amps, mics, etc, we would run through the song until we got a good take (usually the second take, Leo always stopped us when we started getting too tight or the song was losing its emotion). Then he’d spend the evening mixing it and we’d make dinner and then talk about the mixes, go to sleep, wake up, make mix adjustments and any wee overdubs (horns, for instance, which Gregor and Nick had learned that week for a couple of tracks they thought were suitable…nutters!)

…then in the early afternoon we would start on the next track and this went on very intensely for 15 days on the trot. phew. With the exception of one dark day where everyone was in a shit mood and Gregor commented on more than 5 occasions that he could use a punching bag and Leo gave me the death stare about 8 times while I gave Nick shit for everything in the world and Matt just disappeared for about 5 hours unaccounted for, the entire experience was amazing. Intense but amazing. And on that dark day, by the way, the mood in the air was perfect for the track which really benefited from everyone’s assholery so even some good came out of the bad.

Incidentally, it’s the last track on the album and if my voice sounds shaky it’s not down to a wobbly effect. Anyway, we’re really excited about releasing this album and we hope everyone enjoys it. It’s crazy to think that it’s been sitting in our headphones for two months and we can’t let anyone hear it. Arrrgh, bring on May 23rd!!!

The White Cliffs of Dover, Cheesed to meat you and an Arctic Breeze.

I think I ended our last entry in Oxford towards the end of our UK tour. We had a couple more dates in the UK (which, by the way, were great fun overall and I can’t thank everyone enough for coming out and supporting us on our first headline tour). Anyway, we did laundry at Nick’s parents house and then took the Dover ferry over to Paris to play a gig at La Marinoquiere, a great venue near the cemetery where Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde were buried. We set off to find their graves after soundcheck and not only did we totally FAIL (we didn’t have our own map so we followed two girls who turned out to be shit map readers) but we were also nearly locked in the cemetery gates. Some gardeners spotted us and took pity, I guess, and we made it back to the venue in time for the show. The crowd didn’t even boo my embarrassing attempts at French and we had a gourmet meal (or is that just your standard French fare?) so it was a success overall. Berlin was an epic drive and the venue was really charming (the Privatclub) but it was painfully obvious to us that very few people knew or cared who we were and we played to maybe 20 people. Yunno, thanks to those 20 people because I don’t know what we’d have done if nobody turned up. Probably just cried. Anyway, we set out for Italy next to support Sivert Hoyem (a brilliant band outta Norway, the singer was in Madrugada, another great band who are sadly no longer a band) and holy crap, I can’t believe we made it in one piece because the Italians drive like lunatics. I am in love with nearly all things Italian but, holy shit, Romans really do drive like total nutters. We made it back out of Italy in one piece and probably 20 pounds heavier (except for Gregor, who could eat a deep fried horse stuffed with cheese and LOSE weight). Heading over the Swiss Alps was breathtaking and our gig in Lucerne, Switzerland with Sivert was pretty special. It was the last night of both of our month-long tour so we got completely leathered and made shit tons of cheesed to meat you’s (that’s basically a cheese and ham without the bread….there’s a lot of cheese and ham EVERYWHERE in Europe). I don’t know why I’m admitting this, it’s hardly rock and roll…..yeah, we got really drunk and ate breadless sandwiches. Totally mental……..Anyway, I remember very little after the actual gig and slept all the way to France, where we caught a blinding set by Mice Parade in a tiny town outside Lille. Seriously, check both these bands out:

http://www.siverthoyem.com/

http://www.myspace.com/miceparadeband

So we got home all ready for the post-gig malaise to kick in only to get a call from Sivert asking us if we’d like to come to Norway for a gig in Oslo. We were shocked but nearly said no because we thought it’d be too dear UNTIL we noticed cheap flights going out of Edinburgh. Also, the bass player Rudi was kind enough to offer us a gig in his hometown of Tromso, so we’d have been stupid to decline an offer to go to the Arctic Circle. I’m really glad we did (and thank you so so so so so much Sivert Hoyem and Rudi-who’s excellent band is called Pistol and Bart -http://www.myspace.com/pistologbart) because we were all stunned to silence by the beauty of Norway. Sadly, we missed out on seeing the Northern Lights because there was cloud coverage that day (fffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuud) but we did meet some charming Norwegians and a very randy fisherman, as well as being treated to some of the nicest hospitality I’ve ever experienced. So feeling a bit charmed and buzzing off the cool air of the Arctic, we headed back home and turned on the fire and chucked out laundry in the machine………and now we will quietly wait for this post-tour malaise to finally kick in.