Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

I try to buy a new album release every week. Some weeks it doesn’t happen simply because there’s nothing new that interests me, but some weeks when that happens, I just plump for something anyway. Some times it’s because I like the cover art, or I’m intrigued by that little write-up that Fopp do beside the new releases, or some times it’s because I’ve heard of the band at some stage, maybe years ago in some magazine review that I can barely recall, or maybe plastered all over advertising posters in the underground.

I’ve discovered some good albums this way (Twin Atlantic – Free) and I’ve also come across some stinkers (The Blackout – Hope). But either way, I enjoy finding new bands and hunting down new music. In a way I prefer doing this in physical, actual, 3-dimensional record stores (they still exist, just about), possibly because the sheer choice and volume of new music on the internet is impossible to even comprehend.

But regardless, the internet is the way to find, listen to and share new music for this and all foreseeable generations, and that’s the way it is. How you choose to find the new music you listen to is down to you. But increasingly in this day and age it’s on the taste-making music blogs (of which there are hundreds) that hold massive sway over which of the ‘hot’ new bands you’ll be gushing over on your Facebook wall. The debates rage across the hipster, scencster, whatever-er blogs and forums that position themselves at the bleeding edge of all that is new and worthwhile in music, and I tend to stay firmly out of it, occasionally looking on from afar like a rubbernecker on the far side of the road to a 10-car pile up, but never getting out to go examine the gory details. And I’m completely happy with that. I’m set in my ways.

So this brings me onto Lana Del Rey. I’m going to assume that you, dear reader, are aware of Lana Del Rey, and if not, here’s a link to her breakout, viral video hit from 2011, Video Games.

A nice song. So nice in fact that the Guardian declared it their song of the 2011, a perfectly understandable choice, and who am I to judge? You should hear some of the shit that made my list.

So anyway, I was mostly oblivious to Ms Del Rey and her viral hit. I say ‘mostly’ because I noticed the name on the Guardian list, but like most of what their music section prints, I took little notice of it. I caught little flashes of her name appearing on various Twitter streams, but again, paid no heed to those either. Who listen to anyone on Twitter??…

Then the posters for her debut album started appearing – everywhere. Now usually I would ignore any new album that’s thrust this aggressively down my throat by major record labels, especially if they are by a new female vocalist complete with a run down of hyberbolic press review snippets declaring them to be the new, new, new, new,new (ad nauseum) Voice of the Year!!!!. see Adele, Florence + The Machine, Little Bird, etc etc.

But I was feeling adventurous, fancied trying something a little different to what I would naturally go for, and I quite liked the album title. I’d had a quick Spotify listen to the 4 songs they made available before the album release and thought they sounded interesting enough. She had quite a timeless, deep, sultry voice at times, one that has a vintage crooning quality to it. Some of the tracks had an almost trip hop feel to them, and for the most part, I thought it was pretty good. So on New Album Monday, I picked it up in Fopp for 10 of my finest pounds.

I’ve listened to it a few times and it’s not bad, if not completely my cup of tea. It has some great songs, some lovely moments, some lush and sophisticated string arrangements, some of those Portishead-trip hop touches I like, and a subject matter that, while I can’t neccesarily relate to wholeheartedly, is painted in vivid and compelling enough strokes to draw me in. It also has some clunkers on there. All in all, it probably wont feature in my favouirtes of the year come December time, but still, I don’t regret buying it, and I consider that a success.

But it was only after all this did I pick up on the massive internet furore around this girl, and this is what has compelled me to write this rambling post.

She is lambasted, quite viciously by an online music press/blog/mob that once held her aloft as their new darling. Her crime? She used to have a different stage name and a different image, and a failed first album. Lana Del Rey is a reinvention and thus fake, manufactured, ‘not indie’, and all the rest of that bollocks. The obvious idiocy of discrediting a pop album due to a disingenuous claim to indie authenticity is there for all right-minded individuals to see, and it’s really too tedious to go into.

But what bugs me so much is this whole online culture that perpetuates this nonsense, this music blog/tastemaker/entertainment news cyclone of bullshit that must comment and judge on absolutely everything in music, apart from of course, the music itself.

As a completely failed and unsuccessful musican that continues to make music, (yes that probably makes me somewhat bitter, but I digress) it is so depressing to see any new artist achieve even a modicum of success, only to get hauled over the coals for something that is a million miles away from what actually matters – ie. what the fucking song sounds like.

