White Russian Doll or WRD was mostly recorded at our initial sessions at Britannia Row in Fulham where we laid down the basics for five tracks. In the end we weren’t happy with the drum sound and re-recorded the rhythm tracks in a frantic last couple of hours at Brendan Lynch’s place which we’ll speak more of later.
This track started with the chorus and I wanted to make the main melody quite jazzy and have that Stereolab block harmony thing going on. I’ve loved Stereolab since I got an NME VHS video from a carboot sale when I was 16 and it had hypnotic track called Super Electric on it. It was another Stereolab song (Pop Quiz, from the album Music for the Amorphus Body Study Centre) that really got me interested in string sections on pop records.
When first started listening to music, back when indie music didn’t really go near the mainstream charts, there was a general feeling that, if you had a string section on your records, you had sold out. I think this was still a hangover from punk’s year zero obliteration of prog rock. Then Oasis came along and it was deemed OK to be ruthlessly ambitious and spending enormous amounts of money on a full orchestra to play a few chords behind your track became a badge of success. This is of course simplifying things a bit but when Lucky Soul was forming, I knew I wanted to bring back the old romance of carefully arranged strings. When I finally got to hear The Stockholm Strings playing the new songs in a Swedish studio, well I can’t begin to tell what an amazing feeling that was… it was a ‘this is what I’m truly meant to do’ moment. I felt so lucky and honoured.
Anyway back to the song and for me, Ivor’s riff makes it. I would describe it as ‘needley’, which I’m not sure is an actual word or even an understandable phrase, but that’s how it feels to me and it just gets in your head from the off. Something we were looking for across the record and particularly on this track was an insistent beat, never letting up but still with enough dynamics in it to be far away from Snow Patrol loudness sludge. We played ‘Heatwave’ by Martha and The Vandellas live for a while and that’s the most obvious touch-point, with a fair helping of ‘This Charming Man’ and a bit of the Style Council too.
Lyrically it’s pretty vague, it’s a love song of sorts I suppose but more of a protective song. We played Russia two years ago so that was influential and I was definitely after a repetitive lyric to match the title, like a lyrical interpretation of the The White Stripes Seven Nation Army video where there’s always something inside something else.
So there you go, a good upbeat song for track two, and for me a good example of the difference in feel between this album and the last; compare ‘Add your Light To Mine, Baby’ to ‘WRD’ and I think you’ll see the underlying darkness to this record, next to the youthful exuberance of the first.
Below is the video shot by our friend and amazing video director James Slater on a fun weekend in Berlin. Next up, a song most of you won’t have heard.
So here we are just a week away from the release of our new album A Coming Of Age, 3 years to the month since The Great Unwanted hit the shops and 4 years since our first single My Brittle Heart. A long time. I think the writing for this recod started late 2007 and we first hit the studio in December 2008 with a punishing 10 months of recording, editing, mixing and mastering until it was finally finished 6 months ago. Without boring you with too much record label promotional guff, you have to wait at least 3 months if you want the big glossy magazines to review you. Add in Christmas and here we are at last.
So I thought I’d give you a track by track run down of the album to get you geared up for the release. We’re really proud of the album, particularly the way it runs together as an album should. Some great tracks got left off, but we felt it was really important that the album felt good a whole. It clocks in at 36 minutes which is pretty short and sweet (although one minute longer that The Beatles’ Revolver). We set out to make a warm, direct album with a timeless feel and I believe we’ve achieved that and I hope sincerely hope you enjoy the fruits of our, sometimes hard labour.
So here goes…
1. Woah Billy!
This one came about after I watched a TV show featuring Billy Bragg. I was really struck by his demeanour and by the fact that he always seems to be fighting for a cause and doing something worthy. Plenty of people do that of course but not that many marry a pop career with it and that’s what he is to me, a pop singer. I’m always a bit in awe of supreme confidence and I started off this conversation with him in my head where I was saying basically “You always seems to be doing the right thing and juggling that with making making mostly great and very soulful music. How do you do it? and not end up making a complete Bono of yourself?”
