Here Love Dies

It’s a year since I released Spirit Box! To celebrate, I’m putting this bonus track up on bandcamp until the end of November. This was previously only available on the CD version of the EP, along with another bonus track ‘Paper Scissors Stone’.

Here Love Dies is about nightmares. Of course.

It moves from sparse acoustic textures at the beginning to a big loud ending that includes some fantastic lead guitar playing from Gareth Cole.

Have a listen, and download it if you want to keep it because it’ll only be up for a couple of weeks.

Spirit Box Vlog episode 3

Repeats. Can’t stand ’em.

Here’s episode 3 of last year’s vlog series about Spirit Box.

I’m slightly mean about the movie version of Sweeney Todd in this. Sorry Johnny Dep fans …. are there any of those left? Surely not.

Anyway, this is about the second song on my latest EP. It gets a little bit nerdy. If you like chords and stuff you’ll like this. Possibly.

Here’s a link to the EP.

August and Whiteface Lyric Video

Clowns are definitely evil, and none more so than August and Whiteface. They are the anti-heroes of the third song from my EP Spirit Box. It’s a song I’ve had hanging around for ages, but only got round to recording last year. Its all pounding drums, twangy acoustic guitar and shouting crowds. ‘Let ’em swing!’, ‘Let ’em swing!’.

Songwriting Diary 3: Waylaid by a cold

A frustrated, I-know-the-laptop-is-reflecting-in-my-glasses-but-who-does-second-take-selfies selfie.

I’ve been stuck at home trying to shake off a cold. This is annoying and a waste of time.

Nevertheless, songwriting idea generation over the weekend was a success. I now have the following:

A rubbish, lazy attempt at something slow and psychedelic.

A manic riff in A minor and C minor that might kind of work.

A 12/8 melody that might make a good chorus.

An odd riff/verse/chorus song that’s somewhere between the middle of my song Three Rows of Teeth and Disco 2000 by Pulp. Sort of. But not.

So that’s not a bad start. Some, all, or none of these ideas may become finished songs at some point. Maybe.

Songwriting diary 2: First ideas

Today I hid myself away in the nightmare shed with a guitar and microphone and a notebook.

I set myself the task of coming up with some brand new song ideas from scratch. I wrote down a list of possible song ideas – a manic riff in Aminor and Cminor, a psychedelic soundscape etc – and just started playing.

I think it was a fruitful few hours. I’ve got some musical raw material that might make it all the way into a finished song.

Inspiration? There’s no such thing, there’s just hard work.

(Well, not that hard. But work. Well not work. Activity. Doing stuff. I did stuff.)