Hello everybody,

This reason for this message is not a happy one. Unfortunately, we are going to have to postpone our gigs in Sheffield, Edinburgh, Leeds and Middlesbrough this week. This is not a decision we have taken lightly – we love playing our music to people who travel to see us, it’s a really important part of lives so to have to let people down like this is pretty gutting.

After London my voice was feeling ropey but with a combination of liquids, strepsils, vics, lemsips and soup I thought I could manage it. Upon getting to Wolverhampton yesterday I was still feeling positive in my ability just to power through but upon trying to sing a bit of Violence Out Tonight (a very easy song to sing in a technical sense) I couldn’t get through a line without sounding like a yodelling frog. Believe me, if I could get up onstage and give even a 10% version of my voice I would, but sounding like that it wouldn’t be possible. I don’t think I have the nicest sounding voice in the world but I try to convey emotion and passion with it – with my voice in the state it was yesterday and upon waking up this morning, I couldn’t even get to this stage with it.

We’re going to reschedule all the dates – hopefully as early as possible. We will have news on the new dates very soon. On top of this if you send us an email at [email protected] with a picture of your gig ticket we’ll happily send you a couple of free songs as a compensation – I know it isn’t much but we hope you appreciate it.

Once again, we are extremely sorry to have to do this – we think we have a unique fanbase for both loyalty and passion and would never underestimate this on a whim. We hope you understand and can make it when we return.

Rob, Matt and Mickey

This song is based around a piano melody that I’ve had written for years – I’ve always intended to finish it and add a verse but it has only been the last couple of months that I’ve managed to find the extra lyrics to suit the melody and the correct chord progression to work with the chorus.

From its very start I’ve always wanted the song to be written from the point of view of person at breaking point – at a real low, and the chorus line has always been there. Look at me closely you can see, just how broken a man can be. It’s pretty basic in rhyme but in my head it counters nicely what comes before it in terms of the piano melody.

It was written on the same piano that we’ve used since the start of the band – an old school tinkler that just has something special about it. I’m quite sentimental when it comes to instruments and I love this piano to bits. I think that really helps the writing process when you just know how something should sound.

Lyrically, the song is about assisted suicide – something which has been in the news a lot recently. I heard an interview with a guy who talked about how he didn’t want to become defined by his illness: he didn’t like the idea that at some point he would cease to become himself and that that physical representation would overtake the image and memory of his being. He would lose control over how people would remember him, engage with him or even love him.

I often think about the idea of memories and about how they can sustain a person. Memories can bring about feelings that can be painful and wonderful but that ability to encapsulate feelings within them is powerful and pretty amazing really. So with this in mind I tried to write the song from the point of view of this man – broken and just ready to move on.

The song was recorded partly in Vale Studios in Worcestershire at the end of a long day of reamping guitars (Mickey and Matt’s favourite pastime) on the same piano that we used for Language is Over. We were really tired but managed to do four or five quick takes. I was very nervous while playing it as I hadn’t played the piano much and the weight of the keys was quite difficult to get adjusted to, plus I had no ending in mind so the last thirty seconds are pretty accidental J.

The vocals were then recorded in an attic in Hoult’s Yard whilst Mickey was having some family time. Luckily they turned out ok even though at one point I was singing into the wrong end of the mic….

Thanks to James Haselhurst for letting us use his lovely space.

The lyrics are as follows:

Maybe my hands won’t shake
Faces I don’t recall
Each of these finer points
Lost on the whitewashed walls
But at least it gets to be a choice

Look at me closely you can see
Just how broken a man can be

Assisted by those who know
The memories I used to be
Suffering grips all my days
Taut like an elegy

Look at me closely you can see
Just how broken a man can be

Still loss, still grief
Still a tragic energy
But I need control
Death will bring me
A calming neutrality
If you let me go
And make a choice

Look at me closely you can see
Just how broken a man can be

This song is simple and weightless and it was lovely to write. I suppose after re-reading the lyrics just now it could be interpreted as a metaphor for my relationship with songwriting. Sometimes it is nice to just escape and play with language, not writing about opinions or current emotions.