I don’t give a shit who you are, what your name is, or how many botox lip injections you’ve had, if I like your song, if it’s a good song, everything else is completely irrelevant. Obviously there are caveats to this, Joseph Fritzl could write the catchiest pop song of all time, and I almost certainly wouldnt buy it, but hopefully you get my point.

As if it wasn’t hard enough for new musicians in the internet age, when you are lost amongst literally millions of bands competing for the same bandwidth, you now have a ready-made, judge, jury and executioner in the form of all these music blogs and commentators waiting to discredit you for some bullshit reason that doesn’t actually change how your album sounds.

Is this some underhand way of providing a filter for people to decide what to buy? When the internet music fan is searching for the next album to steal from a torrent site, how do they know which of the millions of albums to get? You can’t download them all after all, you can’t listen to everything and whittle them down to what you actually like. So what do you do? Go to the indie blogs, full of idiots having variations of the following exchange:  ”Hey, all this shit sounds the same”, “yeah, but this dude has tattoos that he got when he was 11, he’s the real deal, let’s push him over that dude with the barely dried ink on his arm”, “sweet”.

What makes it even more frustrating is that you can sample everything now before you buy it, or even if you don’t buy it. The internet allows you to listen to pretty much anything via Spotify, Grooveshark and Youtube et al, and setting aside my personal gripes with those services for one second, that’s a great thing! Why? Because you can decide for yourself! It’s there! Listen to it!

Do you like it? “Yes” Then who cares what anyone else says.

Do you like it? “No” Then who cares what anyone else says.

I know I’m stating the obvious here, but I really was completely taken aback by the whole deluge of opinion around this Del Rey lady and her history, and even by the histrionic vocabularly used to spew their rhetoric across the soiled music pages of the blogosphere.  It saddens and amazes me that people who claim to love music can be so knuckledraggingly thick about this stuff.

Musicians who write good songs, sing good songs, or perform good songs should be supported (if you agree with the ‘good’ part).  If you don’t like who they were a year ago in a past life, just go and go listen to something else, it’s not like there’s a lack of alternatives.

Anyway, rant over. I am aware of the irony in me writing this and thus making myself part of the stinky cloud of keyboard-opinion blustering around Lana Del Rey as well, but oh well, I at least hope there’s a sliver of sense in there somewhere. It’s always about the song. Nothing else.

Next post will be a cheery new Down In Autumn music update as usual no doubt, so do check back.

Til then.

Blog music: I wrote this post listening to Green Day’s Insomniac album

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Time for the first full update of 2012..

There’s a few things to address in this post, but first off, following its ‘release’ in December, I’ve now added the latest album, Hesitance, to this site. It’s now available to download from the discography section, and you can get there by clicking this handy link right here. Or if you want, you can download the album, for free, by right-clicking and saving the album cover or this link. There’s a few details about the album in the previous post on this site, so you can check that out if you want a bit more info on the album and its production.

So there’s a few things I have in the pipeline for the upcoming weeks and months. Firstly, you may or may not have noticed the new design of this site. I like it when bands reimagine their website with every new release, and I’d love to do the same, but lack of time and creativity usually gets in the way and I tend to get very lazy with the webpage layout. But I found a bit of time to tinker with the layout. The old black and red design was growing old to me and I want something a little more bright, although that’s ‘bright’ in purely relative terms..

In terms of new music, there’s currently a demo of an old song streaming on the Facebook Page for Boys From County Hell, which is a short film about vampires in rural Ireland by a good friend of mine; Chris Baugh. The song is called When I’m Dead and I wrote it after reading an early draft of the film script a few years ago now. The song was never finished how I wanted it and the version that’s available was only really intended as a present to my friend Chris. The plan at the miniute is to complete the song and put it out in conjunction with the final film, maybe in the springtime. Of course it depends on how much people like the demo version. I might just have to leave it as it is..  You can check it out and have a listen here.

The whole ‘song-for-horror-movie’ thing is not that far removed from what I’m planning as my next main project for this year. After the slog of 2011 and really struggling with the last album in pretty much all aspects of its production, it feels time for a bit of a change. I’m so used to working in a certain way for so long, repeating the same routines for creating and producing music, that I feel a bit jaded by it. It becomes a bit too comfortable to fall back on the usual practices and proceedures and I’m thinking about snapping out of that cycle and challenging myself a little bit. So I still hope to stick to my self-imposed deadline of an album every year, but I have a different type of album in mind this time. I shouldnt commit anything more to type, as no doubt I will fail miserably in my endeavours, much like the instrumental album I’ve been meaning to finish for nearly 5 years now, but it will definitely be more story based in its approach, and taking inspiration from places I don’t usually seek it.

