Welcome to HeartSongs, our regularly scheduled (probably) look at songs and the people who write them. We spoke to Dan from Grunge-Blues two-piece Tooth & Nail about their new song ‘Troubled Times’

“It’s been a rough year or two for most of us, and this song is a reflection and reaction to a shifting and dangerous political and social climate. I wouldn’t say we’re an overtly political band, but as a writer it’s hard not to be affected and want to voice your thoughts. It’s become rare for rock n’ roll to examine and explore these issues, and I wanted to address some of the effects of Brexit, Trump, media manipulation and the rest. People are scared, people are divided and people have been lied to and used on a massive scale. Music should be one of the things holding the perpetrators to account and holding a mirror up to society. A lot of rock bands are crossing over into pop now, and going with that empty EDM club-type vibe and using woah-woahs as a substitute for meaningful lyrics. Not everyone has to be Billy Bragg or Leonard Cohen but I don’t know how you can truly believe in songs as lyrically empty as that.”

“Our aim from the start of this band was to combine our love of hard rock and grunge with blues and Americana influences. Influences like Led Zep, Nirvana, Sabbath, Rage Against The Machine, Bob Dylan, Beatles, QOTSA, Neil Young are cornerstones of what we do. Because we’re a two-piece, we have to think about using dynamics and shifts in volume, aggression and tempo to give the songs more colour and variety - if we just played the same riff over and over it would soon sound pretty repetitive. Having just drums and guitar to work with actually forces us to be more creative and cram in more ideas per song. We don’t see it as a limitation at all! The fuzz sound comes from my Big Muff pedal and Orange amps. I love how thick and powerful the guitar tones are and it helps fill out the bottom end.”

“A lot of our songs have breakdowns or outros that go off in a different direction and take the song somewhere else, but ‘Troubled Times’ is the most straightforward song in the set and certainly the most direct. We wanted to it to have a swagger, to have those singalong moments but also sound taut and punchy - kind of like a bare knuckle fight.”

“A lot of our songs start out as jams or riffs initially, with maybe a chorus hook in my head - I’ll have an idea that I’ll take to Mike and we’ll go from there. I try to avoid overthinking things at that stage and having set ideas for how I think a song should sound, as Mike is such a great, instinctive drummer who really gets dynamics and songwriting. We’ve got such a good understanding and shorthand now, we can write the music to a song together inside an hour. Once we’ve got a groove or the basics going, I’ll go away and write the lyrics and we also try to find a way to make it interesting - to have different elements to the song and different dimensions. It can be like putting a puzzle together, or cutting and pasting pieces until we get a cohesive whole that works. For ‘Troubled Times’ I had the riff, but the middle eight came later and the refrain last of all. It was almost too catchy and simple, but we knew that a song with such a tough message needed something communal to bring people into it.”

Tooth & Nail - 'Troubled Times' - Lyrics

I don’t see my enemy when I’m walking down the street

They’re exchanging pleasantries on every TV screen

I don’t take my advice from people selling dreams

And I won’t drink your poison when you pour it in the stream

Everybody knows

We’re living in troubled times

Crossing dividing lines

I don’t hear no poetry in our King’s speech

Making the same mistakes while we’re still on our knees

I don’t take my advice from country club cheats

You can’t call it lies when there’s a million in the streets

Welcome to HeartSongs, our regularly scheduled (probably) look at songs and the people who write them. We spoke to Julia from Altanta punks The Coathangers about their recent single ‘Captain's Dead’

“Easy come, easy go; what you reap is what you sow. Sometimes people that you trust fail you miserably by falling victim to their own ego. They start believing their own hype, fancy themselves a leader, but they lead nothing. It's based on a personal experience, but this track has taken on a larger meaning given our current political weather. It's feeling stormy - the ships made out of shit will sink themselves.”

I know it was a good time

I know it was a good ride

And I’ll see you on the other side

I'll see you on the other side

Captain of a dixie cup

You thought you had it all but you made it up

I'm feeling sea sick

I can't believe it

Out on a treasure hunt

And you're acting like a little cunt

Guppy better hold your breath

Cuz now we know, ya now we know

Easy come and easy go

What you reap is what you sow

Easy come and easy go

Adios amigo

Won't be such a long time

Before they're on to the next one

Cuz you sold the ground you stood upon

The deed is done

I know it was a good time

I know we had a good ride

And I’ll see you on the other side

The captain's dead, goodbye

Easy come and easy go

What you reap is what you sow

Easy come and easy go

Adios amigo

Easy come and easy go

Welcome to HeartSongs, our new, regularly (probably) scheduled look at songs and the people who write them. We spoke to Cormac from Irish mathpunks Stoat about their latest single ‘Try Not To Think About It’.

