Where We Can Sing Scrath Our Head Raise Again Oh Oh Maybe We Both Retreat Love Songs Lyrics

mayo 15, 2022 Publicar un comentario

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A Quixodelic Tape, 2008

In the summertime of 2008, work began on the second Kaleidonaut's record, it'due south just that nosotros didn't know it at the time. A Warchalking/Wheelies collaboration had been discussed from every bit early as September 2007, and Kris' involvement on "Spaniard" with the tracks "Roll It Upwardly", and "For A Daughter" had shown that it was a combination that could work. Initially "Tigermouse" went under the working title "Villa/Torres" and the collaboration was chosen "ww", but laterally it became apparent (with the inclusion of Jane Gilmore, and when the mouse on the scooter appeared) that this was the next logical step in the Kaleidonauts take chances. iv months of file-sharing across 4000 miles later and "Tigermouse" was born.

one Seed

Smally: "Seed" originally began every bit merely that - a seed of a line that I had stuck in my brain that "the apple bites back". One afternoon round about the mid-point of writing the record I had a bit of time to kill then I wrote and recorded a vocal chosen "The Apple tree Bites Dorsum" - it wasn't really meant as a Tigermouse track, more a stupid lilliputian song to fill some space with all the music y'all tin hear on "Seed", and layers of song melodies singing throwaway lines like "I retrieve this time I bet you wish you'd bought bananas". I sent it to Kris really just to testify him what I'd been upwards to, so information technology was a flake of a surprise when he turned it around and re-wrote the words and vocals from the footing upward and sent it dorsum to me. It was as well at this fourth dimension that the recurring theme of starting an imaginary country on that very real floating island of plastic rubbish in the Pacific Bounding main arose and so that's what it's about. Actually, "Seed" was probably one of a couple of turning points for me during the process of making the record - a kind of "woah… we might be onto something here" moment. I actually like the way information technology sounds like a caput-on standoff between two very contrasting styles of songwriting (Wheelies Folk-Pop and Warchalking Indie-Stone) and creates this strange, but hopefully worthwhile fusion of sounds. Kris' lyrics ofttimes knock me out and "Seed" has some real nuggets similar "I guarantee our immigration policy will be lazy" (even though I was initially convinced he was singing something forth the lines of "I'll get the tea on…").

Kris: This song was the outset of many turning points in the process. I tried the intro with a couple different songs, and information technology worked best with this one. The original was really proficient, I was taken by it immediately. In retrospect, I should've lifted more of the melodies from the original. The vibe was a scrap revolutionary in the original (possibly because its rare for me to have drums anymore), so an introduction to the country idea seemed appropriate. This record is chocked full of small ideas that explode into palatial ideas. Every ane of these started as a kernel in our respective hard drives. This was how to outset this tape. Every bit I think, Smally referred to this as a very Wheelies vocal.

Annotation: the details of our new country were hatched in the midst of studying the effects of globalization. Information technology was for the most part an off the gage rant that began as reaction to futility that sought to be radically businesslike. We are a foreign lot.

Smally: I think when I described it every bit existence "a very Wheelies song" information technology's more with reference to the drum loop and chord structure of the original thought. I'm still relatively obsessive almost trying to piece of work out what can be washed from a continuous major three-chord construction as so many of the songs that I love from the 1960s seem rooted in that. The finished article is a lot less Wheelie by nature - specially because of Kris' lyrical take on the opting out idea. One of the things I really like about this collaboration is that it's forced us both out of our comfort zones - for me to effort and figure out how to get part of that "epic-acoustic" Warchalking audio (reply: multiple piano tracks), and for Kris it'due south getting stuck in the gum of melodies that are maybe more playful than the usual gravity of what he needs to transport his songs. That was really what I was driving at with the "Tigermouse" title, this contrast of styles - the tiger of "surly" and intense Warchalking tunes, and the throwaway mouse of Wheelies nursery rhymes (backside only nearly every vocal I ever write is the semi-witting impulse to try and write the next "Yellow Submarine", or a song that kids can sing on the schoolhouse bus). Probably more than any other vocal on the record, "Seed" captures that contrast.

2 I Made A Cape

Smally: Being exactly 4000 miles apart (from Cape Girardeau to where I alive in Fife) the process of collaboratively writing songs is a tricky i - I mean, you tin can't just sit down with a couple of guitars and say "What do you call up of this idea?" So at the offset, together we recorded some 20 plus "sketches" of melodies with improvised words and traded these to see if in that location was anything that could be adult across the raw idea stage. In actual fact, very little of this opening exchange is left on the finished album (curiously "Greatcoat" and the following two songs by blow rather than design originated at this stage). I think nosotros quickly worked out that there was but too many adept ideas and it needed either one of us to commit to one of these and run with it - at this level at to the lowest degree, making this tape was very easy in that we trusted each other's instincts and even at this tardily stage take yet to take the seemingly obligatory bust-upwards over creative direction. From my sketched ideas I ran with the melodies that would go on to grade "Cape", dug upwards an old bridge from something I'd sung a long fourth dimension ago that didn't work and added a new chorus. This old version of "Greatcoat" - like a couple of other songs on Tigermouse - dealt with issues surrounding growing up in suburbia, and attempting to transcend the somewhat pathetic heartache of teenage relationship interruption-ups. Kris then latched onto the unintentional coincidence of the "Cape" in the song's title and begged me to let him re-write information technology (he grew up and lives in Cape Girardeau). Since he'southward a much stronger poet than me, I obviously said "aye, too right… go for it". And thus this split version of it was born, thankfully minus some of the worst bongo playing from yours truly that you very near heard and including far more profound and beautiful observations like "why do I keep all this shit effectually?"

