This is a song that has been around for a little while but it never was quite
finished enough for the last album – plus, when The Blur… came along, that
screamed out to be the piano song on Hope is Just a State of Mind and this one
was placed back in its little box.

It’s quite a simple one really – it is about addiction. I think you can get
pretty much addicted to anything – a feeling, a sense, a substance, a pattern of
behaviour, something that becomes a cycle – just a position that could be both
destructive and constructive but which makes it almost impossible to walk away
from. I think the song is also mingled in with thoughts of dealing with a mental
illness and depression and sadness.

I wouldn’t say that I have ever suffered from depression but like everybody you
do have moments when you feel a certain darkness starting to consume aspects of
your thoughts… I think this is something that everyone can relate to – plus,
moments that change your life (especially in a negative sense) are often totally
unexpected and I don’t think anyone could honestly say how they would deal with
such a shift – your life could just unravel so maybe just think about that when
you see someone in a tough situation… but I think the accidental lyric that ends
the song explains it better than the last paragraph has. I’d been playing the
song for a week and could tell it really needed a positive end that could give
the character in the story a bit of sustenance and the two lines (“I think
there’s about a million people” and “Keep your little valuable head up”) just
popped up.

For a long time as well we couldn’t quite work out what to do with the end of
the song and that really put it at risk of not going on the album – the
emotional content almost transcends our ability to deal with it. We had a couple
of different tunes that we considered (a song called Different Gravy which
sounds far less poignant than it actually is), but in the end I think we decided
we just needed to risk it – start recording it properly and force ourselves to
finish it.

Mickey knew that a church near his house had a nice piano so he asked Peter (the
rector-majiggy and man only previously known to us from a pretty crazy rendition
of Old MacDonald’s Farm at a playgroup – Daniel Day Lewis style realism in his
pig), if we could use it. After checking that we weren’t singing about anything
dodgy he kindly let us in and we asked Matt, Matt Saxon, and Haley (a really
tremendous singer( not that Matt and Matt aren’t tremendous singers but you know
what I mean, ah I’m digging my self deeper…)) to come and be our choir… Mickey
did some conducting and we were away…

After mixing it for a bit though, the end still wasn’t quite right so we decided
to open the Lisa Stansfield string arrangement folder and put some strings on
it. We don’t have the budget for Hans Zimmer so me and Mickey just put a mic in
his kitchen and shouted at each for 8 hours while I recorded different viola and
violin parts… and so the end is at least rousing…. Mickey would argue that this
depiction cheapens the validity and logic of the process but as he can’t be
bothered to write these blogs I get to choose.

Grief defeats me like a storm
Of endless possibility
Will it leave me cut and shorn upon an island
Surrounded by desolate sea
Slow I wander as a cloud on the horizon
A part of you that always stays with me
I miss you like I miss the calm upon a river
I miss you like I miss deceit

It’s the same bridges
It’s the same cost
It’s the same lover
It’s the same roads
That you can’t cross
But you still love her

The faintest lines, my favourite scars
The finite wistful memories
The trust and bonds that we create across a century
Are homeless like some fallen tree
Nowhere for emotions to roam anymore
They appear as flotsam on an endless beach
I swim until the tide won’t hold me anymore
I swim until I’m out of reach

It’s the same bridges
It’s the same cost
It’s the same lover
It’s the same roads
That you can’t cross
But you still love her
And of the many people that it takes hold of will you recover
To the same roads
For the same cost
To the same lover

I think there’s about a million people
Been trying to find their own way back here for so long
You’ve got to lift your little valuable head up,
You’ve got to lift your little valuable head up, head up.

And of the many people that it takes hold of will you recover
To the same roads
For the same loss
For the same lover
To the same places
For the same cost
For the same lover

• WORHEAD PRE-ORDER UK – http://found.ee/WORHEAD
• INTERNATIONAL PRE-ORDER – http://found.ee/WORHEADint

For this album we changed our approach in quite a few ways. It really was a
conscious thing as we’d made albums 2 and 3 in the same way – not demoing songs
particularly and recording them block by block. We wanted to freshen things up a
bit, as a bit change is often good – unless it involves electing a racist
misogynistic grotbag or voting to leave the EU…

Mickey in particular wanted to track more than one instrument together and this
formed the basis of most of the tracks – me and Nathan would play the drums and
either bass or guitar together. It ended up providing great energy on most of
the songs – like Hunting.