“Like most Stoat songs, ‘Try Not To Think About It’ evolved over an extended period of time - we are not, alas, able to knock out finished songs in 10 minutes (or even, often, 10 months). John arrived in to a practice with the bassline from the verse and the "ching! ching-a-ching-a!" guitar part from the intro. It was faster than it is now, with a kind of Chumbawumba "I get knocked down, then I get up again" vocal rhythm, and no words. We all liked it straight away, and kicked it around for a few weeks, and Stephen came up with the rattling drum groove.”

“The first words were the "Try Not To Think About It" catchphrase. I was going through a kind of miserable period - my kids were young and I wasn't getting much sleep, the place I was working in was struggling to make ends meet, and the house we'd been living in for a few years still wasn't really finished. The band are scattered around the country, and on my two-hour-each-way drives to practice in Athlone I'd find it very hard not to dwell on what a disappointment being a grown-up had turned out to be. To "Try Not To Think About It" was the only remedy I could think of, and the line fit neatly into the song.”

“It stayed "on the slab" for ages - that's the Stoat word for when a song is in a state of being taken apart, fiddled with, and put back together. The chorus melody was originally a guitar line, and I did everyone's head in by insisting we try to put in an extra half-bar between the verse and the chorus, then when we eventually managed to pull it off realised that it sounded crap.”

“Visiting my parents around then I came across an article in a Sunday newspaper where some famous person talks you through a day in their enviable life, and was inspired to write my own, less enviable, version. It began with "I'm Awoken In The Dark", and I even sent it in to the newspaper in question. Never got a reply, of course, but that became the basis of the lyrics - I made it rhyme and there we were.”

“There were so many words that we had to slow the song down in order for me to get them all in, and then all of a sudden we had a song that was almost funky, something that had never really happened to us before, and that led us down a new road - the chorus got a cowbell and a shout-along bit, the guitar in the verses got more rhythmic, and eventually during the mixing we added in that honking baritone sax.”

“If you listen closely you can hear my two daughters, the younger of whose sleeping habits I'm whining about in the first verse, chiming in on one of the "Try Not To Think About It"s.”

I'm awoken in the dark

By someone who likes an early start.

She wants to play, and I know I should join her

But all I can do it sit, dazed, on the floor.

I'm still there when her sister arrives

And I'm suddenly too late to get to work on time

So it's out the door shouting "Bye!" to my wife

Who's in bed

Having been awake half the night.

Stephen! John! This isn't good.

Things haven't turned out the way I hoped they would.

I never get to see my wife naked anymore.

We're just partners in chores.

Try not to think about it.

It's nice of you to offer sympathy

When I'm feeling sorry for myself -

But frankly I was hoping for advice

That might be a bit more practical.

Outside my job I sit in my van

Delaying entry for as long as I can.

Later you'll find me frozen at my desk

Deciding what emergency to deal with next.

In a panic I blunder on. Oh!

Making mistakes I'll have to fix tomorrow.

I never meant this to be a career,

But now it looks like I'm stuck here

Til pension day. My life slips past

As I try to cross items off a vast

To-do list that never seems to get any smaller

Just taller

Try not to think about it

It's nice of you to offer sympathy

When I'm feeling sorry for myself -

But frankly I was hoping for advice

That might be a bit more practical.

At home in the evening I try to defend

My re-heated dinner from my offspring. And then

There's games to be played, stories to be read,

Tantrums and escape attempts on the way to bed.

Callbacks for lullabies, blankets and drinks,

And meanwhile the dishes are still in the sink.

Then when the washing-up's done, and the laundry's put away

I can do as I please for the rest of the day ...

Just as soon as the dishwasher's mended,

Which takes longer than I intended

So when finally into bed beside my wife I creep

She is asleep.

Try not to think about it

It's nice of you to offer sympathy

When I'm feeling sorry for myself -

But frankly I was hoping for advice

That might be a bit more practical.

Hello!

Welcome to a new monthly Musos' Guide column, AlgoRhythms, coming to you on the last Friday of the month for the foreseeable future. I always wanted to do a column with this name, and my love for math-rock and terrible puns were the primary reasons. Sadly, I'm not quite as tapped into that genre as I once was, so the column will flow a little more freely in terms of genre, but will be undoubtedly math-tinged. 

