As you might have noticed we’ve been absent from most of the internet of late. We had a run of marvellous practices back in May and it became clear we had a choice: we could spend the next month polishing the older songs and have the album completed by June or we could knuckle down and push really hard to finish the new tracks, releasing the album later in the year.
We’ve unplugged ourselves from all distractions to finish these songs: swapping nights out for thoughtful country walks and limiting the time we spend on Twitter, Facebook, even uStream. We really enjoyed putting some of the earlier recording sessions online, but for writing new material, we found it too distracting - it’s important to be able to make mistakes when you’re working through things, and if you’re always aware of the camera in the corner of the room, you can become afraid to try the weird things you need to try in order to make a song work.
Our music is important to us. We’re not saying it will be important to everyone everywhere. We’re not saying we’re going to change the world like no band has before - because between Beethoven’s symphonies and The Beatles’ ego, we don’t want to get into a losing battle with history. There’s just a feeling you get in your head when the music is right. Something clicks into place, like the needle dropping into the groove on the record. That’s how we feel about the new songs. There will still be some old favourites on the album, but we want it to reflect where we are now, so the balance is tilting towards new material.
All in all, we just wanted to stick our heads above the water for a few minutes to say that we’re still here, we’re still writing and thanks for the support while we’re doing this. You only get one first album. We think ours is something we could be proud of and the finish line is in sight.
