On a rainswept morning
When I stared lost, for the first time
At the designs and the centuries
In my baby’s own eyes
And I learnt more
In this moment
Than the inert rusting emotion
Of my twenty odd years of life
I’ve got to relay
Got to relay
Got to relay
My foundations to be humankind.

That’s what happened on August 29th 2012 when I held my little boy William for the first time. It just made me think about all the craziness in the world based on ancient religious teaching, as opposed to common sense. At some point the message of just be nice to each other has been washed over by protestations relating anybody who doesn’t adhere to a pretty narrow way of living.

I think that’s what Ex-Cathedra is about really – rejecting outdated moral codes and questioning opinions on their content, not simply accepting them because of their source.

Ex-Cathedra is latin for ‘from the seat…’ and i think it is a reference to papal infallibility – the idea that what the pope says goes. It’s total insanity in the world we live in. Why can’t you express your sexuality? Why can’t women be priests and bishops and popes? Why not support contraception, with the obvious benefits to millions of people? The list goes on.

Me and Mickey wrote this song in the same place as Little Italy and it has a similar lyrical train of thought (sorry if the lyrics are indecipherable again – I get told off for this…), it is almost like it’s older brother.

It also uses an acoustic guitar as the main thrust of the rhythm part, which is quite strange for us. The middle 8 is my favourite thing we’ve done in ages at is has quite a bit of depth, means a lot to me lyrically and has a crazy little guitar solo at the end, plus the drum part Mickey has written really makes sense – it feels like it has quite a bit of purpose which is always good.

Mixing was very difficult for this song – Mickey likes to really sectionalise everything, and it was quite hard to define musical sections as the verse and choruses have the same chord progression, plus there are a lot of instruments and vocals which eat up the space. I think he got there in the end, even if he did end up leaving 10% of his mind in the song.

🙂