And here it is: our brand spanking new single - Whie Russian Doll. It's been a long time coming and we've had a big adventure since the last album but we're sure it's been worth the wait. If you've seen us live over the last 12 months it's likely you'll have heard WRD in its all concise Marr/Motown glory.

This single is a good taster for our second album which is all finished and due early next year, lovingly produced by Andrew from the band and expertly mixed in NYC by Victor Van Vugt (Beth Orton, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey)

Let us know what you think and thanks for sticking with us

Hope you like it!

Lots of love as ever

LSx

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.

Ali  x

Just so you know I wasn't lying. I went. And a song started in me 'ead.

Andrew x

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: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zx5CYIxyzg

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.
 
Take care of yourselves

Andrew

P.S. Why not be ever so modern and follow us on twitter here http://twitter.com/luckysoul

 

The Pipettes and Lucky Soul present a brand new club night:

Technicolour at The Lexington, London

Tuesday August 25th 2009.

 

Live: The Pipettes, Lucky Soul, and very special guest, Montt Mardié (Sweden)

Plus DJ Nasty McQuaid

The Lexington (formerly Clockwork) 66-68 Pentonville Road, N1 9HS

7.30pm – 12am. Tickets £6 advance. £8 door.

Telephone: +44 (0)20 7837 5387

 

 

With a positively storming opening night, which left the sell-out crowd howling for more and dancing their socks off into the early hours, Technicolour looks set to become the place to be for London’s pop aficionados.

Stepping out of the monochrome ‘60s and into glorious technicolour, fellow pop revivalists and long-term musical mates, The Pipettes and Lucky Soul, emerge from a period of studio solitude, eyes blinking into the summer sun with their very own club night. Celebrating all things POP, the club is set to showcase some spine-tingling new material from both parties, currently putting the finishing touches to their respective sophomore albums.

Having first performed together back in 2005, (Lucky Soul made their live debut supporting the polka-dotted trio), a passion for the adrenalin and melodic ingenuity of pure pop has remained at the heart of both bands’ ideologies – something, which still cements their alliance some four and a half years later. Expect Stax-inspired numbers, disco-tinged floor stompers, sparkling dance routines, and a whole lot of fun. The common thread? A shared devotion to the three-minute pop song.

With a hand-picked selection of special guest DJs and the bands’ personal live favourites in support, The Pipettes and Lucky Soul play host to a night of dancing and jollity at everyone's favourite London venue, The Lexington on Pentonville Road.

 

www.thepipettes.co.uk       www.luckysoul.co.uk          www.monttmardie.comnbsp;     www.thelexington.co.uk

 

Lucky Soul on iLike - Add iLike to your MySpace

It’s a cool, cool summer…

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, 25^th July.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=90243683526&ref=mf

The following day, SUNDAY 26^TH 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 11^th and TUESDAY 25^th AUGUST. Advance tickets are available from http://www.ticketweb.co.uk

We’ll be returning to Brighton on the 22^nd 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

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

Blow Update

It’s nearly the weekend and time to get your dancing shoes on but first an important correction to this week’s mail:

Tickets for Saturday night’s Blow Up spectacular are £8 and not £6 as previously stated. Our sincere apologies go out to anyone who has been mis-informed.

But…the good news is that the first 50 lucky people through the door will receive a special limited CD of our new track ‘Woah Billy!’

Doors are open at 10pm and Lucky Soul will be onstage at 11:45pm

http://www.blowup.co.uk/club/

And finally…

A long overdue announcement that keys wizard Malcolm Young has left the band to concentrate on his Masters degree. Malcolm was valued member of the band throughout ‘The Great Unwanted’ years, we thank him for everything and wish him all the best with his studies.

We’ll not be piano-less for long however, for joining us onstage for Saturday’s gig will the marvellous Art Terry all the way from L.A. Baby!

See you tomorrow London kids

LS x

Forgive me, Father for I have sinned. It has been three months since my last blog.

Time is doing funny things to me. Whilst the recording seems to be taking an age, the days and weeks and months are whizzing by. I guess it’s because we’re taking such enormous painstaking care over this record, and like Frankenstein’s monster, it’s beginning to take on a life of its own, getting bigger and grander and more lush by the day. It seems we keep upping the ante, and the brilliant thing about making a second record is that suddenly, some really good musicians want to work with you. I mean world class. Really. Not so brilliant is that you start to question your own abilities, and after 14 hour sessions, singing non-stop guide vocals, you don’t sound too hot!

It’s my second cup of strong black coffee and Sounds of the Sixties on Radio 2, and then it’s down to the practice studio. I’ve started collecting vintage sheet music on eBay – Dionne, Bacharach, Sandie – that kind of thing, and apart from the scores looking really pretty and framable, I’m going to sit down with Barbara, our dusty old upright, and see if I can’t bash out a few tunes (on the proviso, of course, that reading music is a lot like riding a bike, and you never forget…). The gee-tar boys are in the big studio today and I need to keep singing.

I had a quick listen to ‘Ain’t Nothing Like a Shame’ last night, with Art Terry on keys and Steve Large on Hammond, and I got a proper shiver. Wow, I can’t believe this is our record, it sounds amazing. And really danceable – always a good sign if your feet can’t keep still. This keeps me going through these dark days of studio hibernation. It’s going to be immense. According to Andrew’s colourful spreadsheet (Andrew? Spreadsheets?), we’ll be done by the end of June, and then, dear friends it’s lastminute.com and the first plane out of here to lie comatose on a sunny beach.

Thank you for sticking with us – it’ll be worth it, really.

Right, I have a date with Burt, and I’ve now had three black coffees. I’m buzzing.

See you on the other side. Xx Ali