Me, Mark and Mickey used to get up at 6am in the morning to rehearse. We’d meet at a little school in South Gosforth to collect our gear, put it in the van and drive to a Tesco to get breakfast. I’d get croissants but pay for carrots (totally accidentally….) and we’d toddle off down to our rehearsal room arriving for about 7am – after shouting endearing obscenities at a local accounting firm. By the fourth week of doing it, they used to look forward to it I think. We also used to play a game where we tried to guess the lollipop-lady-on-Osbourne-Road’s name, but no-one ever got there.

Before long we roped poor Matt in and started this band….

Our reasons were good and we just played music together and it felt like magic at times. It was dark and intense and often fraught but I’ll always remember those happy days in Davy Burn’s ramshackle garage.

We were very driven then – we wanted to be in a band and tick off every single box on a list of what a band could do, and so the songs we wrote had to be hook friendly, record label inducing, 3 minute bits of pop…. Like a formula. But I think we struggled with this so came out with our own take on it….

Now, we’ve come back round to writing songs just because we like to and so the song Formula was born. I think it is meant to be a history of our band – and a bit of a piss-take of our selves. Bits of the song are serious – we have put seven intense years into this, and at some point this will take its toll.

Me and Mickey wrote it in summer, just messing around with the idea of playing something which was quick and immediate and hooky. The only way we could get away with the eventual result was to make the song a riposte to the idea of contriving but also a little look back on the journey we’ve been on.

Mark Harle plays the drums on this and I’m really glad – it’s always lovely to work with Mark and just see him for a bit, plus his drumming is pretty perfect for a song like this and it has a nice symmetry with the lyrics to have him bashing and tickling.

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Wakeful aching early mornings
Prise the desperation from your hands
Leaning out of bedroom windows
Books and hooks we steal from last night’s bands.

Take a girl’s name for the chorus
Repetition and repetition
Write it on a piece of paper
Add some words that I don’t understand.

Just drinking formula
Every think is wasted
We’re drinking formula
Every think is wasted

Seven years:
Seven years of implication
Debonair,
Critically self-effacing
Unaware:
Unaware of hours we’ve wasted
Far from here,
Soluble from weeks spent

Drinking formula
Every think is wasted
We’re drinking formula
Every think is wasted.

Cold and clear
Sentiment is spent
It’s closure
I’m a tear
Rolling down
An endless cheek
A metaphor
I’ll disregard
With total mercy.

You’re drinking formula
Every think is wasted.