Kris: I love the chorus of this song to no fucking finish. I couldn't touch it. "I got an education, it just keeps me upward at nighttime" is quite possibly the truest statement I've ever seen written down, and information technology makes me express mirth because Smally always downplays his writings skills. The music is particularly cool. All the instrumentation is Smally; I wouldn't change any of it and couldn't improve on it if I tried, even the now-absent bongos. All I said was "You lot gotta requite me the verses". Information technology was perfect for the time, equally I hit one of those points where I was at odds with my environment. The main idea was here was this sleepy little town, and the more I dwelt in it the more than I realized I was changing it. Over the grade of several years I constitute many tear downs and rebuilds occurring every few years or then. Its a song about cocky creation. I still wonder why I keep half this shit around.

Smally: Wow, I never knew that all the instrumentation was me - how come it sounds and so puny when I mixed it all down to begin with? The "pedagogy" line is something I wrote and used a long time ago round almost the "Oh Happiness" Wheelies album, but I can't even retrieve which song it was on (if any). A lot of the words I stop up writing are from this perspective of a younger and very mixed-upwards self, completely alien to the same sleepy suburban town that Kris ends up singing about. It wasn't that I was particularly odd, it's just that there wasn't besides many twenty-somethings walking circular the estate I grew up in wearing flares and a parka jacket. I draw a lot on the past simply because I feel like it's somehow more interesting or relevant to sing most fucked-up times every bit opposed to the position I'thousand lucky enough to have stumbled to now, which is essentially an incredibly quiet and happy life. I'm glad we did the split on this one and my impuissant verses were replaced, fifty-fifty though I withal don't have a clue what he'southward singing about spiders and fruit. Funnily, the beginning fourth dimension I ever played this finished version to Linz she shrieked - there was a spider spinning downwards from the ceiling directly above her at the same fourth dimension she was listening to the spider line.

Kris: Ha! The line is "Planted seed and as it grew the thrifty fruit information technology bore attracted spiders", and refers to the beginnings of projects I had started (the seeds), the progress made in those projects, which wasn't particularly stunning due to the size of the pond (the fruit), and the neighbors and denizens that kept circling around the blossoming of those projects (the spiders). I like starting from big images and narrowing the focus from there.

three Invisible Strings

Smally: This is one of my favourite tracks on the record. I wrote it early on effectually the same time as "679″ with starting time-thought best-thought lyrics effectually the thought that if everyone and everything had a string running from them/it throughout their life how tangled upwards and interconnected we'd all exist. I thought in that location was something in it but I wasn't convinced Kris was convinced and there were times I thought it might terminate upward on the scrapheap of ideas. Thankfully information technology didn't - he went back to it right about the end and re-wrote with new words (every bit e'er an improvement) some vivid harmonies and a couple of completely new sections. The instrumentation we employ on the record is limited, but thanks to our shared love of multi-multi-tracking and layering a lot of the songs still manage to sound very decorated, so at that place'southward something about the more stripped back acoustic feel of "Invisible Strings" that is a welcome shift of gears. Or possibly its just the absenteeism of my amateur un-Manzarek keys.

Kris: I of the major pitfalls in this projection was a lot was sketched out over the course of the summer, during which I was taking classes. And then as this flurry of ideas would go bounced back and forth across the planet, some things got tabled as in that location was no place to put information technology at the time. They got shoved into the next available slot and as things got sorted they'd get the proper attending. I take songs in batches, that way I can power through a couple and feel some sense of achievement. There was never anything incorrect with this song, there was just no room in my brain at the time. I'm glad Smally stayed on me considering this 1 became ane of the more playful songs on the tape. I ended upwardly stealing the chorus from some other song he'd sent initially that I liked and did a different version of (which I never finished and he never heard). I like this song because it makes each of us do things we don't usually practice. Its actually piece of cake to find a middle ground in uncharted territory.

Smally: Well that's another thing I never knew, I idea Kris wrote the chorus melody every bit I don't always think writing it. When it's fourth dimension to write a tape I commonly spend two or three weeks sketching very loose ideas for melodies, filling up a little mp3 player with a tiny shitty microphone, and then start cutting these back to the ones I remember might go somewhere. We're talking hundreds of melodies here, most of which become binned and forgotten. Even at the next stage where it comes to recording slightly more definite (just still improvised) versions for whoever I'm working with, there is nevertheless a lot of perceived deadwood that gets cutting. On saying all that at that place was really simply ii other finished songs that nosotros cutting because the record was running too long - "The Terminal Kiss" - more than of which in a flake, and "Looking Back". "Looking Back" was i of the commencement songs we did, and the starting time of the states mixing up the formula for writing, me taking one of Kris' ideas and writing words and a chorus. Information technology'southward most a guy who drowns on an acrid trip and is by by own admission not the greatest work of poetry I've ever produced, merely I'm sure information technology'll enhance its awkward head again, somewhere sometime. Dorsum on the subject of "Strings" - someday I plan to sing this on a beach beside a burning burn down and I'grand going to belt out "As nature runs amok we're always stuck with cleaning upwards"… I love that line, much deeper than what I had before, which was stuff like "There'south a boy for every girl if that's what it takes to make the globe seem a little bit better non quite then tough/ Simply if boys are non the thing for you there's something else to alleviate the blues similar some other girl or a couple of cats so cool". Oh dear.

