One Easy Song, Three Elusive Ones

Hi, my name is Ben and I have the power to regenerate severed limbs.

A few little bits and pieces to tell you about for the new album - firstly, this is how the tracklist is shaping up so far (this is so open to change in practically every way):

The song subjects, in red, appear to be stuck in my college days.

In fact, the evening that this was drawn up, I went on to write and finish an eighth song. It came together really quickly once I started writing, partly because of how clear and crystalised the inspiration was. Maybe one day I'll tell you all about that, but for now (or at least when you get to hear it), it can just live as a song that I suppose can be interpretted by everyone in that magically ambiguous way that songs are.

Whenever a song is easy to write, or I have such a well-defined subject to write about, or an extensive and apt metaphor lands itself in my lap, I feel like I've almost been gifted the song. I've written before about how I see songwriting as more 'finding out how the song goes' and this song is a textbook example. Unfortunately, the song is also destined to be the eleventh song on the album. While I would love for the product of such an unlaboured, organic writing process to be able to fill one of the three spaces in the list above, it will only ever fit as an epilogue to what is shaping up to be a collection of songs that I'm very proud of. Trying to put the reason for this into words is kind of difficult, but it's partly to do with the nature of Nothing Wasted, Nothing Gained, partly to do with the style and subject of this new song, and on an even greater, meta-level, partly to do with the relationship between these two songs. It's a decision that ultimately fits into that greatest of artistic reasons - it just feels right.

The reason why it's an unfortunate eleventh song and why I'm bothering with struggling to justify the new song's avoidance of one of the empty three slots is mostly to justify to myself the fact that this leaves three songs still left to be written; the reason why I even need to justify that is that I need to get this album written - I have a start date for recording.

Black and white is WAY more arty.

My good friend and long-time collaborator, Frank, is stepping up once again to play drums on the album and we're going to start tracking in early January. We're going to spend time with Joe doing some live rehearsals/tweaking sessions over the next month (especially since we're playing a rare collaborative gig on the 30th) to hopefully keep the final recording process as slick and natural as possible, as well as uninterrupted too much by on-the-fly re-writes or uncertainties. 

For this album, the recording process is going to be drawn out over a much longer period than before - the plan is that once the drums are tracked, we can spend a few days (or even weeks) wrangling the written bass line so that it doesn't miss any musical opportunities that present themselves in what Frank's played. That's the plan, anyway - I refer you to the golden rule of studio recording, which is that although preparation can make the process easier on the day, everything changes once you're in the studio.

However, one thing that is (nearly) always a given is that you'll probably only record songs that you've, you know, written. Hence why I'm kind of keen to fill those three gaps. I'll let you know how that goes.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben