Hello just back from Sweden and must blog or incur the wrath of Ivor (not a pretty sight, similar to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan but with more amps).
I was there to record The (incredibly talented and lovely people) Stockholm Strings again for the other 11 tracks that we’ve been working on for the last six weeks.The results were phenomenal. That makes a massive 16 whole tunes up for album selection. We’re all pretty firm that it should be a concise piece of work so that we’ll have the difficult task of dropping some great songs. Last time it was a case of “oh we can’t leave that one off” but this time it’s a case of trimming off all the fat to leave a lean, mean soul machine.
I will say this now: (although it’s probably not my call) I firmly believe we’ve got a classic on our hands. Sitting in Mandarine Studios and listening to the strings’ magic go down only reaffirmed my belief.
I had a typical dash to the studio. My day started at 7am, (I tried to get up earlier but found I was seeing double from to much screen staring and had to go back to bed) I immediately leaped onto the computer, frantically trying to finish writing the dancing strings for ‘Our Heart’.
Then a dash to Mr Atkins’ house for him to notate the scores (did you know Mr. Atkins doesn’t just hit things but is an all round musical genius who can play anything?)
After a few back and forth trips of this nature it was to the Ruffa Lane office to print out an un-environmentally tree’s worth of scores and back to mine to finish prepping the files. I hit save at 2:30am ripped the hard drive out and pedalled as fast as possible to the coach station on ‘Lady’ my trusty bike, then it was a run, a coach ride, plane, another coach, underground, bus, car and finally collapsed sweating, into Mandarine studios at about 1:30pm Swedish time and was recording within 15 minutes. Wow.
As I think I’ve said previously, Mandarine is a beautiful world-class studio in the countryside about an hour from Stockholm. It is the most tranquil studio I’ve been to. Last time the river was frozen, but of course in June it’s beautiful sunlight and a powerful river, very little traffic and much bird song. The difference between this place and when we did Ivor’s guitars down in Brixton is polar. Much as I love London, I know where I’d rather record.
So a little about the music, which I suppose is why you’re reading this and some songs I think we haven’t told you about.
There’s ‘Warm Water’ which would probably die if it ached anymore, I would say it’s something close to Carole King sing Neil Young’s ‘Birds’ with lush tremolo guitars and Scott Walker Death strings. When Ali did the vocals, the tears were streaming down my face – always a good sign.
‘Could Be I Don’t Belong Anywhere’ I may have mentioned last time with it’s weird Sam Cooke vs. Edif Piaf thing has now evolved an intense outro which has hints of ‘Mrs O’ Leary’s Cow’ from the Beach Boys/Brian Wilson. That’s the song where Brian made the orchestra wear fire helmets in the session, then a building burnt down nearby and he became convinced that he’d started it and canned the album His mental breakdown after that is well documented. Now I’m not saying I’m going crazy but listening to that outro, over and over again gave me the heebie-jeebies some much that I tore the headphones off and threw them out the door. It’s pretty menacing. You will enjoy it but my advice is to try not to listen to it for a solid eight hours. Ivor’s delay pedal frenzy was great fun to record though.
It’s not all dark and brooding though because ‘Ain’t Nothin’ Like A Shame (To Bring It All Back Home) is so much fun. Stax and shades of The Clash in there and probably the grooviest number we’ve ever done.
I think the jewel in the crown though is ‘A Coming Of Age’. Much more will be written on this but it’s the biggest baddest epic we’ve done whilst still coming in at 3mins. We’ve got Stephen ‘Lord’ Large playing the Hammond on it. It’s immense but I still haven’t finished the lyrics. It deserves brilliance.
Well I better get back to my thousands of hours of editing ahead, I didn’t have time to tell you about the Soul Bunker, or Robyn, or a few of the other songs but we’ll leave that till another, hopefully sooner time.
