1 - She Loves Ted Bundy
The album opener and lead single. This song began life as a joke idea about my girlfriend's serial killer / Ted Bundy obsession. She actually does own a Ted Bundy mug, and had gone through a phase of photoshopping Ted Bundy's face onto everything, including the cats in the album art. This song was incredibly popular from the very first time we played it, and it seems we accidentally tapped into something a lot of people (mostly women) can relate to well. It is the song people seem to know best, and long may they enjoy it.
2 - Bedroom Analysis
This one is way darker. It was the first song I ever wrote in 6/8 time, and the first song I ever wrote with different lyrics in each chorus. Writing this helped me process a really difficult situation I was trying to make sense of, so it's one of the most meaningful to me. It essentially describes some extreme gaslighting, though I didn't realise what was going on at the time, and trying to cope with all the confusion and self-doubt it created.
3 - A Song for Hannah-Beth
While She Loves Ted Bundy tends to be the song that grabs people's attention most, a very high proportion of the people who really like our music end up picking out this one as their favourite song. It describes the early stages of a relationship where everything seems a bit too good to be true, but you desperately want to be able to set aside your (well-founded) doubts and believe that everything really is as wonderful and magical as it appears on the surface.
4 - The Pokémon Adventure
This is one of my personal favourites, and it was the first one on this album we went into the studio to record. It was based on an actual rubbish night out that I had been on. There are plenty of songs about great, fun nights out, but I think there is a shortage about the disappointing, lonely ones that leave you feeling crap. The Smiths mention one such night in How Soon Is Now, but I wanted to tell a story with more detail, as the little details can make it more relatable and bring it to life. I found myself thinking about how you can attain a level of mastery at your favourite nerdy hobbies, and in a situation where you want to meet girls, your amazing skills don't really count for anything, and they definitely don't leave you feeling any less lonely at the end of such a night. I did once come 3rd in the country at the Pokémon card game national championships too. Another thing I really like about this song is the way I was able to make the feel of the music fit the various moods of the story the song tells. I had never before managed to achieve that to quite the same degree.
5 - Cities of Gold
The Mysterious Cities of Gold was the best cartoon ever, and anyone who says otherwise is wrong. I absolutely loved it growing up, and I still think the whole thing - the story, animation, and soundtrack, are spectacularly beautiful. In one of our very early rehearsals, Rob started playing the theme tune, and we all joined in, and it has been a fairly regular part of our set ever since. Our version is a bit more punk-rock than the original, and fans of the cartoon seem to love our version. It is the only cover on the album, and if it helps remind people what a great cartoon it was, and maybe inspires younger people to go and watch it, that has to be a worthwhile achievement.
6 - General Debility
This is the only song on the album without drums (though we have a full band version we play live). This is the only original on the album I did not write the lyrics for. They were written by one of my best friends, Leila Howl (who also played bassoon on the recording), and I thought they were great, and wrote the tune to fit to them. It is a song about experiencing horrific levels of stress at work, and feeling as if you are falling apart. The song was very new when we recorded it, and the recording has such a haunting, eerie feel to it, which I really like.
7 - One Day
This is a rather angry breakup song, about trying to make sense of all the things that turned out not to have been true, and trying to get over it, but as I was writing it I was questioning who I was really trying to convince about being over it. It is one of our most energetic songs, and we have often used it as the opener at our live shows.
8 - Involuntary Counsellor
I think this might be the oldest (original) song on the album. Rob came up with the main riff, and I had an idea for some lyrics that I thought would fit the feel of the riff well, and it came together nicely. It's probably our heaviest, and is another that has sometimes been our opener at live shows. This one is Sarah's favourite of all to play live. Lyrically, it's about a situation in which someone is expecting you to deal with all the effects of their depression, but where you have no idea what to do, and it feels like an impossible situation. I would be so much more able to handle a situation like this now though. Sometimes, recording your oldest songs can show you how much you've learned and grown as a person, which can be quite a nice feeling, but I still remember the experience that inspired this one well.
9 - Anna in Wonderland
In a way, this song is the sequel to Bedroom Analysis, only by this point, you are starting to see the holes in the picture that the person gaslighting you is painting. However, while you're still a complete mess, the other person seems completely unaffected, leaving you feeling very detached from this person you thought you were so close to, and wondering what was real and whether all the emotional energy you invested was completely wasted. Unlike all the other songs on the album, this one has never been a staple in our live shows. I think it works much better on record, and I really like this recording. Rob did all the production on this one, and ended up singing the lead vocals too, so it offers something different for anyone who has had enough of my singing by this point in the album.
10 - An Attempt to Write A Song
When I first started trying to write music, it did not seem to come naturally at all. Loads of other people I knew seemed so much better at all-things musical, and they made everything look so easy in comparison. The first band I had been in had quite an acrimonious breakup, in which I got accused of a bunch of things that, looking back, probably were rather unfounded, but at the time they hurt. I tried to channel that hurt and frustration into a song about songwriting and trying to decipher what I wanted from my music and life generally, and this song is what I ended up with. It is a song that offers something quite different from the rest of the album, and I think it works well as a sort of conclusion to it all.
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