So this week I wanted to do something a tiny bit different on the blog. This week I'm going thru each track on W Sides and discussing the origins of each track, as well as the album as a whole. Is it because it's Sunday and I haven't listened to any new music this week? maybe, but I think this is also a good use of my time.
So I'll start with the cover. The name "W Sides" was inspired by the gorillaz albums D Sides and G Sides, with the "W" in this case is something that's still technically classified. The cover art itself is basically a collage of nearly everything we've wrote songs about- can you name them all? But for seriously, even people in the band have had to ask me what some of them mean, which is pretty funny.
Lockdown (intro)
So this served pretty nicely as an intro. It was kind of stolen from a project for a "lockdown album" that didnt materialise, but it sits nicely here. It kind of harkens back to the earliest tunes in the band which is nice.
Wash your hands!
This is a short little rap song Reuben wrote and i did the production on, I fairly sure only a couple weeks after the initial "3 weeks to slow the spread" (lol) and it got pretty positive reactions on twitter, but then just sat in my hard drive for a while.
Blood Pipe
This is kind of the first "real" song on the album, the phrase "blood pipe" is something I had wrote in my phone's notes for a while, and I eventually wrote the words and music, then the produced version. I did consider just having an acoustic guitar and drums, but I liked this version better.
9/4
Kind of another gorillaz reference- even tho slightly unintentionally. I wanted to make a song in 9/4 because I wanted to see what it would sound like, and this is what it sounded like. The vocal line was sampled from Timer Killer as I'm sure most of you know, and the sound effects just felt necessary. "Ruh Roh" is something I say alot in real life as well.
Brexit
The backing track was kind of a thing I had half made on my hard drive for a while, it didn't real fit the tone of the songs on TheRectory so i used it here. I think the vocal lines are from when we were maybe 14?
I'm Poo
This song is fucking old- I completely forgot about it until I went to update my soundcloud account and found it just sitting there. Apparently I initially made it in September of 2019, meaning it predates the majority of staggy tunes. The weird electronics bit at the end is something I'm still kind of proud of too.
Space lesbians
Not a lot to this one... I thought it would be funny to have a song on the album called "Space Lesbians" and so there is.
Quacks on quacks 2.0
Quacks on quacks is pretty much the worst song off 60,00 miles, and I'm not saying this one is better but it is funny.
Peppers, milk and cocaine
Someone on twitter said i should make a song with this name so I did. It's kind of a meme in the David Bowie fanbase, so I drew on his jazz-ier influences for the backing track. I can't say I completely agree with Reuben's pepper opinions, but I was pretty vague with the guidelines. Whatever.
Ballad for a dead man, part 1
I think this was going to be one of my contributions to the "lockdown album". I think this is the less good of the 2 Ballad songs, but it's ok. Who's it about? I'm not telling you. Figure it out.
Weed Smoking song
Another tune for the lockdown album, I'm not quite sure why or when I wrote this song, but it's in my first notebook of songs so it must be pretty old. I think it's a nice tune.
I took a shit (live)
Taken from our atrocious live set on new years 2019-20, This was Kai's idea, so direct all anger to him. Thanks.
60k medley
This was just a little wotsit we had lying around after the 60,000 miles sessions. This took quite a few takes if I remember rightly. I still kind of love how the riff sounds with the reverb in that space at the end.
And then the whole world went away (Acoustic)
I sort of found myself playing this tune to myself alot on the acoustic guitar, so I wanted to put it on the album. I think in terms of simple songwriting it's one of the best tunes I've written. I think I put this in the bandcamp description, but I wanted to do a bunch of acoustic guitar versions of staggy songs as an EP, and that kind of wound up being this.
Ballad for a dead man, part 3
The third part of the trilogy felt like a good closer for the album, so I put it at the end. I remember this song took ages to write, I'm talking multiple months between verses being written, but it's definitely top 3 songs I've wrote, staggy or otherwise.
So yeh, that's the whole album. If you've still got questions, you know where to find me. But I think I covered just about everything there is to cover. Real review next week, I promise!
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