So for me the crux line of this song is “You seem so sure about yourself. What’s your secret?” Basically it’s a song about insecurity and frustration.
I met Billy Bragg himself recently but I was far to shy to say anything about the song. He was incredibly confident and a towering presence and maybe slightly overbearing with it. It was definitely a public persona though and I never did find out if inside he’s a secret worrier like the song says.
It’s a weird song and doesn’t really have a traditional verse/chorus structure, but I new I wanted it to say ‘Woah Billy!’ as many times as possible. I think it came together pretty quickly in rehearsal and the big glam riff was there pretty much from the start and I’m pretty sure that the disco break down felt like a really obvious thing to do. We’ve been opening shows with it for a while, so it felt right as the big introduction to the album and a statement of intent for a more powerful sound that we were after on this album, partly due to the arrival of a new rhythm section. Paul (Mr. Atkins) and Russell (Rusty) immediately clicked together when Rusty came to audition. I remember Paul saying it was like his kick drum had a remote control for the bass on it and we’ve become a much more solid outfit since they came along.
Here it is, in the slightly surreal context of our new video which was made entirely by Lucky Soul (see news section). Stay tuned for the rest of the album…
The wait for album numero deux is so very nearly over, faithful friends, and to whet your appetite here’s an exclusive look at our beautiful new cover with artwork distressed and printed by cutting-edge American artist, Hollis Brown Thornton, super stylish photography by Glen Wilkins and put together with alchemy by our friends at IWANT design.
Our glorious new LP (we are awfully proud of it) is entitled A COMING OF AGE, and to celebrate its tantalizingly close release, and because we know you’ve been waiting patiently, we’re giving you a little prezzie this weekend! To download the title track, A Coming Of Age FOR FREE, simply go to www.luckysoul.co.uk/freedownload and type in your name and email address and you will be guided through the rest.
And, if that’s not enough for you, here’s a sneaky peek at the album’s tracklisting to get you chomping at the bit.
01 Woah Billy!
02 White Russian Doll
03 Up In Flames
04 Love3
05 Upon Hilly Fields
06 A Coming Of Age
07 Warm Water
08 Ain’t Nothin’ Like A Shame (To Bring It All Back Home)
09 That’s When Trouble Begins
10 Southern Melancholy
11 Our Heart
12 Could Be I Don’t Belong Anywhere
I was saving this for a dark and bitter post the day after the vote but, seeing as we won, it changes the tone a bit. Never mind though, I’m a miserabilist so I’ll carry on.
Down at the bottom of the page is the b-side to ‘WRD’, ‘Cryin’ In The Morning’. It was the first song written after ‘The Great Unwanted’ album and was thisclose to being on our new album. Sadly it swopped places with ‘Southern Melancholy’ whilst on a bus ride to play the SWN festival in Cardiff. I was a bit sad about it to be honest as when I wrote it I came out thinking “I’ve just written my first classic”. Still it was only left off the album because it didn’t quite go with the flow, nothing personal, like and it’s dep is also brilliant. It was really important to make the album work as a whole listenable piece, so sorry, ‘Cryin’, I still love you but it’s just never gonna work. Let’s just be friends.
Anyway ‘Cryin’ In The Morning’ paraphrases an old flat mate of some college friends of mine in Liverpool. When asked if would be coming out for a drink that night (most nights) he would invariably reply “No, I’m rowin’ in the morning”. It became his catchphrase after a while and was second only to stories of his mate back home, ‘Shapes’, who would drink 10 pints get into some scrape and come ‘rollin’ downhill’. “And then your man, Shapes, came roooolllin’ down the hill”. I’m surprised the guy had any knees left.
Much as Shapes’ adventures became almost herculean in my imagination as the years went on, the song’s not about him, or Liverpool. As usual about loss and longing and resignation, themes that run heavily through our new album. I wanted to write something like Patsy Cline’s ‘Crazy’, which is a beautiful and paranoid at the same time. The lyrics make me laugh, they’re so fatalistic. It was also the first tune written on Barbara, my honky piano and features the Stockholm strings in all their glory. I believe they call it a torch song.