As our previous mainstay The Weekly Froth! has passed on, in homage to its dated titles I've opted to do the same, but with the number in hexadecimal for that wholly unnecessary numerical twist. Additionally, as they're certainly the band that's had the most influence on my music taste over the years, I've opted to include one Biffy Clyro track per month, with a focus on the bizarre so we can dig out those golden oldies. However, as it's unlikely all those tracks will be (legitimately) available on the internet, I'll just omit the player forever to avoid inconsistency.

But yes, that should be all the waffling and preface text out of the way, so let's get down to the music, shall we? 

Biffy of the Month: 'With Aplomb'

Arguably my favourite track by arguably my favourite band, from undeniably my favourite record of theirs, The Vertigo of Bliss. This song is so good I once started a music blog named after it, but in all seriousness it's the sheer confusion of its composition that makes it so beautiful. The music is twisted and progressive, from those trite guitar and string melodies at the opening, to the sweeping drama of its most ferocious moments. Furthermore, the lyrics are apparently absolute nonsense but all the better for it, and whilst Simon Neil's lyricism has never won any accolades, "Kill your bizarre mindset, fuckhead / Soldered to a three-layered concrete brainwave castration" really hits the peak of bewilderment. With liberal doses of bizarre time signatures, this record was a stepping stone on the path to math-rock for high school me, and this song is a perfect place to kick off a new column. 

1. tricot - 'Melon Soda'

Accelerating quickly from 2003 to the present day, tricot's aptly titled third record 3 was released on Big Scary Monsters this month, and is a taste of modern Japanese math-rock. With a visually confusing video (it appears to be simultaneously backwards and forwards), preceding single 'Melon Soda' twists and weaves with Ikkyu Nakajima's vocal. Angular bass and guitar melodies dance a merry dance from the outset to an abrupt ending, with the whole track striking a pleasant tone at an enjoyable and leisurely pace. 

2. Minus the Bear - 'What About The Boat?'

Staying in 2017 and Minus the Bear have recently released their first record in five years. The preceding record was actually released on Big Scary Monsters, but it was 2002's Highly Refined Pirates that really spoke to me in terms of that math-rock beauty. Taken from VOIDS (released 3rd March by Suicide Squeeze), 'What About The Boat?' is a dreamy number which saunters along for the majority of its duration, before droning into some amount of excitable discord before fading to a close. 

3. Tall Ships - 'Petrichor'

Taken from what is definitely my album of the year so far, their second Impressions, Tall Ships' 'Petrichor' is an emotive indie rock anthem. The album overall is filled with tales of loss and woe, and this track is no different with its powerful dynamics and yearning lyrics. Evolving from the quirky math-rock sounds of their EPs, the band now create soaring rock landscapes such as this, which peaks with those chorus guitars and troughs with an endearing closing passage. 

4. The Darien Venture - 'Thinks / Thoks'

Speaking of loss, let's take a second to consider the loss of math-pop maestros The Darien Venture. Taken from their final mini-album / EP A Kite, A Key and A Storm, 'Thinks / Thoks' lays on the math-rock intricacy from the outset, and providing that in conjunction with some hair-raising vocal harmonies is the flavour that this band did best, and it's a shame they're gone. However, that whole release is available on a "name your price" basis, which means £0 if you want, get on it. 

5. Now, Now - 'SGL'

On the flip side of bands that are never coming back is Now, Now who just unveiled new track 'SGL' (I believe it stands for "shotgun lover"), their first since 2012's album Threads. That record was the one that turned me onto the band, and it's enticing and emotive mix of guitars and electronic elements instantly won we over. 'SGL' is very much in the same vein, with the strummed chord opening to the synth-tinges, but it's therefore equally enjoyable, even if they did shed a member along the way. 

6. Envy On The Coast - 'Virginia Girls'

To finish on another band back from the depths, Envy on the Coast recently announced a new EP Rituals ahead of some reunion shows. 'Virginia Girls' from that release channels the same rock swagger as 2010's Lowcountry and less of the indie leanings of Lucy Gray which came before. Instruments harness that attitude and the band's renewed confidence on this track, and it's an interesting teaser for the revival of the outfit, who have coincidentally also lost some members since we last saw them. 

That's all for this month's musical offloading, but check back on 30th June for some more math-laced musical musings. In the meantime, if you happen to have any musical or journalistic suggestions for the future of AlgoRhythms, please shoot them my way, probably best to go through Twitter (@kj_mccormick) for that. 

Goodbye!