Kris: Yep, this is intended to be a campfire song. I dunno if its a Skillful campfire song past any stretch, but that was the aim.

iv My Generation

Smally: Of all the songs, "My Generation" has come the furthest and the strings of who did what and why are so tangled that information technology'due south foreign to even endeavor and option them apart. Basically it began during the last Kaleidonauts album when I wrote a vocal almost identical to this ane in melody called "Pettycur Bay". It was lyrically very weak, so I re-wrote it nether the title "Dead Canaries" as a song most the projection I was involved in at that time. Jon of The Atom who was writing the Kaleidonauts record with me was musically burning out at the time with me firing loads of song ideas at him, so information technology got dropped. As far dorsum as August 2007, Kris and I had been talking about making a record together, perchance writing 4 songs each and contributing backing vocals to each other's songs. When Kris got roped into the original Kaleidonauts record (Spaniard) and sang on "Roll It Up" and "For A Girl" I think it became apparent that information technology was going to exist something a lot less straightforward and a lot more collaborative, each of united states of america playing to our particular strengths. I dug up "Dead Canaries" to encounter what he thought of it, and he re-wrote the music and lyrics. In hindsight I probably should have left the words the way they were, simply when I sang my version I changed some of the lines to effort and reflect my own take on information technology so the finished version is an nearly 50/50 mix of his words and mine. Kris then re-sung the main vocals, before I added backing tracks and keys. So what you stop up with is this acoustic carol have on "My Generation" (I called it that because I liked the idea of folk expecting to hear a Who encompass-version, and getting something completely different), with both of us contributing at virtually every stage along the way.

Kris: This held ane of the rare contention points during recording. I had been playing a lot of shows with younger kids (strangely, it's like shooting fish in a barrel when you're 28), and a lot of them were really good. Here I was in my tardily twenties finally figuring out how to write songs and hither were these college freshmen coming upward with really clever ways of making music. All I could recollect about was where I'd be if I started on that level. Then I made the song about that. My argument was we have to await to the kids to sympathise how to adapt with culture-irresolute technologies because people older than u.s.a. offer little assist; his argument was after painstakingly sifting through piles of kids' recording, a frightening amount of them were deriving their music from already derivative sources and I must've establish some diamonds in the rough. Thinking about it, he was pretty much right. All those kids I saw were from Manner out of state, working their way around the country on whatever funds got put in the hat. Nobody around here has always heard of the influences these kids were using. The result became how people our age have to keep an center on both horizons. The generation referred to is whatsoever generation that has to adapt faster than their parents, which I figure covers about 3 so far.

Smally: Yes, I accept a quite cynical view of young people today. That's not to say that I'yard an former bastard, or that there'southward not exceptions to the rule (there well-nigh definitely are - accept for instance bands like The Shivas, or individuals like Dylan Gough), but more often than not I find the whole fashionably unfashionable EMO thing merely a flake depressing. It really comes from working on The Fantasize Generation, and from the same feelings that acquired me to write "The World Is Fucked" on the last Wheelies album. Doing the DG affair involves a lot of surfing on MySpace non simply looking for bands, but besides trying to find individuals who might like what we're doing. I remember pretty vividly this horrible feeling of trawling seemingly page after folio of nihilistic kids trying to outshock each other. I guess I got lucky when I was in my mid-teens every bit it coincided with the Madchester scene with bands like The Stone Roses and The Happy Mondays, and shoegaze acts like Ride and Chapterhouse - and all of that music opened doors to the golden era of The Beatles, The Stones, The Velvet Underground, The Byrds, The Kinks etc. Kris' original take on "My Generation" I felt complimented too heavily the adjacent generation coming through behind us, but at the same time I really identified with what he was saying about us being lost between the burned bridges of our failed hippy forefathers, and the enviable position of a youth that takes the technological changes of the terminal twenty years in their stride (every bit opposed to being caught upwardly in the blizzard of advances like we have). I gauge that's why I threw in lines about faulty parachutes and taking pictures on your phone to somehow try and make sense of whatever the fuck has only happened to us. Not that I ain a phone, simply that's another story.

Kris: Returning to collegiate study has brought my opinions a bit closer to Smally's. At outset I was surprised, then I recalled how awkward and ambiguous the late teens-early on twenties phase was for me. Granted, my collateral damage was less astringent than a geometric haircut and super-tight black jeans, but I hung out with people with a lot of facial piercings and flannel shirts, so its non that it disappoints me, its but hard to sentinel kids fall in the same traps my generation had. I own a phone, just just barely. I got it last August out of spite.

5 I'll Be Your Pavement

Smally: This one's the other of the ii best songs I wrote. It was a melody I had boot effectually on my mp3 recorder for months before 1 afternoon when I had a bit of time to impale I wrote some proper words just for something to sing. It's funny the way it works out sometimes - you write something you lot actually like merely when it comes to the crunch it just doesn't work, and less oftentimes on the flipside you write something that really shouldn't piece of work, simply it does. The vocal is a semi-fictional take on beingness a teenager, there are lines that are really me and at that place are others that are simply flights of imagination. The bridge melody is an alternative take on a melody I'd already used on "Pepperland", which at the time I wasn't thinking was going to finish up on the tape as well. Information technology's quite a repetitive track in terms of music with the guitars and piano, but I like the way it's the same iii chords right the way through and still manages to underpin several unlike vocal melodies.

