Here’s some Q and A from our press people that makes for an interesting insight into our album…
Swift Black
Laurie Red
Where are you all from? You say the crappy part of the ..Lake District.. -
tell us more..
I am from Barrow-In-Furness which I would describe as a neo-depressing, crack-filled disbanded shipbuilding town on the south coast of ....Cumbria.... but the others are from elsewhere. Laurie also originates close to where I was from….but we formed and lived for a few years in ..Lancaster.. which is just on the edges of ..Lake District... ....Lancaster.... is actually a really nice city.
I suppose in relation in to this album and my approach to song writing, where I come from has had a huge effect on me…when I write a song I approach it like there’s nothing to lose I suppose. And even though I haven’t lived there in years, its still hard to rub off the feelings I had being brought up there….you can take the lad out of Barrow etc etc!
And as the album is called ‘To The City, From The Sea’ this is fairly much an autobiographical title of where we are at now and where we have come from
Formed in Lancaster, Row and I we’re hunting for a new singer for 9 months, everytime we bumped into swift he’d ask how the search was going and he’d be met with the same answer…one day he said to Rowan “I’ll do it then” I remember Rowan coming home with a massive smile on his face and telling me. First practice we wrote 3 songs. Swift’s a melody machine.
Give us a potted history of the band: how you met, early days etc.
Building on what I’ve already written. Basically (and in short) I knew Laurie and Rowan from ....Lancaster.... music scene as I was in another band at the time and they were looking for a singer. I went to along to a rehearsal and it just clicked as we wrote some really good songs together straight away one of which (By The Sea) appears on the album.
I also liked Laurie and Rowan as people too, as I had been waiting ages to meet other people who just wanted to go for it and put 200% into everything.
Soon after, we located to ....Manchester.... and after another few line up changes met Adam who now plays drums.
What have been the highlights of the band’s career so far?
I must admit when I first heard that (our first single) we’d been played on Radio1(+ 6music) by Steve Lamacq, I got really excited. As i’ve listened to Lamacq and have always been a fan of Radio since being a kid. And gig wise – playing Manchester Academy 3 to a fairly large crowd was memorable. And also think signing to Akoustik Anarkhy. Without sounding cheesy, it was important for us to meet some people who valued and believed in what we were doing.
What are the influences feeding into your sound?
Like all bands we all are influenced by a range of things. Musically I think it’s a cross between alt-rock (sonic youth, idlewild) and traditional ....Manchester.... indie (smiths, fall, roses).
I think our overall sound on the album is pop with an alternative edge. I think it would be false to say we are experimental and anything other than indie-pop.
Theres also a lot of anthemic-ness that comes through in the songs with the big pop choruses and stuff. Probably comes from my love of Shed Seven.
I know that mountains of other bands also say they have the above, but I just think they don’t do it as well as us and articulate and evidence this as well as they say they do.
We love Manchester Roses/Smiths/Fall/New Order/Chameleons and we love Sonic Youth/Mission of Burma/Sebadoh/Early REM. I think its represented quite well on the album.
f you were to plot each song a line with UK one side US other I think Songs like Miracles are much more to the UK side / songs like 1819 much more US. Telephones maybe straight down the middle. Maybe we should give it away as a game like on the back of a cereal box. People can play it when they listen.
Guitar wise I love Marr/Squire/Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo/ Lou Barlow/Nick Drake/Billy Corgan and I should say Brian Molko cause he was one of my earliest influences and I can’t shake him off.
Where / when did you record the album?
We recorded the album in Airtight studios which is in an area of ....Manchester.... called Chorlton. It was recorded (and mixed) in April 2009 over two weeks, so the process was fairly quick.
Who produced it?
It was produced by a weird and wonderful man named Tom Knott with a little help from us and the lads from a.A.
TK, he was brilliant. We had quite few people interested in doing it but I’m so glad we went for tom, he knew exactly how to get what we wanted and he saved us so much time cus he was so fast and he’s a great guy, we spent a lot of the time laughing. He was on the ball all the time, totally focussed.
What was your initial aim when embarking on the recording process?
Aim was to get the 10 songs sounding the same as what we had in our head and all sounding cohesive. Wanted to keep it sounding energetic and live but also well produced - which I think we’ve managed to do successfully.
A few had been demo’d but for most songs we starting from a blank page. We’d done a lot of preparation beforehand which helped when we got in there which saved a lot of time.
We were happy with and enjoyed the recording process and we are all extremely happy with the final results.
really wanted an album that did the songs justice but didn’t sound too well produced. I think we achieved that.