So now you’ve seen our glorious new video for ‘White Russian Doll’ directed by amazing friend, Mr. James ‘Goodtimes’ Slater (Kaiser Cheifs, Norah Jones, The Coral, Go Team). I thought I’d tell you a little about the shoot, filmed entirely in Berlin at the start of December just gone.
I’ve been promising to go and see James since he moved there last year, as he’s forever going on about how wonderful the city is, how spacious, creatively nourishing and cheap it is. I’ve been to Berlin twice before, once when I was young traveling around Europe on the trains (I can’t remember much about it as I was too interested in the Fräuleins to pay any attention to my surroundings) and also when Lucky Soul played in the Magnet club two and a half years ago. Although we saw virtually none of the city then, the gig was great and we did 3 encores, my preconceptions that the locals would be far to cool for school for us being totally misguided.
So I was really looking forward to going. James had promised a weekend of off the cuff guerrilla filming with a view to a making a really fast paced but non narrative video loosely based on Jean Luc Godard’s classic film ‘Breathless’.
He’s brilliant is our James and although I suspect he never really knows what’s going to happen until he suggests it, his talent for spontaneous creative thinking is unquestionable and his videos always look brilliant and different to anybody else’s.
Friday:It was two coats cold when we got to Berlin and a swift ride with a racist taxi driver got us to Kreuzberg and straight into an eye-wateringly smokey bar for the first of many German beers. It seems to me that in Berlin there is a nice cosy bar or cafe with great music about every fifteen paces – perfect. On the way home I got one of the best pizzas of my life for 3 Euros – double tops. I was happy and safe in the knowledge that I didn’t have to do any filming myself and the hardest work I would be doing was to hold bags and drink coffee – now that’s what I call a good shoot.
Saturday: A respectable start to the day, up at 10, drank some coffee and met up with Violetta, James’s Spanish -in-blood-but-Yorkshire-in-outlook(i.e.Unimpressed and unfazed by anything) cinematographer girlfriend. For the tech fans out there, she was shooting on a digital Canon SLR which took 30fps of high res photographs resulting in great depth of field, a real filmic quality and much better than a digital video camera of similar price.
Firstly we took the U-Bahn to Tiergarten where there’s a large Soviet War Memorial for some Eisenstein-esque low angled shots amongst the heavy and imposing architecture. “It’s a quiet place, no-one ever comes here” James said as 50 Spanish tourists walked in. We got the shots anyway but while we were waiting for the tourists to move out of the way we noticed another film crew filming a Russian soldier. Quick as a flash James was over asking if we could borrow the soldier for a few minutes. Soldier: “I’m not sure. What did you want me to do?” James: “Would you mind dancing with this pretty girl for a minute?” Soldier: “Where do you want me?”. The Russian soldier turned out to be Sebastian from Frankfurt but he was very accomodating all the same and we left for lunch pleased with a good mornings filming.
After lunch it was over to a dusty hall with gunshot mirrors above Clärchens Ballhaus for some moody shots. It was my job to be lookout and give the shout if anyone was to come up the stairs and chuck us out. A couple of shots of Ali draped across the piano later security came up the stairs and my little brain decided that the alarm code phrase should be “I don’t think the cafeteria is up here” and say in a loud English accent. It sounded absoluetly ridiculous and only half worked too as the rest couldn’t understand why I was looking for a cafeteria when we’d just been to one for lunch and I was rightly and mercilessly ribbed for it the rest of the weekend. I think I’m destined never to be a secret agent.
Off to to the Christmas market at Alexanderplatz next and a trip on the Ferris wheel with some confused South Africans and a nice mug of warming Glühwein.