In the meantime I am planning to put out a short 3-song ep of covers that I recorded around the Christmas holidays. I spent 2 full weeks at home back in Ireland this year, and planned to spend a sizable chunk of that time playing music with my youngest brother Niall like we used to back in the day. We ended up playing a lot, but the whole recording thing seemed too much like hardwork for the most part. In the end, I had one day left at home and we decided to see what we could get done in the space of an afternoon. So there’s currently a scrappily recorded framework of two songs on my laptop that we recorded in the space of an afternoon/evening. The idea was to do something much more collaborative than I usually do, and we split the playing and performing mostly down the middle, both singing vocals, both playing drums, guitars etc. I need to now go and mix them and add a few bits here and there, which may be tricky as I think the piano is possibly out of tune.. On top of that, there’s another simple little cover tune that I’m waiting to get additional vocals on from Ghostlight’s very own Al White. So all in all, hopefully those 3 songs will be available sometime in late February.

Then of course there’s the issue of live shows. With a lot of downtime from Ghostlight proceedings the last few months, the itch to get back on a stage is niggling me consistently and it may be time to get my acoustic guitar restrung and hit a few pokey clubs around dingy London backstreets to sit on a stool in the corner and play these misersable songs to strangers. My preference for playing with a full band is even further away in coming to fruition so I may have to bite the bullet and go solo. I’m a world champion procrastinator though, so any words, emails, tweets, comments or text messages of ‘boot-up-the-arse’ encouragement would be very welcome.

Any developments on any front will be reported here, and in the mean time, you’ll get occasional musings from me on the Tumblr page, plentiful moaning on my Twitter page, and the occasional tasty morsel on my Facebook page. Check back soon for more updates, oh, and if you haven’t already, go download my new album, it’s free! And you may find the odd bar of music in it that you might actually quite like. Stranger things have happened..

Thanks for reading,

Thomas

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Click on the image to get the album for free

So finally, after months and months of deliberating, and faffing about, and predicting its release; I’ve finally finished the new album. I’ve been pushing hard to try and make my yearly deadline, as for the first time in years I haven’t managed to put up an albums’ worth of songs yet this year. So here, with 2 weeks to spare, is album number 6: Hesitance.

I’m doing things slightly different this time round, the album won’t be available from this site, not just yet anyway, for now you will be able to download it from this link. As always it can be downloaded completely for free, although this time there is the option to pay as much, or as little as you want to for it, kinda like Radiohead did a few years ago, only I’m neither as good, nor rich as them. So in other words – it’s free. Oh and it can also be listened to and downloaded from Facebook by clicking here.

I always say that I’m not going to talk/write too much about a new release and then more often than not I invariably end up doing so, but I will do my best to keep this brief..

As to why the whole thing has taken so long, I can’t really pinpoint it other than for the first time, real-life work really got in the way. It’s been very difficult to try and stay creative at the end of long days, and with so little spare free time, the tendency is to spend any I do get, basically sitting around and doing nothing. I can actually get quite disheartened thinking of all the many half-started songs that could maybe have come to something in the last year had I not given up after a few minutes due to tiredness and general malaise. But yet, some still managed to make it through, fighting against my lethargy, and made it to become fully finished, recorded songs. And here are 11 of them.

The songs on this new album range a span of about 14 months, all were recorded in my room in South London and in that time I broke a laptop, along with my long term audio interface, a 2^nd audio interface, several guitar strings, lost most of my audio software and almost completely gave up many, many times.

As for the theme, well the title song was probably the first one written, and I always liked that as an album title, so the rest of the songs kind of fit into that theme and what it conjures up in my head. It’s about the state of being hesitant in general, or ‘in-between’, holding back, caught in a spiral of indecisiveness. It’s about hesitance in the sense of being at a stand still, unsure of where to go next, and afraid of making a choice that changes too much. It’s about the good and the bad, the past and the future, the pros and the cons…. or something along those lines anyway. The main thing is that I always try to make sure that the songs all fit stylistically and thematically together, and I think they more or less do. It’s easily the most stripped-back of all the Down In Autumn albums when it comes to production, and the songs were kept pretty simple both in terms of the arrangement and the production, hopefully it works.

And I’ll leave it there. Another one down. There’s another EP I currently have in mind that may surface early next year, and beyond that, who knows? I’d be ‘hesitant’ to presume anything beyond that..