Talk us through the tracks on the album: the story behind them, anything interesting about the way they’re recorded etc.
Misunderstood What You Said
I wrote this song following a conflict I witnessed between 2 musicians which all got a bit petty. I remember one of them remarked something along the lines of ‘oh I misunderstood what you said’…so that’s where the idea came from.
This song was most certainly the most difficult to get sounding right. It had already been demo’d to a decent standard which set the level high. Eventually and thankfully we got there in the end by simply adding an extra lead guitar part and changing the mix. It had to be perfect as it is the first song on the record and had to set the standard high.
Something about an argument swift saw. The demo for this song was really strong so we had to work hard to get it sounding better, really like the changes Adam made to the drums. It was a really important song for us when we wrote it, it was faster and more hooky than anything we had at the time.
Guitar wise I used two capos on this not to show off/over complicate stuff intentionally but because we changed the key of it for swift. Just thought I’d clear that up.
18,19, 20, 21, 22
The lyrics of this song are basically about how I sometimes felt during the formative years of my life. I feel it’s important to highlight the word sometimes in the above sentence as it wasn’t all doom and gloom.
One of my favourite tracks on the album, as it just poars with energy. Balls out post-punk. One of the best intro’s on the record.
I wrote the riff for this song when in a spare lesson slot at work. I was teaching Jump by Van Halen at the time and it definitely influenced the rhythm of it. I like to think its like a mixture between Jump and Express Way to Yr Skull by SY. Rowan added an extra bass note and it was done. First one on the album that Ad wrote the drums for, he brought this Jimmy Chamberlin sound (the drum roll) to the verses which I love. One of the easiest to record. Maybe my favourite song on the album.
Stars
3 minute catchy pop song. I self admit the lyrics are pretty vague – which I sometimes like in song lyrics. More for the listeners imagination. The ‘stars’ theme came from when I was having a pint in one of Manchesters inner city pub beer gardens before a band practice, and it was a clear night. I was looking up at all the stars…wondering and reflecting on life. Simple as really.
Fairly easy to record from what I remember. Think the guitars sound especially good and overall one the best produced on the record.
Pop pop pop. I’m really influenced by The Pixies/Nirvana quiet verse/loud chorus thing and combined with swifts anthemic chorus writing it really worked with this tune. The verse is really smithsy the chorus is BTR at our best.
Miracles
One of the highlights of the album in my opinion. When we’d written this, I remember thinking we’d written a classic.
Lyrics are about searching and hoping for something or someone. Although the word ‘love’ appears in there quite a bit, I wouldn’t go as far as saying it’s a love song. Not going to bang on about this song too much. People are intelligent enough to make up their own minds.
I especially enjoy the drums on this song, gives it a ‘baggy’ or ‘dancey’ feel, and I like how goes full-on towards the end. It was a real pleasure to see this song grow and develop as we recorded and mixed it.
There was a time when we aware we didn’t have quite enough songs to make a great album. I was going through a period of writers block and one day after trying frustratingly to write stuff for a few hours this riff came out of no where. By chance Swift had a song that fitted with it. Adam’s ‘tommy’ drums are great in this tune, I’m usually dead against tom tom beats but I think it works. His drums gave it a waterfall-esque swagger. Every time this song started in the studio Tom Knott would shout “Manchestargh” and we’d all piss ourselves.
Telephone Conversation
The first single from the album. Another straight forward indie dancefloor song.
Despite popular belief, this song isn’t about people on their mobile phones. Its more about hearing people talk about things I’m uninterested in and these people living in a totally different world.
As it was the single, it was recorded 2 months before the album (but still in same studio) which was done in around 8 hours altogether.
I came to practice excited about his new riff I’d written, played it to the guys and they we’re pretty luke warm about it, suppose it wasn’t that good in retrospect anyhow we started jamming with it and from that Rowan came up with the bassline and we wrote the song from there. Similar to stars in brevity and loud quietness.
Pretend You Play Guitar
I remember the idea for this song came in the basement club of Manchesters Retro Bar, at about 3 in the morning. Me and Rowan were just quietly taking the piss out of some guy who was playing air guitar to a song which was being played. Think we went back to Rusholme and started writing it. Unlike most situations similar to this, the next morning we still actually remembered how it went, surprisingly and think we wrote the rest as a band. Lyrically probably the song I took most time and effort writing.
Was really quick and easy to record as we had already demo’d it as a 4 piece not too long before starting the record.
