Brummie indie rockers The Twang became unlikely pop stars in 2007 when their debut LP Love It When I Feel Like This reached the dizzy heights of number three in the UK album charts. Fans have followed them around the country and beyond ever since.
We’ve not heard much from The Twang of late, and with good reason; the band has been busy recording their third studio album NEONTWANG at Rory Attwell’s Lightship 95 Studio in East London.
We caught up with the band for an exclusive track-by-track talk-through of the album in order to get a foretaste of the new material ahead of their visit to York for a gig at The Duchess on Tuesday, February 25th.
Over to The Twang…
City lights
“This one was written on guitar initially. We liked it but when we listened to it amongst the other songs it didn’t really fit. It didn’t help when every time we listened to it Saunders said it reminded him of the Hawk The Slayer theme tune.
“So we changed it a little adding a sub bass sound and some heavy strings. The lyrics are about a young man leaving the small town in which he grew up to avoid a life of poverty and violence.”
Larry Lizard
“This was a real rough recording that Jon had on his phone. Simmo was playing a piece on the guitar one day when Jon came out with the opening line ‘Larry lizard made a threat with the scissors and then went back to the party’.
“Rory changed this around a bit to get it to its final state.”
New Love
“Simmo wrote all the music to New Love at home (then called ‘My Love’) and sent it over to us.
“Phil had been working on an idea called ‘New Love’ so it seemed natural that the two ideas were married. It’s one of our favourite tunes on the album.”
The Wobble
“We kind of wrote this off the cuff. We didn’t know where it was going, we just wrote a musical part, put a vocal over it, wrote another part, put a vocal over it and then did it again.
“Because of how it was written it has quite a strange arrangement, which we really like. We used this song as a tester to see whether Rory was the man for the job. We love what he did with it.”
Sucker For The Sun
“Jon watched an interview of Johnny Marr where he’s walking round a record shop. He states how he likes buying records based purely on their cover.
“A few days later Jon bought a record based on the fact he liked the cover. He ended up borrowing the vocal melody from one of the songs on it and re working the words.
“The song sounds quite Sixties which is a place we rarely go with our music and contains a cracking guitar solo.”
Almost Anything
“This is quite a simple pop song really. The opening line is ‘I been thinking about a sandwich, not thinking about much while the sun’s out.’
“The idea was to try and say ‘I’m not worrying about life and death and the state of the world. I’m just thinking about now, today, the sunshine, and not much else.’”
Happy Families
“This song is just a made up description of the kind of family that most people have known or seen.”
Medicine
“This song came together real quick, we wrote it in an afternoon. It’s relatively new territory for us.
“It’s quite sparse but also quite epic. It’s dedicated to an old friend of ours.”
Step Away
“Jon read a quote by a writer named Ray Bradbury who died last year. He said: ‘Stand at the top of the cliff, jump off and build your wings on the way down.’
“This song is about facing your fears.”
Bigger Than You
“Phil and Simmo wrote and recorded this in one night. It was initially titled ‘The Sad Song’ but for obvious reasons was changed. We feel it’s caught something quite honest and innocent.”
Bywyd Da
“This is a cover of Inner City’s Good Life. We started playing around with the concept a while back and it sounded pretty good so we recorded it and it’s ended up on the record.
“It’s also a nod to Vibe Tribe’s remix of Good Life that sound-tracked many acid driven nights of our early years.”
- For more information and tickets for The Twang at The Duchess, York on Feb 25th, click here