The other main change is that we worked from a vast pool of songs – normally
songs would get discounted very quickly in the process and we would quickly
settle upon 12-14 that would make up the bulk of the album, if an accidental one
got written along the way then that was good but not really part of the plan.
This time round we had about 30 songs, and instead of choosing the album
straight away we demoed them all and then sat with them for about 6 weeks before
deciding which ones to work on – I was running quite a bit at the time and was
listening to them that way, thinking about tempos and different production
ideas.

Just towards the end of the demoing Mickey was like – what about that Hunting
song… and for possibly the first time ever I thought he was a bit crazy… We had
written this song in about 5 minutes a couple of weeks earlier and it was from
the point of view of a character. He basically loved fox hunting but he had to
stop when the ban came in. After this he worked out that effectively politics
was the same thing – a hegemonic system in which you can play out power
fantasies while persecuting a creature that you think is worthless vermin. Plus
the effects on them, however deliciously brutal, aren’t of consequence because
the confines of the game are so rigorous they can’t do anything about it anyway.
But it was quite a jokey song for us so I had kind of forgotten about it.

Mickey doesn’t really listen to lyrics (I know!!! He gets put off Bob Dylan by
an out of tune guitar… anyway…) but he loved it because it was really hooky
(Mickey loves a hook like) and it had stuck in his head. So he wanted to demo
it. Then he wanted to record it. Then he wanted it on the album.

Now from playing gigs in lecture theatres, to burying ourselves in the sand
(Mickey actually wanted hire a JCB and bury us in a field for the Common Things
video but we just said no), to sending individual emails to 2000 people over
Christmas, Mickey is a hard person to deny – so with Hunting it was inevitable
it was going on.

Our only problem was the length really as the demo was 1:28 long – but we put
off making it longer until it was pretty much finished. For a long time the song
went as far as the “ah oh oh oh oh oh” high vocal section, and then stopped with
a chorus: and this is how we recorded it with Nathan. We recorded the bass and
vocals but it was only when I was putting together the backing vocals that I
added the rising “never get caught, never get caught” coming out of the
screaming vocal section – this gave Mickey an idea so we just got Nathan to add
a few bars of drums and cut the vocal parts up. I changed the chord progression
by only playing black keys on the piano and we had our drop section….

I really like the energy of this song and the really unexpected quiet section –
it was great that we had enough confidence in the process just leave it for a
while and let the song settled than force an answer from it in a couple of days.

It’s also nice to write a song about something I care about without it being an
angry rant – although at the minute it is quite hard to laugh about the
frightening situation our world is heading towards because even though it
provides bizarre and unbelievable material for satire, it is also incredibly
dangerous. We ARE part of a hegemony, beholden to the few, with people (like
David Cameron) playing games with our futures as a finale to some pathetic
cockfight which started in public school. And as for Donald Trump……

I’ll never get caught hunting

I do it on a Sunday

Go out in the west end

I do it with my best friends

It feels so fucking good

To be misunderstood

So even when confronted

I’ll never get caught hunting

Last night we found a child

He came from E9

Dressed him up as a fox

Took off his hope and socks

We made him look a fool

Burnt A&E and closed his school

Got bored so privatised the homeless

I do it to myself

It’s for the common good

I live in the Ladbroke Grove

But I think it’s Hollywood

I do the same each time

That you let me

You’re just a part of

My hegemony

I’ll never get caught hunting

I do it on a Sunday

Go out in the middle of the west end

I do it with my best friends

It feels so fucking good

To be misunderstood

So even when confronted

I’ll never get caught hunting

These blogs again, eh!  I would say that they are back by popular demand but about 20 people read the last lot so maybe just by demand and/or my need to let off steam a bit.

Also, they are good for Mickey and Matt as half the time I don’t think they know what I am going on about – although Mickey definitely doesn’t read them, but if he did he would moan that I should have told him all this BEFORE we started recording the song so he would have a better idea of what was going on haha….

Anyway…

Common Things: me and Mickey (as usual) wrote this one in his garage after Mickey had been playing this riff over and over for about three weeks (it came to him in a dream I think) then we kind of adapted it into the chorus but had real problems coming up with the verses for ages.

I think what helped is that the chorus line paints a real picture of what the verses should be about – like with Jennifer or Joanna. It was just a case of filling in the bits of the story which fed from the idea of a couple being satisfied with just the simple things.

I suppose it is semi-autobiographical up to a point as I am quite a simple person and take more from the gaps than the need to fill them.. I’d like to think Jo keeps an atlas under the mattress when I am away but to be honest I am more than likely only in Swindon or somewhere so I doubt she bothers. And as for the coldsore thing well………

That line is actually from a really old song we had that went                                

“everyday she’s medically giving me coldsores                                                              

I’ve a reprieve because in two weeks I’ll be in Walsall,

she will still be lying on a carpet, thinking how could I have ever doubted him,

And the truth that lies within his skin”

But didn’t scan.