Thanks for listening

Thomas

Today is the anniversary of the passing of the late, great Elliott Smith. Anyone who is reading this and has listened to any of the music I’ve ever recorded will probably be able to guess that he was, and is, a huge inspiration for me and the music I make. I was quite a late-comer to Elliott Smith’s music, I was aware of him when he was alive, but ignored him mainly due to the fact that I didn’t then, and don’t even really now, like acoustic singer-songwriters, my loss obviously. And I’m also aware of the irony of this statement given the ‘genre’ of music you’ll find on this site… I think anyone who knows me will know that I’m really just a frustrated punk/’emo’/metal guitar player at heart, channeled through an acoustic guitar and a small bedroom.

Anyway, no doubt today the web and blogosphere will be awash with Elliott tributes, from fans and friends alike, and they’ll do a much better job than I probably could, so instead of going on at length about the man himself, I’m going to go on at length about my top 5 favourite Elliott Smith songs as my own little tribute to my all-time favourite male recording artist, a hero of mine, and someone I genuinely find great inspiration from so often. Rest in peace Elliott Smith.

5. Going Nowhere

“The clock moved a quarter of a turn,
The time it took her cigarette to burn,
She said you got a lot of things to learn.
Going nowhere.”

This is a song that was only released posthumously on the excellent New Moon double disc set. The album was made up of songs mainly from the Elliott Smith and Either/Or sessions. This is a song that didn’t immediately stand out for me from that collection, but came to mean a lot. When a song can be there to help you out when there’s nothing else that can, it becomes something very special. The story behind my affinity with this song could take up an entire blog article by itself, but suffice to say, I once listened to this song numerous times on repeat one night many years ago, wandering completely directionless through north London. Yes, it’s a pretty downbeat song, Elliott Smith can write ‘sad’ as well as any other artist I know, and sometimes it’s exactly what you need. This is a song I don’t listen to all that often for it’s specific attachment to a time and place; I pretty much have to stop whatever I’m doing if it ever comes on, but it’s always there when I need it, and for that I keep it very close.

4. Condor Avenue

“Sick shouting like you hear at the fairground,
Now i’m picking up to put away anything of yours that’s still around,
i don’t know what to do with your clothes or your letters
it’ll make a whisper out of you”

This is a song from Roman Candle, Elliott’s first solo release. I was never the biggest fan of that album, but this song became one of my most played Elliott songs, in fact I think it currently is the most played of his on my iPod. It’s a slightly strange, sad, dark little acoustic track that tells a story, at least that’s my interpretation of it anyway. It seems to be about a couple’s argument that results in one leaving, jumping in a car and leaving, then going onto be in a fatal car accident. The song is told from the point of view of the man stuck back in the apartment, reeling from the argument with anger and bitterness, oblivious to the news of the accident that will come later. It conjures a eerie atmosphere of regret and loss, yet anger and stubbornness, it’s a mix that makes it captivating to listen to every time I hear it. I find this a really powerful song.

3. Color Bars

“Everyone wants me to ride into the sun,
But I ain’t gonna go down,
Laying low again, high on the sound”

The first Elliot Smith song I ever properly listened to, and I was hooked. I had gotten a copy of Figure 8 and was determined to see what all the indie fuss about Elliott Smith was, I picked this song to listen to first as it was one of the shortest songs on the record. It’s quite an odd song structurally, with a weird combination of music and lyrics. Lyrically it tows a similar line to a lot of Elliott’s work; obviously drug-inspired, dreamlike imagery, almost psychedelic at times, with military references. Musically it’s fantastic; the piano plinking away almost jauntily at the beginning before taking a darker turn half way through with low cello notes swaying into the mix, and there’s definitely tension there from the beginning, hiding in the background waiting to come out. The late string surge that follows help lend the song it’s amost triumphant crescendo. To me, the whole thing sounds like a defiant but brittle confidence, lost on a drug high, hanging by a thread on the verge of complete collapse. It’s beautiful.

2. Waltz #2 (XO)

“I’m never gonna know you now,
But I’m gonna love you anyhow.”

Starting as a lot of his songs did, with a strummed minor chord on acoustic guitar, I always liked the general air of wistful melancholy draped around this almost perky waltz, and the chord progressions are pure Elliott.  This was a song I recognised when I furst heard it; it sounded instantly familiar yet I didn’t know why, like so many songs back then, I probably just heard it on MTV at some point. Various images are brought to mind throughout the song, and although Elliott has apparently hinted that this song is in some ways about his mother, I’ve always had my own interpretation of it. But it’s the hook of the chorus that makes the song and stands out to me now as it ever did, tying together broad visual suggestive verses with a strong lyrical couplet that sticks with me no matter how many times I hear the song.