Andrew x
Having had a rather heavy week involving a gig on Monday, which confused me greatly, and having been out to dinner three times in a week – actually one was technically lunch but it was dinnertime by the time we’d gone from the Ivy to the Dog and Duck, to the sparkly gay bar next door for buy-one-get-one-free Cosmopolitans (ouch!) I’m having a weekend of doing NOTHING, except watching X Factor (yes, yes it’s my guilty pleasure), making chocolate cake (like that’s not a guilty pleasure!) and compiling a playlist on the old iPod entitled ‘Second Album Inspiration’. It’s really random stuff, but it kind of makes sense to me in that kind of Country/Soul/Gospel/Bacharach/Scott Walker/60’s pop/Rock ‘n’ Roll kind of a way that the new record seems to be heading.
It goes like this;
The First Cut Is The Deepest – PP Arnold, Jolene – Dolly Parton, Perfect – Fairground Attraction, These Arms Of Mine – Bettye Swann, Thousand -Dollar Wedding – Gram Parsons, No One – Alicia Keys, I Will Always Love You – Dolly , Way Over Yonder – Carole King, The Age Of The Understatement – Last Shadow Puppets, Walk On By – Dionne Warwick, Wild Horses – Rolling Stones, Warwick Avenue – Duffy, Love Hurts – Gram & Emmylou, Fire & Rain – James Taylor, Run – Sandie Shaw, Distant Dreamer – Duffy
I’ve been listening to Dolly quite a lot lately, and of course Gram and Emmylou (sigh!) Rusty says ‘Don’t Fear the Country’, and we’re taking heed. Alicia Keys always sounds so desperately sad. I love Eddi Reader too – what an amazing voice. (I’m hoping all this will go in the ears and come out the mouth…somehow…) I’ve got Fire and Rain in there for pure sentimentality. It was the first song I learned to play on the guitar, sitting at the bottom of my stairs singing and attempting to strum along for my mate Faisal. We were 15 and I wanted to join his band. He said forget about the guitar you can sing instead. Ho hum…
It’s strange the way songs come together. Sometimes they seem to have a mind of their own, as if they want or need you to write them in a certain way. Even though you try to make them go in one direction, they’ll take you in another, and you eventually arrive at a destination you can both accept, a bit like taking an unruly dog for a walk.
We had an example of this the other night with a new one, with the working title of “Tree Falls”. Andrew came to rehearsal with the chord sequence and the lyrics, and then Ali, Paul and Ivor helped him to put some kind of structure together. At this point it looked like being a slow one in 6/8, but that felt too similar to some of the other new songs. So they tried to do something a bit different with it, by speeding it up, and putting a slightly Latin rhythm to it, almost bossa nova.
I tried to get a piano part to it, but it wasn’t sitting right with me. It felt cheesy and unnatural, as if we were forcing it to wear clothes that didn’t fit. It was a conscious effort to make it sound different, and when you start going down this kind of route, it’s often frustratingly difficult to see a way round the thing that’s blocking you.
Then Russell suggested something different, slowing it down and changing the feel back closer to what it had been originally, and with a new bass line and drum part, it suddenly fell into place. Immediately everything felt right – a very simple organ part, and a little bit of electric piano, a bit of slide guitar, all quite sparse and atmospheric, and it all felt easy. The song sounded beautiful, along the lines of “The Last Song” from the first album, or “That Hollywood Glow”. It reminded me a little bit of “Cody” by Mogwai, but I’m not quite sure why.
Anyway, it’s sounding good so far, and has reinvigorated my enthusiasm. Can’t wait to get in and record it…
Hello Andrew here, long time no blog etc. Much has changed.
Truth is at the end of the last album I was burnt out and insecure and blogging seemed insignificant (which of of course it isn’t), like i should have been doing something more productive rather than sitting at the computer talking about the album and waiting for it to come out and really it was all hands to the pump getting the damn thing manufactured.
Anyway, this time two years ago was frantic, trying to get everything ready to go into big studio to record ‘The Great Unwanted’.
This time a year ago, the album was out with relief all its amazing reviews and was about the time we supported Bryan Ferry and were frantically getting ready for our first proper tour culminating with a sell out queue down the street at The 100 Club (dream ticked off the list for me). after that it was off round Europe and to Japan and by Christmas we had left our Greenwich Hitsville SE10 home (now demolished see above) and moved to Soulsville SE5 (Camberwell see below).