It’s roughly about a partner who is disconcerted with negativity and intensity in a relationship. Like Bridge Burn, Cover Your Rain as a title is just a way of saying: put it away, get light. Again this is something that Mickey will often say to me – you’re being too negative. So maybe that has fought its way out in this lyric.
I always think that I am a realist but Mickey (and Matt secretly) think I can be quite pessimistic a lot of the time – towards songs, situations we find ourselves in, how things are going in general. I suppose I just don’t have a great deal of outward self-confidence – plus the amount of burns our little fingers have acquired over the years do tend to tint my vision a little bit.

The rest of the song pines for escape and refreshment – again (this is getting quite cathartic now) this could be a handy metaphor for our band. Hahaha, better leave the lyrical analysis at that or a song that sounds like a benign and airy little thing will turn into a doomsday scenario for Little Comets. And we aren’t quite there. Yet 😉

Recording wise I think Mickey was tearing his hair out a bit. He let me do the bulk of recording alone (always a bad idea). When he came back to listen it was quite tough as he felt I’d taken no notice of his pointers, but by process of him scaling back reverbs and sounds and adding a little bit of percussion he managed to knock it into some sort of shape. He took what I did and made it about a million times better.

Here are the lyrics, questions on a postcard.

You change the covers
And I’ll make a will
Punish me rotten
For the way I feel
Woe betide me and you
And anybody who’s
Got a lot to lose

Cover your rain
Cover your rain up

Maybe I will live in fields
Paint all the colours with a new found zeal
Black and red
Deeper blue
Treat every crescent
Like my own tattoo

Cover your rain
Cover your rain up

Celebrating like an ocean
Celebrating’s all the same
Maybe I am washed up
So I’ll cover your rain
Cover your rain up

I was pale everyday
Born so mono in a fashioned way
Now I revel in stereo
Peel back the caution
And away we go

Cover your rain
Cover your rain up

Creeping. Up. Appearances.

What a journey this little song has been on. It was another of those songs written in protest at my inability to finish other more important songs.

I have a pretty primitive set of recording techniques which involve reverb and constantly adding vocal parts. This was how the first couple of verses and choruses came about.

Lyrically it is about the way that I feel politicians exploit their positions for self gain, and the correlation between the issues that MPs persue whilst in parliament and boards of companies they seem to inherit seats upon when they transcend their public service duties.

They’ll never tie their own hands either – just look at how expenses have in fact risen since that particular scandal. Pretty mad really.

The lyrics are quite oblique and wishy washy for me until the middle 8, when it gets a little more specific about the issue at hand, but that’s ok I suppose as a lot things that cause people anguish can be described fairly vaguely yet still make sense. I’m hoping that “sunshine keeping up the rain, but I don’t see you falling for that to gain” is an example of this…

The middle 8 and end came about two months after the majority of the song was written. Me and Mickey listened to it quite a bit and both agreed that it needed to go somewhere (that was as deep as we went), so while Mickey was working on Ex Cathedra, I got down to finishing it off.

Recording wise it didn’t take too long – it’s quite easy to sing so vocals were surprisingly quick for us. Mickey ended up writing a pretty tremendous percussion part which really drives the song on – he said to me “this needs to be a driving song, name a driving song…” So I said Boys of Summer. He listened to that and then wrote the part so who knows what was going through his head.

The final thing we did was to repatriate an old synth part that we’d originally written when we were producing The 1975/Big Sleep. It works really well so if you ever see them live and recognise it then don’t worry, it was only on loan.

Here are the lyrics:

Sunshine: keeping up the rain
Sunshine: keeping up the rain
But I don’t see you falling, for that to gain.

Daylight: deal at your rate
To everybody’s delight: you inebriate
But I don’t see you falling, for that to gain.

You lobby hard
Tripping on shop bought plosives
Picture this, picture this.

Four holidays, two new chalets
Paid off in a week says:
It’s a mess, it’s a mess.

Every scam, needs a new
scam to use as a ruse
Flotsam is as flotsam is.

Reset it, move on
Same mirror, old hand, new gun
Hopelessness hopelessness.

But I don’t see you falling, for that to gain.

X