1. Say Yes

“Cricket spin can’t come to rest, I’m damaged bad at best,
She’ll decide what she wants.
I’ll probably be the last to know, no one says until it shows,
See how it is, they want you or they don’t,
Say yes.”

This is one of my favourite songs in the world. It sums up the beautiful simplicity of what millions of songs attempt to say, to express, to make less complex, but few do so with the simple and perfect eloquence of this song. Of all Elliott’s many many songs, this always sounded to me as him at some of his most open, honest, and almost contented moments. Contented in the sense that so much of his music could be deemed ‘sad’, lyrically speaking anyway, this song almost has an air of acceptance. It’s still not exactly upbeat in the traditional sense, but it has a quiet hopeful yearning behind a pessimist’s usual outlook. Knowing that “situations get fucked up” but for the minute, you can take some hope and happiness in the small things, or at least by the clarity of knowing what you want, even if you won’t get it. There’s really not much to say about this song, it’s all right there in the lyrics, so I should stop writing and just let you get one with listening to it for yourself. Enjoy.

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Last week I picked up the new album by American pop-punk band Yellowcard, it’s got a great title, (When You’re Through Thinking, Say Yes) but isn’t exactly setting my world on fire. It’s ok, but they really do make the same album over and over again. Anyway, despite this repetition, I like it, it’s got some catchy songs, in a poppy, glossy American kinda way, and it more or less does what I expected it to do. Listening to it made me go back and listen to their earlier songs from previous albums. I always liked the song One Year, Six Months (see video audio clip), as with a lot of their songs, it’s about memories. They write a lot of songs from this lovesick melancholy perspective, misty-eyed and all ‘emo’ about days gone by and all the regrets that go with them. This is partly why I like them, it’s easily-digestible, yet sincere (enough) sentiment.

Yellowcard – One Year, Six Months

Anyway, it’s got me in that nostalgic frame of mind recently, more so than usual you could say, and with that in mind, I’m reminded of last Saturday evening and an Italian girl called Nikki.

I was in a bar in Hammersmith. We (the crowd of about 10 friends and family I was with) had made our way there after a long and hazy afternoon in a function room in Pimlico. It was a riverside bar and was in fairly boisterous mood in the aftermath of the massive party that had taken place there, hours previously during the big Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge. Caring not a single fleeting fig for the boat race, and a little unaware of the furore surrounding it, I was somewhat surprised by the scale of the party that was still in full swing. There was wall-to-wall people, beer spilt everywhere, a smouldering barbeque outside by the river and a long stretch of port-a-loos, none of which featured a light source, so they were somewhat…messy..

Anyway, it was fun. But to the point.

I found myself standing by the bar beginning to chat to a fiery young Italian lady who had just arrived. She was called Nikki. She was quite attractive, had long dark hair, thick-black glasses (but not the wanky ‘media-shoreditch’ kind), and deep, intense eyes that were almost black. She was quite drunk, and quite aggressive. She immediately reminded me of someone I used to know very well.

So we got chatting, and from the off it was really more an argument/screaming match than what you could legitimately refer to as a ‘conversation’. It began with her declaring her undying allegiance to West London football team QPR (she’s lived there for 3 years), my football allegiances were of little concern to her the moment she realised I wasn’t a QPR fan. From there we then went on to talk/argue about London, Italy, Ireland, politics, art and probably a lot inbetween. She seemed to object to pretty much everything I said, and wasn’t shy in showing it. She slammed her drink down on the bar several times, shoved me once or twice, I remember an awful lot of finger pointing and raised voices, and her general level of profanity was excessive, even to me. She was quite possibly the most objectionable, stubborn and obnoxiously volatile person I’ve ever met, and yet I enjoyed chatting to her. Despite the obvious mental problems, she had an unhinged passion that I find very hard to resist, she really gave a shit about what she was saying, and I have a respect for that I guess.

“This woman hates me so much. I’m starting to like her.” – George Costanza

I gave her as much shit as she gave me, and this seemed to earn her respect. Before long, she was all smiles, congratulating me, like I’d passed some sort of psycho test, and with that, she promptly turned her attention to another unsuspecting male victim at the bar. He didnt do so well with her sociapathic test process and once she punched him in the face, the bouncers moved in swiftly and removed her. Bye bye Nikki, you absolute nutter.