Kris: This was one I didn't have to do much to. The music was rich enough, contained its own vibe, and the words were very much Smally. I lean towards minimalist lyrical structuring that emphasizes using less to say more; Steven uses lengthy and brilliant lines that rope into a massive mosaic. This vocal was a massive mosaic, so for me to alter annihilation would've wrecked an already excellent vocal. I agree that the repetition is what makes this song work.

Smally: I had to read that bit twice, go up, go abroad and think nigh it to effigy out what's being said. My initial response was on the contrary, that Warchalking tend to be far weightier, and poetically ambiguous, whereas my lines tend more often than non to exist very unreal, a cartoonlike exaggeration of ideas. Actually I remember what's beingness said is the mode nosotros phrase things with me cramming words into a line? The affair is, I once read something about how Bob Dylan sought some kind of artistic mentoring and it led him to the revelation that he was using besides many words that were redundant and unnecessary to convey what he was thinking. The affair about that though was that this lyrical epiphany coincided exactly with a signal where I completely turned off from what he was doing (ie. equally far as "Blonde On Blonde" and little to love beyond that). Then I consciously choose not to be analytical when I write, just to "become it out". Hence why I occasionally find myself playing songs about crashing imaginary mopeds with a 2 pence piece (that you can hear rolling around at the very end).

Kris: I've heard it cleaved down that there are two kinds of writers: those that tell a story, and those that pigment a film. Smally and I do both, but using different approaches, so I guess I'm saying there are two more: Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Smally likes to layer. Could it exist considered redundant? Depends on how y'all similar your stories painted. Its like driving downwards the aforementioned street for a week. First couple of drives you notice some consistencies, but after enough time those fade in with the trees and you lot brainstorm to notice the intimate life of the place. You see the habits of the residents, the personality that exists in thirty second bursts that truly define grapheme. Its a lot more in sheer mass, but its alive. It breathes. I'm more of a side street writer. There's a lot less to encounter, only the things seen are more direct tellings of what 'due south going on. The front end of the house is the face we try to put on ourselves, fifty-fifty though the strings are visible. Its the fights and the bath robes in the dorsum chiliad that are dead giveaways. At that place's no masking that. I used to write big, descriptive lyric sheets that set a scene and lived in it a while, merely I could never recollect all the words. I cutting information technology back out of simple pragmatism.

vi Permit'southward Start A State

Smally: I think more whatsoever other (with the exception perchance of "Seed") "Country" reflects Kris' talent for hearing/visualizing potential in something that was originally mediocre at best. I wrote the song later a couple of emails back and along about my urge to go and start a country somewhere, incorporating some of Kris' ideas (tomatoes, stoning, that floating island of plastic in the Pacific Ocean). It wasn't dandy to be honest, but he redid the music - a unproblematic guitar line that reminds me of the Stake Blue Eyes era Velvet Underground - and brand new words, including gems like "our flag will float free on a pile of droppings that keeps growing". He sang this 2nd much stronger version of information technology (I loved it), and against my meliorate sentence I reluctantly added a new ready of vocals that have since been incorporated into it. As I write this, "Country" is the last of the songs pending completion as we're waiting on a Jane Gilmore vocal track that Kris thinks volition complete it - then I'm looking forward to hearing that if it materialises. I recollect of all the tracks "Permit's Start A Country" actually defines what this record is and how we made it - a throwaway thought from me poorly executed, Kris picking information technology up off the footing and extracting anything worthwhile from it, sending it back to me for boosted work, so finally back to him for all the technical arrangement. I just actually hope that its as good to heed to as it was to make information technology.

Kris: This song wound upwardly complex. It started fairly directly forward. It was the main vehicle for the country idea nosotros'd tossed around, just we already had three or four tunes that were acoustic-driven bivouac songs. So I tried a single tremeloed guitar as a carrier, and shot for an anthem. I don't know if its an anthem or not. We managed to sucker Jane in on this one every bit well. She added a nice layer on an already dense group of voicings. One of the major points in this record is that Smally is far meliorate at carrying a chief melody than I am, whereas my strength is in harmony and texture. Initially I had the lead, merely when Smally sent his tracks the better judgement was to take him atomic number 82. The motivation of this vocal went for two directions: one as a voice of frustration. You can but talk about the problems of the globe for so long; at some point you lot have to innovate an alternative of some sort. If the world is so wrong, then what should be right? The 2d, when thinking about fundamental flaws in political and economical establishments, its easy to get overwhelmed by the complexity of the whole affair. There are and then many methods and opinions, and not all of them are necessarily wrong, simply incongruent at a global level. If yous wanted to correct all the absurdities in the human condition, you take to be willing to be as absurd. A squad of people living on the Pacific trash heap living on fish and singing drunken dirge songs while dancing naked around a fire seemed crazy enough to make sense. This is the adjacent step in human being evolution.