After that it was home for some food and put the glad rags for a night out in the very camp Monster Ronsons Karaoke Bar. On arrival it was again full of Spanish tourists which was odd until Violetta found out that Spanish disco diva Terremoto de Alcorcón and her enormous bust were performing on stage that night. Violetta said it was a big deal and indeed it was, especially her duet of ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ with a bearded drag queen. Sadly we didn’t see the whole performance as our allotted time in the Freddie Mecury booth arrived (one of five dead rock star themed karaoke booths). It didn’t matter as we could her through the Plexiglas anyway. At the time I thought the stuff we filmed in there might turn out to be a bit naff, but now it’s my favourite bit of the vid. After a few runs through of WRD there was still time for me and James to murder Patti Smith’s ‘Because The Night’ some more beers and then home to bed stopping only for a massive halloumi sandwich on the way
Sunday: As expected it was a late start on Sunday and a sluggish early afternoon of outside cutaways followed by a trip to one of the flea markets I’ve heard so much about (why didn’t I buy that microphone) then back to the Ballhaus, this time downstairs in the beautiful art deco dancehall for some Cha Cha Cha dancing.
An initial aborted hungover dance was cured with more pizza and beer and then it was the surreal sight of Ali dancing on her own in the middle of the dance floor singing a different song to the band whilst a host of couples waltzed and cha cha cha’d around and into her. I think we managed about 3 songs before we were told by the proprietor in no uncertain terms that we’d done enough.
It was decreed that the day had been succesful/hungover enough to warrant and early wrap which meant a night off to have an amazing Lao curry (ordered entirely in German – thanks GCSE’s) a run throught the rain and a night cap in another lovely cosy bar. So pleased at my dinner language skills and convinced I was already passing for a local, I did my best order at the bar. “Sure what size would you like” came the answer in English. Oh well.
Monday:Easy stuff on Monday walking through East Berlin, shooting some cutaways in the Ubahn, outside the old Cafe Mokba and in front of a hairdressers wall just outside the building where they filmed ‘Goodbye Lenin’ (brilliant film if you haven’t seen it). We also persueded some Kurdish accordian buskers to do WRD with Ali but sadly it never made the cut. A shame because it was hilarious. Maybe the dog poo I stood in twice while watching pervaded onto the tape.
Another Soviet freedom statue and that was it, just enough time for more pizza (not much for the vegetarian in Germany) and for me and Ali to visit the Brandenburg Gate (the only time I heard any English accents) and the eerie and moving Holocaust memorial.
Then it was back for the bags and a swift goodbye bier in another lovely wooden bar before heading home to noisy London and immediately hasseled by the crackheads outside Kings Cross station.
I really fell in love with Berlin, it’s a beautiful city which seems to quietly enjoy itself and not be weighed down by it’s traumatic history. I’d move there like a shot if I could. Maybe it’s because there’s so much space you have enough time to collect your thoughts, maybe be it’s the creative buzz, maybe it’s the romantic low street lights or maybe dry humoured nature of the German people so welcoming to us despite their constant and despicable abuse from Brits Abroad (it’s not banter…)maybe it was just a great weekend with friends but it certainly felt special and I think that sense fun seeps into the video.
For your listening pleasure! Our new single which will be out in January and a great taster for our second album. Much more info to follow soon and I sincerely hope you enjoy WRD. Let us know and stay tuned for ticket details coming very soon
Google ‘The Great Unwanted’ and you only have to get to the second page before you can download all 13 tracks of our debut album for free. (Don’t all rush at once!) My gut reaction, on first seeing our beloved little self-released record on these file-sharing sites was one of shock and disgust. How dare they? Don’t they know how God-damned hard we worked? It’s a reasonable reaction from a struggling musician, for which I don’t apologise. Then, I was working part-time in a book shop desperately trying to make ends meet. But the issue of illegal file-sharing goes much deeper than right and wrong, it reaches far wider than artist and consumer, and it represents an entire generation of kids who have been brought up on it. To them, music has always been free, so why should they start paying for it now? It seems the horse has already bolted and the industry only has itself to blame.
Much of last week’s controversy surrounding Lily Allen and The Featured Artists Coalition has focused on the notion of greed. Of course, we’re all Ferrari-owning multi-millionaire pop stars on a mission to squeeze the last few pennies out of the impoverished music fan. It strikes me that we have a PR problem here. As I took the good old Northern Line home from Air Studios on Thursday night, I felt obliged to write about this on my own blog because, whilst in the context of a meeting of fellow musicians my opinion is just as valid as Lily’s, it’s not as newsworthy. Believe me, we need these big names, but if the press only focus on them, the FAC is misrepresented. Nobody wants to hear a member of Pink Floyd moaning about his wages, in much the same way as nobody trusts a fat politician, and I can fully appreciate why some are peeved.