Anyway, the thing that occurred to me at the time, and what is left with me now, is just how much she reminded me of an old friend. She was like an evil caricature version of course, but her Mediterranean ferocity was familiar to me in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time, and it was strangely, perversely ‘comforting’. I know I probably sound as crazed as she undoubtedly was in saying that, but that half an hour was almost like getting reacquainted with a personality I’ve missed for many many years.

I spend so much time thinking about the past. I know you’re not meant to, but sometimes it always seems so important and vital to hold on to. It can turn the most mundane, unexpetced moment into something you maybe haven’t felt or thought about in years. It can make a half-hour chat with a violent nutjob a comforting nostaglia trip, it can make a song you listen to, allow you to relive a moment you may never feel again, and it can also ruin your day.

But what it never seems to do, at least for me, is make me appreciate what happens as it’s happening. I feel all the time like I already miss what has just happened. Like everything’s going so fast so quickly and changing the very moment it flies by, and I’m desperately trying to grab hold of it. I miss that conversation I had on Saturday night, because I still miss my old friend, I miss moments and feelings I had last year, last week, last night, I miss the excellent red curry I just ate (though I know I can repeat that exact experience tomorrow night if I choose, though I may try the green). and I miss being able to write a blog post that didn’t waffle on for way too many paragraphs. (That’s never happened).

But this is nothing new. A million bands have written a million songs about this very subject. I’m pretty sure I have as well at some point. This could be something that comes through on the next cd I make, the one I’m currently putting together piece by tiny piece. Whatever the songs are about, they will function as they always do, little 3-4 minute tributes to memories

And now I’ve gone and missed my bedtime.
Goodnight

Thomas

You should always put the most important information at the start so that people’s limited attention spans get what they need to know. So with that in mind, the other band I play in, Ghostlight, released our debut album last week. It’s called Somersaults and we need all the support we can get as an independent band. The album is something we’re all really proud of and I think you would like it, yes, that’s right, I’m saying that you will like it if you listen to it, that’s how confident I am about it. Listen to it and prove me wrong by following these links – Webstore, Amazon, iTunes.

So that’s the main plugging done. I can now move on to what I’m much more comfortable doing and that’s  rambling on at length about it.

We, as Ghostlight have lots of professional, official PR releases and biographies and stuff; that flowery gumph you see on every band’s MySpace/Facebook page, I even have them on my own pages, but this is my own account and biography of our band and our debut album. I guess I should include one of those disclaimer things you get on DVD commentaries about how the views expressed here are my views alone and do not necessarily reflect the view of Ghostlight the band, but that doesn’t really matter because so few people read this, and because I’m probably not going to say anything that controversial.

Anyway, Ghostlight began a few years ago. It began with me and my good friend Al White. I met Al in University in Farnham, Surrey in 2001. We both studied animation and Al was already writing and recording loads of songs in his spare time. We hung out a lot and would stay up late at nights playing music and once or twice did the odd gig for friends.

When we left Uni, we went into a recording studio in North London and recorded an album under the name SMDGE, it was a collection of songs that Al had written over the years and I played bass and electric guitar. It was engineered by a big audio-tech-nerd called Jason who put up with us for several weeks whilst we recorded what we thought would be the be all and end all of our recording careers. The album didn’t do anything, we released it on our own website, but it was never official.

We went back to record 3 extra songs a year or so later, Jason again engineered and he brought in his good friend Patrick to drum for us. It was a few months after this that we got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to tour with Al’s favourite band in the world Sparklehorse. The UK tour we supported them on is still probably the best week of my life and the story of that tour would fill a lengthy blog post all of it’s own. I might write that one day..

That was the beginning of Ghostlight. Jason and Pat came on full time shortly after that as we set about to record some new songs, with a new name, and a more focussed direction. The pursuit of making one big, proper, complete album would last for the new couple of years.

Al had written a whole bunch of songs, and the four of us began to play and rehearse regularly. We would hear Al’s demo, then the four of us would rip it apart and put it back together again, and the songs that would go on the album started to come together as whole pieces of the four of us, adding our own ideas and making something that would represent us as a collective.

The album was recorded mainly in 2 stints at Real World Studios a year apart. The days we spent there were amazing, an experience we are so lucky to have had, and we produced and recorded all the songs ourselves and continued to experiment and try any and everything we could to make the album exactly how we wanted it.

It was finished quite some time ago now, but its release has been delayed for reasons typical of the music industry we are all forced to be apart of.