Smally: And then since I wrote this originally the vocal got done, and Jane sang on it, and it was as good as Kris imagined information technology would exist I think. I promise erstwhile he digs up that original version of him singing information technology on his own though, I've heard information technology goes down well in front of a rabid coffee shop audience and seeing equally you lot'd demand to put me in a binbag and force me onto a phase at gunpoint, the chances are I'm never going to feel what it feels like to sing well-nigh trading hash and tomaytoes to anyone but my own shadow. The next step in human being evolution? Hmm I don't know most that ane - I have a feeling the personality types that would be attracted to such a project would not interpret well to the more practical aspects of survival on a floating heap of plastic junk in the Pacific Body of water. When I was 19, me and the rest of The Wheelies took every item of furniture from every room in our flat and built a giant cube we planned to live in from so on. We lasted nigh 14 hours, it got grim existent quick once we started to sober up and ran out of things to smoke. I come across real parallels between the "Pepperland" of our imaginations and that misadventure. Actually the original idea of a country I had was that it would exist only in imagination. I mentioned this to Linz once and she said "For fuck's sake, are you ever going to grow up?" Haha.

Kris: Come to call up of it, I've got enough pipe dreams lying around to float in an ocean and live on. I'll be saving that for "Allow's Start A Land ii″…

seven 679

Smally: For a long time this was going to be the opening track on the tape, until Kris came up with "Seed". I preferred "Seed" as an opener to be honest, and when he added that lifted fade-in from the final song "Pepperland", information technology actually confirmed it was the right song to kick the record off creating a symmetry between the get-go and the end. "679″ was one of the first songs I wrote from outset to finish specifically for Tigermouse (or "ww" as nosotros were calling ourselves at that bespeak). Prior to that I recall we'd just washed "My Generation" taken from an one-time idea, and "Looking Back". I was pretty pleased with "679″ when I wrote it, feeling like information technology encapsulated a lot of what I practice and how I wait at my involvement in The Daydream Generation, and it was also the beginnings of the starting a land thought that increasingly became a role of the whole album. My liking for it has diminished over time, just I call up it might exist as much to exercise with the fact we went on to write even meliorate songs (likewise equally over-listening to it). It was called "679″ past my three year onetime son when I played it to him and was stuck for a title. I don't have a inkling what it means.

Kris: This tune was one of my favorites in that in that location wasn't much actual writing to practice. Information technology was washed. The trick was to fill up information technology out and go far pump blood. This was at the tiptop of the playlist for a very long time, partly because information technology was ane of the beginning batch to be finished and was the crown jewel, for sure, and partly considering this was the song where we started to get a focus on where the record was gonna go. I'll fess upwards, nosotros robbed the Beatles bullheaded on this one. At least I did. And the Beach Boys. Fucking Brian Wilson…

Smally: Well I never intentionally robbed The Beatles and if I did then I can only apologise - would be nice if someone could point out which Beatles song we've ripped off, but if it'southward merely the sound and so that's cool - if you're going to try and audio like anyone then I can't think of anyone better to try and sound like. Since I wrote the first fourth dimension effectually about "679″ nosotros remixed it, brought it dorsum to it's original lo-fi roots and consequently I think I really similar information technology again.

Kris: Its non that we've robbed anything specific. We've stolen technique, which since I last checked wasn't subject to copyright police force. And thank fuck for that, otherwise I'd be screwed.

8 4000 Mile Dream

Smally: The origins of this vocal can be traced as far back as November 2007. I spent a day writing and recording an unreleased Wheelies record from scratch chosen "7 Hours" - x songs, 5 of which went on to feature on the Kaleidonauts "Spaniard" record. This ane was called "Holy Smoke" nigh a child in a tribe who'd "run out of matches and nicotine patches and ideas baby", but information technology was all verses and I always felt similar in that location was something seriously missing from it (eg. a chorus). Afterward the initial "sketching" phase at the beginning of Tigermouse, and while Kris was struck downwardly with tonsilitus I was hitting a seemingly endless vein of songs and wrote the "if this is a dream" part, patching the 2 melodies together. Over previous records I've worked on I've fallen into a tradition of writing "Dream" songs and this was initially #four in the series. I inverse all the words effectually based on some nonsensical dreamlike storyline where the protagonist like the real Descartes is holed upward in a tin shack thinking, forth with his Russian friend (Dostoyevsky) lamenting the fact his cycle has been stolen by Atticus Finch (To Kill A Mockingbird). The bike stuff I wrote with Kris in heed equally he'due south a bully cycler and thankfully he liked the song and redid the music, with me adding some keys at the stop. It'southward got one of my favourite lines I wrote on the record - "Fucking Atticus Finch is out riding around on my bicycle!". I don't know why I like information technology then much, but I do. The title comes from a dream I actually had - I'd been obsessively thinking virtually a name for the project and woke up i morn with "The Bespin Black Lotus Basement Ring" in my head. I dropped the "Bespin" bit from fright of being rumbled as an unconscious Star Wars geek.

Kris: The music on this was fun in that its got a gallop, and I love playing songs that gallop. I tin can't count how many times I'd sung the Atticus Finch line in the shower, attempting to mimic the accent horribly. I identify with the Atticus in the dream as he'southward a cycling nutter, drinking his beers and singing songs at civilization, harassing poor Descartes lovely slump with ideas similar "If nobody'due south watching, then you lot can practice what yous want."

