Might have heard
Tom: Ever recorded a song which you didn’t write? I don’t mean this song is a cover of some else’s song. It is 100 % percent us but maybe only 10% me. Read on to unravel the mysterious origins of this track.
The song started life as a completely different track. I don't even recall the original name: it must've been something that I sent to Andrew, probably an old Garageband file. He can probably chip in here with the name of the old song. Found it. It was called “I might play synths”.
Andy: Nah Tom, ‘Kurtvile’ was the original song, ‘I might play synths’ was a later version you improvised over. The original Kurtvile was a two part jam. One part ended up as our song Inflatable Lawns the other part ended up as this song - but the journey wasn't quite as simple as that.
Tom: The lyrics remind me on an old song of ours called “it's in your head” - a collection of memories and without them we're just an empty shell. The lyrics included “Dreams and schemes, imaginary beings they're all in your head. Times tables and old Fables they're all in your head” and while we really liked them, musically the song never got off the ground. Have a listen: "in your head”.
Arch and Andrew really took the lead on this new track, and imagine my surprise when my melodies and lyrics were sent back to me with a new musical bed underneath after rebuilding the entire thing and only keeping parts of the melody. Notice dear readers that there is some hard applied auto-tune on this, particularly at the end of the track. (Look out T-Pain. Who incidentally released his own karaoke microphone.)
So you might consider the song as a remix of a song we never released. Eventually I'll be recording lyrics/vocals for the others to produce songs independently, by chopping up and recombining old vocal takes.
Andy: Initially I’d mined the original Kurtvile track for the vocals and guitars and then rearranged into a pretty straight pop song structure - with a vocal breakdown acting as the bridge. When I played it to Arch though, he was ‘um, Andrew, we already did this song - it’s Inflatable Lawns!’.
Arch’s actually studied music theory so as much as I argued that the vocals, drums, arrangement etc were different he was adamant the chords were the same so it was the same song and we should just move on to other material... Thus ensued a bit of polite debate about what makes a song!
Anyway, in the end, as we committed to doing a full length album this came back as something we had on the pile. Arch agreed it had potential but only with a rewrite on new chords. So he ended up totally changing the underlying melodies and chords and only kept the vocals and arrangement.
I get why Tom has this sense of dislocation from the song - sure it’s him singing but he was singing over something totally different to what he is now. And some of it was never sung that way.
The chorus lyric was originally “I’ve been wanting to’ repeated twice. I grafted the ‘you’ into the second phrase to make it “I’ve been wanting to, I’ve been want you to” (is it to or too?). Fun fact. I sing backing vocals on this track in to outro - only song on the album.
Side Bar - Microphone talk
Tom: Introducing the main mic on the album - a Shure sm58. I picked this bad boy up from a local camera shop for 15 pounds. Which is a steal as they retail for 99 pounds and closer to $230 NZ dollars at the Rockshop NZ!!! Outrageous markup!! It is a real Shure, not a copy. Lots of copies out there folks so do your homework first. Even has original packaging and soft case. Score!!
It is a cardioid dynamic mic which is mainly used for live performance. I do also own a MXL 990 condenser mic but I prefer the SM58 in my non-acoustically treated bedroom studio. It doesn’t pick up too much of the room’s natural reverberation. The room is not ideal as it is square, boxy, high ceiling and contains lots of reflective surfaces. I usually build myself a makeshift vocal booth out of a clothes rack, duvets, blankets etc.