We always get the same two names used when people talk about us; Snow Patrol and Coldplay. Such comparisons are natural and expected, though I’ve always found it interesting that I don’t actually like those bands, but I like us. The thing is, a lot of what’s popular in music is mostly based on trends. Coldplay are one of the biggest bands in the world but have a stigma attached to their image that says they’re a boring, bland band, and as such aren’t ‘cool’. And we all must constantly seek to be seen as ‘cool’ right?? Coldplay and Snow Patrol write good songs. Simple songs, that people like and relate to. A whole lot of people like them and their success isn’t a surprise. I’d like to think people could hear that there’s more going on in the record than lazy rip offs of ‘Cold Patrol’, we all in the band like such a wide variety of music, and to me there’s a lot of inspiration that’s gone into creating our album that comes from as diverse a collection of sources as electronica, to metal, to country and a whole bunch else.

So we are forever linked with Coldplay and Snow Patrol, and as such, we aren’t cool. But I believe in the album we made, and I believe that if the right amount of people heard it, a lot of them would like it. I know every band thinks this, so it’s hardly a revelation, but we face the same problem every one faces; people won’t listen.

If you do listen, hopefully you’ll hear something you like. It’s something I’m very proud of, and if it wasn’t for Ghostlight, this site and this Down In Autumn band of mine wouldn’t exist at all. Personally, my favourite tracks on the album are the final two songs. ‘Sway’ and ‘Primer’, songs that would never get released as a single, but songs I really believe in and enjoy. The thing I’m most happy about with it though, is the fact that I can listen to it, and hear all four of us contributing. If you like what you hear when you listen to Down In Autumn, then you will hear bits of it throughout our Ghostlight album.

Happy listening

Thomas

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No One Ever Knows – An Ep of Covers Vol.3 *Click here or on the image to download a zip file of the new cover songs ep*

Surely every band/musician plays cover songs? At one point or another it’s a staple of anyone who plays music.  From the first song you ever learn to play, the music that gets you to pick up an instrument in the first place so you can emulate your favourite songs and musicians. Even established bands will still play the odd cover, it’s a way of showing respect and tribute to the songs that inspire you, a way to treat your fans with taking something they already know, and putting a new twist on it.

For me, Metallica was the band that started playing music. If it wasn’t for them I would never have picked up a guitar, and it was their mammoth catalogue of riffs and solos that I spent hours obsessing over, learning as I went along, without even realising it. As yet, I’ve never covered a Metallica song, but I have no doubt I’ll attempt it some day.

So anyway, the point of this introduction is to ‘present’ the latest collection of cover songs I’ve recorded. It’s the third in what I guess you could call a series of Eps covering songs that I love for one reason or another. I try to do at least one a year. Some times when you go through a bit of a writer’s block, it’s nice to spend some time not having to worry about that, and record and experiment with songs you already know, it allows a certain level of freedom and fun that is sometimes missing when recording your own songs. Previously I’ve done an ep made up of covers all originally by female artists, and then a 2nd covers ep, that was a fairly random collection of songs. This new one is much the same..

The new ep is 6 songs plus 2 remixes. I’ll write a brief description of each as well as a link to hear the original (mostly YouTube videos), and you can also download the entire ep with front and back cover art from here, or on the discography page.

1. Last Night originally by Motion City Soundtrack (click here to listen to original)
The foundations for this cover were recorded back in 2009 and I was originally going to include this in the previous covers ep. So it sat unfinished on my hard drive for nearly a year before I rerecorded most of it and finished it off for this one. It’s quite different to the original version, which is faster and more upbeat sounding. The idea to cover it was when I was planning to do a covers ep of my favourite pop-punk bands.

2. Bloodied Up originally by Alkaline Trio (click here to listen to original)
One of my favourite bands in the world, I’ve been planning to cover an Alkaline Trio song for years., and for some reason, I cant quite explain, I always wanted to do this one, an album track from their 2001 album From Here to Infirmary. This is a fairly scrappy little cover, drums were recorded at home over Christmas, and the louder vocals were recorded late at night after an evening in the pub, so not the most polished of covers, but early Alkaline Trio always had that quality to them, so hopefully I get away with it..

3. Heart of Darkness originally by Sparklehorse (click here to listen to original)
I recorded this the day after Mark Linkous aka Sparklehorse committed suicide early last year. I had in my mind to cover Sparklehorse for a while, and I always loved this song. When I heard the news on a Sunday morning back in March, I was pretty shocked and saddened, so I spent an hour or so that afternoon recording this as a small tribute to an amazing artist.