The thing is, Ed from Radiohead wasn’t sat on his private beach counting his gold, he was at that meeting talking to the likes of Andrew and I because it’s not about the money; it’s not about record sales or relative success from one musician to another; it’s about the principle of the thing. In our case, we need all the money we can get in order to keep going. Each record we make pays for the next, and so we cling on to whatever income stream there is available. Why wouldn’t we? But there are some who believe musicians should simply give up their incomes from record sales as a matter of course. We already earn money from publishing, touring and selling T-shirts, so why be so greedy? Let’s make it all free. After all, it’s the record labels that will ultimately suffer because they take the greater cut (and who cares about hurting them anyway?) But in our case, we are the label, and just as not all recording artists drive Ferraris, not all record labels are evil, money-grabbing multi-national organisations. Labels struggle too.
The last thing we want to do is alienate the very people who enjoy our music. We rely so much on word of mouth because we don’t have major-label marketing budgets, and so we find ourselves in an incredibly difficult position. But others are profiting from illegal file-sharing – just look at the advertising revenue available on these sites. I don’t know how many illegal downloads we’ve had compared to official record sales. I guess I’ll never know, but being part of the FAC at least means we are opening up the debate further and bringing our ideas to parliament and to the major labels, who are the ones really pulling the strings. And guess what? They’re listening. For this, I’m grateful to Lily Allen because without her, we probably wouldn’t be having this debate at all. And for an emotional Lily to turn up at our meeting having given us such a public battering was one of the bravest things I think I’ve ever witnessed. She threw herself to the lions, proving that whichever side of the fence you’re on – not that it’s ever that black and white – this debate is raging because it’s something we all care so passionately about, and that can only be a good thing.
Before I start. A big, big congratulations to Mr and Mrs Atkins on the birth of a mini Atkins as little Elia Sophia arrived last week. Eating, sleeping, making a racket, throwing up and learning to speak English are just some of the things we’ve grown to love about Mr Atkins in these past couple of years. We’re sure he’ll take to fatherhood like a duck to water.
And so…
Yesterday I emerged blinking into the outside world and discovered that it was autumn. It was very much winter when I went in the studio, so it came as some surprise to me that I had entirely missed two seasons.
Autumn is my favourite time of year. I’m a country boy after all and when I first started writing I used to have a special thinking spot on hill just outside my home town where I’d sit with my faithful dog, with nothing but the sound of birds and the steam train, watching the leaves turn and think up snatches of lyrics, wondering what it would be like to be in a band. Ah, nostalgia. I’m going home next weekend to visit. I love London but it seems so long that I saw the sky or walked somewhere without meeting anyone. I’m gonna make sure I go back to that spot and have a think about things. Somewhere near 9 minutes in on the vid below:
Only this time it’s with the satisfying knowledge that our second album is very nearly finished. It’s handclap day on Thursday (always good fun and really the only part that gets better with beer) and that will be all the recording done and in the bag. That’s just the last little bit though because last week we completed the second phase of mixing with Dutch/ Australian, New Yorker: Victor Van Vugt.
Triple V is an all round nice guy despite his instance on being 6 hours behind us, which means when we’re toing and froing with stuff I have to stay up till all hours. He’s a real pro though and has a great pedigree (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Beth Orton, Sons And Daughters, Voxtrot, Kirsty MacColl, Kylie. Kylie!) and the tracks we’ve been getting back from him sound fantastic. Just the right mix of pop and grit.
So we’ve reached the end of this level where we’ve got good mixes of everything and now we’ve got a month to sit on them, digest them and decide what’s gonna make it on to the album before doing the final tweaks. It’s going to be really difficult. We’ve got fifteen to choose from and have to whittle it down to eleven or twelve. I’d like to go for ten really but we’ve been so concise with the arrangements that some of the more perfectly formed pop songs are way less than 3 mins so I think only 10 would leave a very short album and I don’t want to short change anybody.