Smally: Haha, aye Kris' British accent - it was actually pretty not bad but sounded probably as comical every bit information technology is for me to sing "tomaytoes". He likewise sang the "fucking Atticus Finch…" function with this beautiful spit of what sounded like sincere pissed-offness in the role of someone whose bicycle has been chored, but with me singing too it kind of gets lost. Once again since writing what I did before this song got renamed and is now called "4000 Mile Dream" every bit we had to get it in somewhere. While I was trying to think of a title for the record I went onto the internet and on a hunch calculated the altitude between Cape Girardeau and the beach I alive on in Fife Scotland. Information technology was near enough 4000 miles exactly (4000.38) which I thought was kind of chilling. I've told a couple of people about it simply I usually but get blank looks - I'm like "Yeah, only it'south 4000 miles exactly… not 3999 or fifty-fifty 4001…" It'south amazing plenty though that you can find people on the other side of the globe on a different continent and brand records that sound similar they've been written in the same room… if you could sniff it, it would smell like a revolution.

Kris: None of my people are all that impressed by the neatness of the geographical altitude either. And, unfortunately, I'm a witting Star Wars geek, so I suppose I'm grateful we didn't go with "Bespin Black Lotus".

nine Oh No

Smally: For a change I don't really have much to say about this one. I wrote it about 2-thirds of the way through the record and it was relatively straightforward, initially called "I Hope You Kept The Receipt". I wanted to write something that sounded similar it had been lifted off The Beatles "Rubber Soul", simply as Kris pointed out to me "nosotros overshot Prophylactic Soul and landed in Abbey Road". Not almost equally bang-up obviously, but you see where I'yard coming from. Afterward I'd sent all the tracks abroad to him to mix and supersede guitars and add together vocals I think we both knew that "Oh No" was missing something, and so arranged for the brilliant Jane Gilmore to help out with some vocals. Equally great a job as she did, I still think this song is missing something, simply at the aforementioned fourth dimension I effigy that the more we add to it and mess around with it, the worse it could potentially get.

Kris: I agree. This ane lacks the magic. But I can't get rid of it. Jane did awesome. Nosotros concluded up prodding her for some other accept, and wound up using both. I love how her vox fits in with our mess. Makes it swish. And she gave the song a new depth. I think ultimately this song was a casualty of a mad period for me. I may have tried too hard and it wound up a little short on the pop we wanted to give it. On the other manus, its a actually honest vocal. An aspect of music I've e'er enjoyed is it always asks y'all to put the all-time, or worst, or whatever you're feeling immediately to piece of work. Its like working a life lesson out on paper, because whatever you make that song nearly becomes an aspect of y'all or your by that you have to constantly revisit time and time again. You work through you shit, like it or non. The words were so genuine. You go in these relationships, and there are times when y'all can't just trade out for a new one. This has been a lesson I've struggled with.

Smally: Some other one that got a makeover after I'd written about it here. I thought a lot nearly this song in the build-up to the record coming out, trying to figure out the missing piece of the puzzle so to speak. In the terminate I asked Kris to turn the reverb downwardly a notch to hear what information technology sounded like stripped dorsum. The version on the anthology is the stripped back version and I'm much happier with it - I agree completely about Jane's input and have written several times how astonishing her voice is. As a vocalizer she'due south similar some kind of maverick racing driver taking staggering chances that by and large find combinations of notes that sound very original and melodic. In other words, thank fuck for Jane.

Kris: I'1000 still amazed she helped out. This record was a total sausage fest prior to her contribution. Thanks Jane.

10 To A Concerned Earth

Smally: This i is more of a Kris-song than any of the others on the record. It was i of the sketches he recorded at the beginning and I really liked it, imagined at the time information technology turning into this Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young type long rolling guitar song. The lyrical content of the song was helped along by some conversations we were having nigh America'due south place in the international community and its insular political view of the world. I was trying to explicate how electing a Autonomous president at the next ballot is perhaps even more important to the residual of united states than to America itself. All the people I about meet from the USA are great people and very switched on, then I counter my bewilderment that they would let the election and then re-election scummy $-fixated correct-wing Republican scumbags by ripping them about the state of America. Information technology must accept struck a chord with Kris. Information technology was really keen to hear this vocal growing from the ground up, with layers and layers going on each time I heard updated versions. Like getting to watch a songwriter or sculptor at work. I added some pretty bones keyboard parts and some backing vocals that hopefully he liked. I doubt he would tell me even if he hated them mind you. With every record I've been involved in there's always the ambition to write some political songs and actually say something, but I commonly retreat back to the simplicity of druggy love songs… Tigermouse was no exception, merely this fourth dimension I had a running mate to do all the important dirty work.

Kris: Political songs are always hairy. Part of the problem is you immediately date the song. Another part is its actually easy for people to misinterpret any of the messages you try to convey. Take Springsteen'southward "Born In The Usa". Smally was my gauge on this one. One of the cracking things about working with him is he's a terrible liar, fifty-fifty though I've never actually spoken to him directly. If it was too preachy, he'd say so, simply he didn't, so here nosotros are. The concept is as such: "Dear World, many Americans empathize that there are things immediately impacted by what happens here. It'due south fucked up, we know it, but understand that this is a strange place. At that place are a lot of very loud voices. There are a lot of interests. Trust that nosotros are not all idiots. We'll become at that place. Please don't end criticizing from the exterior equally that's the only way we tin can change things in here." I think that's simple. Maybe not. The discussions nosotros had on the affect the US had on the rest of the world were peachy in that here was a voice from outside explaining what were stepping on, which is tranquillity information round these parts. Smally got actually intense on me for a infinitesimal, and it had a lot of bear on. This was the response. As for his additions, I don't know what the fuck he'south talking most. What he put in was perfect. They serve the song brilliantly.