I wanted to get a mention of the arboretum in for Nathan as well, but it didn’t happen.

The song meandered quite a bit until we started playing about with it in a room with Matt Saxon and Nathan – Nathan’s hi hats are tremendous so that drove the bass line especially and we wrote the “geographical section” after getting rid of a bit that ripped off the oobeedoobbeeeedoobeees of Jennifer BUT the bit that brought it all together and made it sound finished was the percussion part that Mickey fashioned from me (badly) playing a combination of a djembe, a bottle, a bike pump and a bit snapped off an old snare drum….

We also recorded it and did the whole tracking for the album in an unfinished house in the middle of a farm which was deserted except for this old bloke called Percy who kept wondering into the studio. He used to be in a band years ago but now was just there as a voluntary farm hand and was telling us about this song called “OOOOH THE DIRTY DANCE” that he’d written haha. It was class because you would be in the middle of a take and just look up and there would be Percy just standing in a door way going “HOW’S IT GOING THEN?”.  This would have been the weirdest part of the process if it wasn’t for a 10pm sound curfew agreed with our next door neighbour Steve Staunton who knocked on the door one night….

When she first gave me coldsores

On a park bench in Walsall

I remember the feeling

As the last of the light

Dripped with might

From the palms of the evening

Like a psalm on the ceiling

Of her home, of her home

I love those common things I do with her

TV at six o’clock is de rigueur

Don’t need to fall apart to works of art

Don’t speak no Portuguese in the dark

And we can’t be romantic

Cos we don’t live in France yet

Get our kicks from the frantic

Little movements of feet

As I gallivant she keeps an atlas

Sleeping under the mattress

So I’m home, so I’m home

Don’t need to run along to Chittagong

Don’t need to get to Delhi or Geelong

Don’t need to throw a coin into a fountain

Don’t need to digress in the Spanish Mountains

Don’t need to trek from Santander to Bilbao

When I’ve got this better way to find out how

Cos I love those common things,

I love those common things,

I love those common things,

I love those common things.

Hey everyone,

So today is the day when you can finally order a copy of our fourth album WORHEAD.

Apologies for the delay in bringing it to you but we wanted to make sure everything was perfect before we put the link up. We are very passionate people about every aspect of what we do – from the first note in a song to the last dot on the artwork and so we do think it was worth the little extra time we’ve taken.

We can’t wait to start sharing the music in the next couple of weeks for what we feel like is the truest thing we’ve ever created.

For those of you not in the UK, we’ll have info on how you can order very soon 🙂

Thanks for your patience, trust and support.

x

Pre-order WORHEAD

Morning everybody,

After 6/7/8 months of hard work and determination we are absolutely thrilled to
have a couple of announcements for you this morning.

In early February 2017, we will release our fourth album WORHEAD on The Smallest
Label, along side a lovely tour of lots of parts of the UK (apologies in advance
to anywhere we’ve missed!)
Both the album pre-sale (including some very special versions) and tour tickets
will be on-sale from Friday 30th September at 10am.

Songs come alive that little bit more for us when we get to share them with you,
so the idea of playing them live and letting people hear them for the first time
is both nerve-wracking and exciting in equal measure. We look forward to
introducing them to the wild over the next few months.

The tour dates are below, but once again thank you for reading this message,
listening to and supporting our music.

x

Hello Everyone,

Hello everybody,

Firstly, apologies for the English nature of this email but due to the fact that we’re going to be playing in three differing linguistic places we thought it was probably for the best!

After many long years we have finally decided to come and play a few gigs in mainland Europe, shockingly in November. Wrapped up in Berghaus jackets we will be playing the following places on the following dates. We know there aren’t that many dates, but you have to start somewhere I suppose. Have a click for ticket links:

Sat   14   Netherlands, Den Haag, Crossing Border Festival

Sun  15   Germany, Berlin, Badehaus Szimpla

Mon  16  Austria, Vienna, Chelsea

Wed 18  Germany, Hamburg, Prinzenbar

Thu  19  Germany, Haldern, Pop Bar

Fri    20  France, Paris, Les Etoiles, HOWL Festival

We are honestly delighted to be able to come and play for you – especially as we haven’t been to most of these cities before. It’ll feel like touring for the very first time once again.

Also, we have a pan-European release date for our new album Hope is Just a State of Mind – 30/10/15 – you can order a copy here: http://littlecomets.lnk.to/hope.

Hope to see you there,

x