So you join us nearly two years on from the first blog and we’re frantically writing and demoing getting the difficult second album together. This week we started demoing a song called “Could Be I Don’t Belong Anywhere” which starts in a jaunty Stax way and then goes very BIG and grand somewhere between Bacharach/Scott Walker and Love. I particularly like it’s fairground swing bits. As with pretty much everything we’ve demoed so far it’s frighteningly good and sounds unlike anything else out there the moment but very Lucky Soul.
Nice to be back, expect the blogging to be much more frequent and probably increasingly nonsensical.
I just thought I’d write to let y’all know how we’re getting on with the new album. It’s been a while since we were last in the (big) studio and while touring is flippin’ great, quite frankly you get a little bit bored of playing the same songs over and over again. So… we’ve got seven or eight spangly new tracks already demoed and sounding rather good, and another seven or eight written and ready to commit to hard-disk at our ‘lil studio in Camberwell. Andrew’s gone into studio hibernation and hasn’t seen the daylight for a good few weeks. If you asked him what day it was he wouldn’t have a clue and I’ve noticed the enormo-jars of Nescafe going down alarmingly quick! Meanwhile, in true diva style I managed to get some of my vocals done at home in my PJ’s surrounded by feathers and down in my makeshift vocal booth. It’s really refreshing to get stuck in and work on new stuff.. and of course this is the first time we’ll be recording with our all-new super tight rhythm section, Rusty and Mr Atkins. Yay!
Here are some titles of our new songs, you know, just to whet your appetite…
Into The Night Our Heart Love, Love, Love Upon Hilly Fields Southern Melancholy Why Can’t Everyone Be Nice For A Change? Up In Flames Crying In the Morning That’s When Trouble Begins
‘Why Can’t Everyone’ is a beaut – all gospel harmonies and slow, soulful melody with a very hummable chorus, ‘Love Love Love’ is all dolly-esque and country, ‘Southern Melancholy’ has gone all Scott Walker and is so, so lush, and another of the new ones sounds like James Bond and looks set to be another LS epic. Current favourite is ‘Upon Hilly Fields’ which sounds like somewhere between Dirty Old Town and Witchita Lineman (we managed to steer it away from Crocodile Shoes thank goodness, but you get the drift!) We’ve already decided to borrow my step-sister’s blue-eyed horse, Kel for the video, and I’ll be dressed as Doris Day in Calamity Jane. Yee ha!
That’s your lot for now. Don’t forget to join in the fun at the forum www.luckysoul.co.uk/forum and we might even let you into a few more second album secrets if you ask nicely.
Howdy folks,I felt that as I’ve been a Lucky Soul for nearly a year now (where has the time gone?), that I’m well over due for posting my first ever blog. So, without the use of a safety net or general anesthetic, here goes.
I’m happy to say that we have managed to overcome a major hurdle, one of many no doubt, on the road to making the next album. What we’ve achieved is to learn, create, learn again, create some more, do a bit more learning, record, do some editing, re-record, change keys, re-learn, re-record and then finally mix demo recordings of a bunch of songs that will go on the next album. And they sound bloody great, even if I do say so myself.
Why put sooooooo much time and effort into recording mere demos of songs I hear you say ? Why not just go into a nice studio, with great equipment, friendly staff and the best coffee that money can buy and make an album? Well, when playing a song with a band in a practice room you think you know what it sounds like and what works and what doesn’t. And sure, one can learn a great deal about how to best play a song by simply playing it, but you can see (or hear as the case may be) a song in a different light once it’s recorded and you listen back to it. Often it turns out as you had expected, other times it doesn’t. And not to say that when a song sounds different from your expectations that it’s a negative thing for you can be pleasantly surprised too.
So, the benefit of all the loooooong days and even loooooooooonger nights tinkering away with instruments, lyrics, melodies, knobs and sliders is to gain a fresh perspective of our songs. And now it’s time to start the next batch, some of which we prepared earlier and all of which will be just as tasty. And we’ll get straight on to it, right after we get back from our lil’ trip to Russia
For your viewing pleasure I’ve included a photo of the view from the window in my home studio where the previously mentioned songs were lovingly mixed. This is the view that I would look at for inspiration and occasionally in desperation. Sometimes I’d just gaze and procrastinate, which can be quite useful at times too as it turns out. So if you’re in need of something to focus on for inspiration or just a distraction try looking at this picture. It may help.
Till next time,
Ka kite anō
Mr Atkins
p.s. the blob on the window isn’t a small smelly gift from a passing birdy, even though it might look like it. It’s actually just paint.
I will say this now: (although it’s probably not my call) I firmly believe we’ve got a classic on our hands. Sitting in Mandarine Studios and listening to the strings’ magic go down only reaffirmed my belief.
I had a typical dash to the studio. My day started at 7am, (I tried to get up earlier but found I was seeing double from to much screen staring and had to go back to bed) I immediately leaped onto the computer, frantically trying to finish writing the dancing strings for ‘Our Heart’.
Then a dash to Mr Atkins’ house for him to notate the scores (did you know Mr. Atkins doesn’t just hit things but is an all round musical genius who can play anything?)
After a few back and forth trips of this nature it was to the Ruffa Lane office to print out an un-environmentally tree’s worth of scores and back to mine to finish prepping the files. I hit save at 2:30am ripped the hard drive out and pedalled as fast as possible to the coach station on ‘Lady’ my trusty bike, then it was a run, a coach ride, plane, another coach, underground, bus, car and finally collapsed sweating, into Mandarine studios at about 1:30pm Swedish time and was recording within 15 minutes. Wow.
As I think I’ve said previously, Mandarine is a beautiful world-class studio in the countryside about an hour from Stockholm. It is the most tranquil studio I’ve been to. Last time the river was frozen, but of course in June it’s beautiful sunlight and a powerful river, very little traffic and much bird song. The difference between this place and when we did Ivor’s guitars down in Brixton is polar. Much as I love London, I know where I’d rather record.
So a little about the music, which I suppose is why you’re reading this and some songs I think we haven’t told you about.
There’s ‘Warm Water’ which would probably die if it ached anymore, I would say it’s something close to Carole King sing Neil Young’s ‘Birds’ with lush tremolo guitars and Scott Walker Death strings. When Ali did the vocals, the tears were streaming down my face – always a good sign.
‘Could Be I Don’t Belong Anywhere’ I may have mentioned last time with it’s weird Sam Cooke vs. Edif Piaf thing has now evolved an intense outro which has hints of ‘Mrs O’ Leary’s Cow’ from the Beach Boys/Brian Wilson. That’s the song where Brian made the orchestra wear fire helmets in the session, then a building burnt down nearby and he became convinced that he’d started it and canned the album His mental breakdown after that is well documented. Now I’m not saying I’m going crazy but listening to that outro, over and over again gave me the heebie-jeebies some much that I tore the headphones off and threw them out the door. It’s pretty menacing. You will enjoy it but my advice is to try not to listen to it for a solid eight hours. Ivor’s delay pedal frenzy was great fun to record though.
It’s not all dark and brooding though because ‘Ain’t Nothin’ Like A Shame (To Bring It All Back Home) is so much fun. Stax and shades of The Clash in there and probably the grooviest number we’ve ever done.
I think the jewel in the crown though is ‘A Coming Of Age’. Much more will be written on this but it’s the biggest baddest epic we’ve done whilst still coming in at 3mins. We’ve got Stephen ‘Lord’ Large playing the Hammond on it. It’s immense but I still haven’t finished the lyrics. It deserves brilliance.
Well I better get back to my thousands of hours of editing ahead, I didn’t have time to tell you about the Soul Bunker, or Robyn, or a few of the other songs but we’ll leave that till another, hopefully sooner time.
Andrew x