Smally: I think the rest of us know that America is not a nation of idiots, just it was horrifying enough to run across Bush-league elected a second fourth dimension to not exactly be filled with confidence. I mean, this election should exist treated like a War. If people are maxim to y'all "All politicians are the same", and then they're just trying to make you feel bad about giving a fuck. It'due south hard to judge what kind of impact an Obama presidency would have, but all the signs betoken to a dramatic comeback, or at the very least an attempt to meliorate things for the whole rather than the individuals at the top of the social ladder. In Kris'due south words, information technology'south fourth dimension to start throwing stones at "the old white men on the thrones".

Kris: Ane thing that can be gleaned from the final few elections is that there is a growing mob unhappy with the US's current direction. 57 one thousand thousand people voted confronting the Bush-league presidency, and listen also that half the people in this country don't vote at all. This yr we've got a bunch of highly motivated people that really want to steer the ship for a while versus a bunch of confident people that have been steering for a while. Image changes don't happen overnight, simply the worse things go the more motivation there is to make the switch. I dunno, I partially experience bad for taking a side, as taking sides limits yous to the options available within that side, and straddling the contend allows you to be more than objective. On the other hand, I personally, ethically, and logically disagree with most of the dominant stances my government has taken. Its get fourth dimension to choice sides in this land, unfortunately. Believe it or non, this election has become war on many levels. Nosotros're about 2 degrees away from taking to the streets, and I fear a McCain election may go every bit far a three degrees. Then once again, that's what I thought last election, and it seemed crooked as hell where I sat.

11 The Somewhere Song

Smally: This is the first of what I feel are the ii best songs I wrote for the tape (though at present with Kris contributions non necessarily the two best songs on it). I wrote it really late 1 night strumming some chords while I was waiting for some files to upload that I was sending to him for mixing. Very occasionally you pick up a guitar and a whole song comes out completely intact, words and everything - a lot like "The Sometimes Song" that I wrote for The Wheelies, so the championship is an unsubtle nod towards that. Information technology's substantially well-nigh a relationship breakdown, or the strains of long-term relationships, so I'm hoping that somewhere there'south going to be somebody who hears this and knows exactly what I'1000 singing about. I recorded it all in 1 takes the following twenty-four hour period before shipping information technology off and for a long fourth dimension it hung effectually the project like a weird picayune rain cloud of unfinished business organisation. Irrespective of how Kris feels nearly the atmospheric guitar parts he added to complete it, I really dearest information technology and think it makes the vocal, similar what he'south done carries the melody and lets the vocal simply be what information technology is. At times it sounds spookily lo-fi orchestral and that small guitar line in the middle of the song is one of my favourite musical melodies on the whole project.

Kris: I've begun to come up around on this song. I've been in so many bands with really artistic guitar players, and so I guess what I come up with based on that example. To my ears it sounds like a terrible attempt at mimicry. It is a good song, but in the hands of a competent melodic guitar player it could've been peachy. This, along with Blood Music and Oh No, was in a batch of intensely personal songs Smally was shipping me at the time, then much and then that it felt similar a sin to change any of it.

Smally: Just to clarify about the "intensely personal" function. The reality is far from this "we used to be friends/ but sometimes information technology ends" - every relationship has its highs and lows and mine is no exception. In that location are elements of fantasize license in pretty much every song I ever write, some are consummate daydreams, others (like this) grow from the basis but are very caught upwards in the moment and even so have a whole lot of heaven in them. Music has a lot of different functions, but for me the most important is using it as a tool for communicating something. Going dorsum to something Kerouac wrote about attempting to externalise these feelings for the sake of getting to know each other is that if we didn't do information technology, information technology would be "a travesty turned on ourselves". So that was the thinking behind it - write something that other people might possibly chronicle to. Walt Whitman told me when I was about xviii to "Delve! Mould! Pile the words of the earth! Work on historic period after historic period, nothing is to be lost…"

Kris: I should clarify as well. I use 'personal' in that the song describes some fragile emotions, and the detail diction used to express those emotions was very profound. I saw a rewrite as potentially damaging, and chose not to fiddle.

12 Blood Music

Smally: Like a lot of the songs, "Blood Music" has been on a bit of journey to get to the concluding version. To begin with, information technology was one of Kris' sketches that he recorded at the outset. I actually loved the verse melodies and wrote some words, and a chorus and an outro for information technology originally called "Blood Music", just and then later inverse to "The Final Kiss" from the subject field matter of the song. Over the course of time two versions of the song emerged - one a carol called "The Last Kiss" with my music, vocals and words, and the other was this much more guitar-driven version called "Claret Music" based around the new structure I'd written with Kris' singing, words and music. He seemed to think that it was a tough telephone call between the two for which should proceed the record, simply for me information technology was a no-brainer - once more, lyrically this is at a whole other level and obviously struck a chord with the whole Don Quixote-Daydream theme. Ane of the last contributions I made to the record was to endeavour to write some keyboard tracks for "Blood Music" and spent 3 long nights at it, tearing what little hair I've got out trying to discover sounds and melodies that would fit. In the end I said to myself "fuck it" and sent Kris everything I'd attempted (some twelve tracks of sprawling piano, multi-delayed glockenspiel and so and and then on) and let him figure out how to put it all together. Which miraculously he managed.