It’s hard though because I would happily include every one of those tracks, there’s no fillers here. Pet Sounds is 36 mins long as is Revolver, so I’m going to take that as a good length and see what fits. I want it to be perfect.
The Great Unwanted was a bit of a horn frenzy but this time, there’s only 3 tracks with horns on them. Didn’t want to over do it, not with Ronson saturating everyone with ‘em. But ours are totally necessary. In a classic back-to-schoolesque moment I stayed up all night the night before the recording session trying to finish writing them. I’d got Love Love Love and Could Be I Don’t Belong Anywhere nailed but still hadn’t got Ain’t Nothing Like A Shame sorted (I’d had about five months). So I pretended the dog ate my homework and promptly wrote it on the spot. Phew, luckily the Killer Horns were really very talented and I could just sing the parts to them. Some session musicians are like robots but the best one’s are flexible and believe me these guys could play. Ain’t nothing like extreme pressure to get your brain working though. After we finished (late) I had to run across London with Misty (my pretty Gretsch) and a case full of pedals to get to Technicolour (the club night we’ve started with The Pipettes) and jump about on stage. I was pooped but it was great fun again see here http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/lucky-soul-the-lexington-londonbramazing-baby-proud-galleries-london-1779119.html
Ain’t Nothing… is turning out to be a beauty and is definitely up in contention for a single. It’s just a lot of fun sounds a bit like Booker T, a bit like The Specials, a bit like Paul Simon. It’s a cheeky song and the lyrics are right dark, which is always my favourite combination.
I’ll write some more later in the week and tell you about the other songs but tonight I’m going to the Raveonettes which is very exciting. It’s nice to be out of the woods, so to speak.
Hello
Summer is well and truly here, give or take the odd shower, and we’re so near to finishing recording our second album that we’ve decided to give ourselves a mini break, see some daylight and play some live dates over the coming month or so.
First up, we were thrilled to be invited to play in Brighton (any excuse), by the lovely Rebecca Stephens (ex-Pipette and Polka-dotted Riot Grrrl, now working on exciting new stuff herself). It’s her own club called TIME CRISIS and it’s at THE HOPE on Queens Rd THIS SATURDAY, 25th July.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=90243683526&ref=mf
The following day, SUNDAY 26TH JULY (call it a micro-tour if you will), we’re heading up to the beautiful Derby countryside to make our INDIETRACKS FESTIVAL debut, performing alongside the likes of Art Brut, Camera Obscura, Teenage Fanclub and Au Revoir Simone. Celebrating 20 years of releasing glorious Indie-Pop, the very wonderful Elefant Records have taken over the main stage for the entire weekend, and we’re very proud to be part of it. You can find all the info here:
http://www.indietracks.co.uk/
We also have some very exciting news to announce. Ahem… Drum roll… We’re joining forces with our dear old friends, The Pipettes and starting our very own club night. It’s called TECHNICOLOUR and is set out to celebrate all things POP! Of course both bands will be playing live, and showcasing new material for both upcoming albums, but we’ll also have some very special guests in to DJ, along with our hand-picked favourite live bands in support. It’s all happening at THE LEXINGTON in London with the first two confirmed nights as the TUESDAY 11th and TUESDAY 25th AUGUST. See advance ticket details here:
http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/user/?region=gb_london&query=..detail&event=337170
http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/user/?region=gb_london&query=..detail&event=337171
We’ll be returning to Brighton on the 22nd AUGUST to perform at The Wedding Present’s own one-day festival, THE EDGE OF THE SEA, (in honour of the David Gedge song of the same name) and curated, no less by Mr Gedge himself. Have a look at the rest of the line up here: http://www.last.fm/event/1059617
And ticket details here:
http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/user/?region=gb_south&query=detail&event=324280
We were delighted to be asked to play with The Weddos once more, having toured with them in 2007 and oh, guess who else is performing on the very same stage? Oh yes, The Pipettes… my, my, people will talk.
Hope to see you at one or two, if not all of the above. Come and say hello. We need human contact after all this studio solitude.
Lots of love from Lucky Soul