4. The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows by Brand New (click here to listen to original)
I have been planning a Brand New cover for years, but I always wanted to do Seventy Times Seven from their debut. This cover came about from jamming this song with my brother Niall whenever I spend any time back in Ireland. This was all recorded over Christmas last month at home in Castlewellan. Niall plays the drums and sings the backing vocals, and I even managed to get my sister Catherine to contribute to the group vocals in the middle 8 and the end. All the vocals to this song were recorded on New Years Eve evening, yet sound remarkably sober, a fact I cant quite explain..

5. Goodnight Moon by Go Radio (click here to listen to original)
This is the odd one out on this ep. The other songs are generally by my favourite bands, whereas Go Radio are a band I only discovered last year, and only have one ep. However this song was one of my favourites from last year. The original is very much a big, glossy American emo pop song, and as such will be an acquired taste for many, so I wanted to try it a bit more stripped back and acoustic.

6. Call It Off by Tegan & Sara (click here to listen to original, *one of my fav music videos)
This cover was originally part of a ‘live’ session I recorded in my bedroom at Easter last year, you can hear the other tracks on my Soundcloud page. This was a little bonus cover, recorded in one take and tacked onto the end. It’s a very straightforward cover of what I think is a beautiful little song.

7. Friends by Les Sages (click here to listen to original)
This remix was part of a remix competition last summer. The prize was to feature as a bonus download on Les Sages’ album on Deep Elm records (of which I’m a bit of a fan boy), an amazing prize, but one I didn’t win. Oh well, I still love the band..

8. A Drowning by How To Destroy Angels (click here to listen to original)
Trent Reznor’s new band released this on a debut ep last year, and what with Trent Reznor being the top bloke he is, as with his Nine Inch Nails stuff, he made the song files available to download and remix. This was the one I attempted.

Spotify link - Best of 2010 – by Down In Autumn

A full update and blog post will be up shortly, but this is just a quick one to link to a Spotify playlist of some of my favourite songs from 2010 as it draws to a close.

This year has been massively transitional and a hell of a lot has happened, this is probably evident in the variation of the songs that feature on the playlist, from moody electronica to angry metal, quiet acoustic to upbeat punk, it’s actually been a really good year in terms of new music in my opinion. The yearly ‘Best Albums’ list will appear here shortly, complete the usual lengthy explanations of each choice, but that’s still a work in progress as we enter the final week of 2010, plenty of time to finish it though as this week is a quiet one at home. I may even spend some time working on a new covers Ep, hopefully to surface in early January…

Anyway, the Spotify link is at the top of this post, if you want it and the link doesn’t work, just drop me a line on Twitter or Facebook. And just for the hell of it, here’s a list my Top5 fav songs of 2010 in order..

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Do you ever really learn any lessons?

I find that no matter what, I consistently make the same mistakes. over and over again, year after year, month after month, day after day. Obviously we all take certain lessons from our actions on a day-to-day basis, we learn what works and what doesn’t. For instance I know that a cheeky 5 minute snooze past my alarm in the morning means I hit rush hour traffic and that can automatically add a nice 20 mins to half an hour to my bus journey to work. So I’ve learned not to take that cheeky 5 minute snooze. But that’s easy, I can control that, what isn’t so easy to control is how you are affected by the people and situations around you.

If you listen to any of the music on this site, you might make several assumptions about the author, (whether or not they’re accurate doesn’t really matter) one possible observation might be that there can often be themes of pessimism running through a lot of the songs. That’s one I’m willing to admit to. I think it’s certainly true of most people that the ‘darker’ part of life is often much more inspiring and conducive to creating. I guess this comes simply from the fact that people love to moan, more than they love to praise, and I’m no different. Pessimism leads to the misguided presumption that it can act as a defence mechanism for disappointment, and in theory I can understand that viewpoint. but it doesnt work, it never works, and this is a lesson I never seen to keep hold of. Disappointment is inevitable, and that’s fine. But when you try to prevent the worst from happening, you’re quite possibly fighting a  losing battle, things will work out how they work out, and people will do what people want to do. It’s both exciting and terrifying, chaotic yet consistent, frustrating and yet completely natural.

Things change, things fall apart, you want to try and stop this from happening, but you secretly know it’s impossible, but it never stops you trying. This is exhausting, and pointless. But you never learn that lesson.

Weezer – Why Bother?

New ‘Falls Apart Ep’ at Halloween….