Kris: Probably the well-nigh collaborative vocal on the record. It bounced back and forth so much and evolved so dramatically that it virtually became a dare to twist information technology a little more than each time it showed up in the inbox. Smally's original lyric gear up was really intense and personal. I was worried about compromising the gravity of information technology. When I rewrote his version, I was fully prepared to scrap it completely. Granted, I did sweeten the pot with the estimation of the Quixote story; intimacy is difficult to compete with. And the fucking keys…he sends a link saying he had a few pianoforte tracks, twelve or then, and that I could utilize whatever I wanted. I was thinking that information technology was twelve footling spots that laid over each other, no huge deal. I open up it and its twelve four minute piano tracks. I had to walk away from this one for a few days simply to wrap my caput around twelve unique piano melodies and how it was at all possible to make them piece of work. All of them. I think considering he had gone to such an unfathomable length, I felt obligated to justify the effort. And I wanted to run into if it could be done. I think I cut and pasted on this song for all of eight hours.

Smally: Haha - yeah those keyboard tracks. That was painful. Annihilation longer than five minutes sitting at a piano and non managing to come up with a melody and I showtime to get very frustrated. Ordinarily I'll just printing some keys and something happens but with "Claret Music" I pressed a whole load of keys and a whole load of happenings never really happened at all. Cistron into that the fact I really wanted to exercise a skilful job because I loved the song so much… oh man, it was a nightmare. But all'southward well that end's well. I can't even imagine how vicious information technology must have been unpicking all those knots of melodies I'd been tying. Just to clarify again - "The Terminal Kiss" was not a personal song at all. I drew on elements of a break-upwards a long time ago, but by and large near all of it is fictional with the exception of "some story continuing on some stairwell". I hated the lyrics of that one, so the Don Quixote reworking was like the original daydreamer charging in at the last minute with a chamber pot on his head to salve the day.

13 Pepperland

Smally: I thought I had an hour to write and record a song 1 sunny Sunday afternoon, but the business firm was invaded some 40 minutes earlier than anticipated (every bit you will hear). Rather than sink into a songwriters sulk, I battled on regardless never really thinking that this would be something useable on the finished record (hence why it sounds then ragged), but when I mixed it down the end of the song somehow seemed as plumbing fixtures every bit any manner to finish the record. To be honest I think Kris has indulged me by putting this runway on hither, particularly as all of the original tracks were lost in a estimator meltdown and so information technology's a cruel Smally-mix every bit opposed to a shiny Warchalking-mix. But in a way I'one thousand glad we used it every bit Smally Jr has been something of an invisible and occasionally audible part of the Tigermouse songwriting procedure - one of the reasons behind me writing "The Apple Bites Dorsum" (Seed), beingness with me when I wrote "679″ and naming it, and he too named this 1 too. Immediately after putting the mic down he pulled on his plastic rollerskates and shouted "Off to Pepperland!" I thought this was a funny little mix of Peter Pan's "Neverland" and The Beatles "Sgt Pepper", and somehow seemed like an apt name for the mythical country we'd been singing about. Hence as well the DG5 embrace with the flag that has the eye-finger, a symbol we're besides using for The Daydream Collective - designed by a friend of Kris' at our request - that flag (at least in my caput) is the flag of Pepperland, and why I tin can't help just grin when I sing "tomaytoes" on Country. For a few minutes I considered proposing that we call the album "Copse Volition Whisper To The Sun And His Face Will Shine On The Children Who Play In The Places Only They Know Exist" after a line from this song. In hindsight I'g glad I didn't.

Kris: TWWTTS&HFWSOTCWPITPOTKE would've been the well-nigh advanced album championship out of the many we had proposed. Spirits were definitely down on this vocal towards the end. Every bit the only song I didn't accept individual tracks to, we had been saddled with the demo version to overdub and massage equally much a possible. It still sounded markedly dissimilar, no thing what was done. Smally's computer had taken a dive over the summer, then I was nether the assumption that the originals were gone, and we had discussed pushing it as far to the cease as possible as a bonus runway. Then, through some feat of providence, the original tracks turn up, Smally puts some finishing vocals on it, and all of a sudden its one of the coolest spots on the whole matter. What started every bit the last song because information technology never got off the basis became the terminal vocal considering information technology was a great closer.

Smally: I'chiliad glad I plant the tracks and Kris could remix it as the version we were going to employ only didn't sound quite and then. Every computer I've ever owned has let me down at some point, mainly nether the weight of the DG music and songs I tape, so when it started to meltdown, I saved just the stuff that was outstanding (I retrieve at the time this was "Pepperland" and "Pavement") - then when I went back to retrieve them all the individual tracks were scattered all over the PC and had to exist found and reordered. I'chiliad pleased with the finished thing because it was melodically improvised and the words were written in nearly 2 minutes. I added the "Love/beloved/love" parts as a throwback to "The Somewhere Vocal", which itself was a throwback to "Ringlet It Up" on the outset Kaleidonauts tape, which in turn was ripped directly from The Beatles obviously. That one'southward deliberate, like a nod in the management of songwriting masters. OK, I'll get out it at that, I'thousand away to go rollerskating on the pavement.