Love the words to this song so I will talk about them. For me it’s all about style verses substance. I feel there’s so much emphasis on the way bands look sometimes. BTR are in no way the best dressed band in Manchester- infact we’re probably near the bottom of the rankings and I used to worry this would hold us back but Swift and Ro were always adamant we stick to who we are. Its like a mission statement a BTR verses the world song…
Musically we wrote it differently to how we write a lot of stuff… Swift and Ro kinda had it already written… I remember hearing that chorus and loving it straight away, thinking we have to do something with that. I had the intro/middle riff knocking around and it that was that. Oh and swift also had the 7/4 ending idea which I really like. It’s a fucker to play live cus it capoed so high and the guitar slips out of tune.
Passenger
Lyrically this song is pretty depressing. No surprises after you’ve given it a listen. Played it to one of my friends and he described along the lines of Morrissey jumping into the body of Chris Martin. Not sure how accurate this is though! The ‘happier when dead’ was just the first thing I started singing when Laurie had the hypnotic guitar line that repeats during the song, so it wasn’t intentional or anything…shit I’m just digging myself deeper here aren’t I.
On a serious note. It was one of the last songs written for the album and I think it gives the record a good balance as it brings things down a level after the first 6 tunes which are all pop by numbers.
Thinks its produced really well. Was bit difficult to record; firstly as we were still writing it in the studio and secondly due to the repetition etc, it was often easy to lose orientation.
Pure swift this one. I had the riff but I really felt he was is charge of this tune and I was happy to do whatever he said. One of my favourites on the album.
By The Sea
The oldest song on the record.
Wrote it in our first few practices (in ....Lancaster....), and listening to it, I think this shows, as like most bands we have developed musically since. Not to say it’s a bad song because it isn’t, it’s a great song – one of some people favourite. I especially enjoy the instrumental part in the middle.
Lyrically it is about escapism, and as I’ve always (apart from Mancunia) lived by the coast, I always found the sea as a source of inspiration and comfort.
Was another one of the most difficult songs to record because of the complexities in instrumentation etc.
Third recording of this. An old song I wrote the basic music for years ago. Its like three separate songs stuck together. That verse riff was knocking around since 2005 and I just couldn’t get it to work with anything until one day I realised I could fuse it with the chorus riff. Middle stabby bit was ripping of smashing pumpkins tune – Here is no why. We played it to swift and he just started singing that melody ad those words I remember thinking how the hell does he do that. This was the first song that people responded really positively to…if it wasn’t for Ro we’d have never have recorded it the first time.
This City Is My Friend
Despite being my least favourite song on the record, I think its one of the most important songs that is necessary to be on there. Although we no longer play this song live, we thought it was still worthy of the album as it reflects the process and development of the band over the last couple of years.
I will always remember the night me and Laurie wrote this song. We had finished practice and everyone had left apart from us two, we started with a guitar riff, I went on bass and a bass drum kick pedal and I wrote it about how I was feeling about being in ....Manchester.... at that moment. I remember it being dark, cold and rainy and I was far from home when I wrote it.
Again, recording wise - another one of the most challenging songs to perfect, as we needed to get the dynamics right between the verses and choruses etc.
Nearly, didn’t make it on the album, quite an old tune but its got a great chorus and I’m really glad it was on there. Swift and I wrote it in big fish practice rooms one day when we had a spare hour left. I remember us saying “we could leave or could write a new tune…lets see what happens” I had the verse riff and a few other ones and swift stood there with a bass and a kick drum and we wrote it there and then. Took ages to record the guitars, we just couldn’t get em in tune. Think Tom was ready to kill me by the end.
Remember The Morning
As an album closer, don’t think we could better this. It was the last song written for the record (and probably still writing it as we were recording) so we were really unsure of how it would come out, but I think it exceeded all of our expectations. Think it’s a really optimistic song to end the record.
I love the guitar on this track and also think the drums are important on this song.
This is the last song we wrote for the album…seemed to write itself. It sounds like and ending but also the sound of the future. Credits due to swift for writing pretty much the entire ending on his own. One of the best ones on there I’d say.
The album title - what's the meaning behind it?
The title for the album, firstly came from the concept of the songs and in particular tracks 8 and 9 (sea and city). Secondly the title outlines the progression all of us have made to ....Manchester.....
The record is by no means a ‘concept album’, but there is definitely a theme that runs through it, and I think ‘To The City, From The Sea’ is a sound representation of this.
What are your hopes for the album?
I can speak for myself and the other members when I say that we are more than pleased with the final product we have. I am really proud to have written these songs and I think it is a fantastic album with some great tunes. So obviously we are hoping as many people as possible get the same feeling from it. Hope that it will give us the much needed step onto a next level that will open us up to a wider audience and set us up for album number 2.