Hello! Let us begin the 5pm listening session for Weird Country. I will press play any second but here's a photo of us escaping for sunlight during the sessions. L to R: Chrinz McCrory, Andrew Mac, Lewis Orr?, Jim Dubber, Sath Evans, Crick Argos

1. Karaoke ... this was the first song purposely written for the album. We had to get Seth to play the piano 'less well', like he was falling off the stool from being too fucked/too tired. That way. His natural instinct is to play thing very well

The sick on the stairs lyric is true. I'd been away from the city for a while working elsewhere and the night I came back @bethchalmers_ had a flat party for her birthday. And I believe it was her

I thought it would be funny to reference oatmilk?

2. Taking The Four ... this song is about a) waking up and being like "yeah man world is my oyster!" but also ruminating over every stupid thing you've ever done or said, or bad decision, or whatever

Really love those high pitched guitars in the chorus. That was a Chris McCrory job

3. Old Country ... I have been writing variations of this song for years, I found a few demos of it recently. It came together really well I think. Big mid-period REM influence on the guitars I reckon

This is based on my previous life as a journalist and real interviews I did with Italian immigrants and real stories they told about coming here to start a new life. The Mr Drummond writes.... is a real guy who wrote a letter to the Glasgow Herald bemoaning them

If anyone's interested I would recommend getting some of Joe Pieri's books on Scots-Italians. I used to work at the local newspaper in Perth and one of the old councillors (Joe Giacopazzi) let me come to his house, ask him questions, and then let me borrow the book. It was great

I don't think this song would exist without him? Thanks Joe. Pretty sure you are not following this thread but thank you anyway. And a big shout out to fish and chips / ice cream

4. The Puppeteer ... This song was given life by Andrew, who basically ran with the arrangement and exaggerated the baroque sorta thing. We both love Village Green by The Kinks. A big influence.

This is the most mean-spirited song on the record

I suppose it's about practising what you preach. The internet makes it very easy to preach. Life is hard

5. Merrie ... I started writing around this chord progression when I was in Halls of Residence in 2008. I reckon it was really, really bad

It is fun to sit on ideas though, sometimes for over 10 years. More slide guitar from Andrew Macpherson. I think this song owes everything to that, and also to @cooljinzo 's harmonies.

I think I brought it in with Guided By Voices in mind but we were actively pushing it towards 'The Cars doing country' in the studio

The lyrical content is quite stupid. Mary Green is a fake girlfriend we claimed Taylor had for a long time. She left him to join NASA. I wrote a song about her. I think it fits because the idea of the grass being greener is relevant, thematically anyway

6. Battlefield Boss Dream ... *16 year old boy voice* we were all very stoned when we tracked this

a lot of speeding up and down and accidentally standing on distortion pedals. this was tweaked quite substantially in post hahaha

We basically had a free night because we were ahead of schedule so I taught the guys the song. Andrew started making this mad moaning sound with a slide/volume pedal, Jamie and Lewis locked down a cool groove... it got to the point where it felt essential

I'm glad we kept it. Would have been really easy to have written it off

I've hinted that we had a very good time whilst making this album, there. We did. Great camaraderie. We spent a lot of time watching @timheidecker's On Cinema between takes, goofing around. Particularly the Oscar Medley and Tom Cruise Jr returns bits

My drink of choice was some white wine from Sainsburys that I don't think I could even look at ever again

7. Monument ... This one turned out way better than I thought it would. Really stomps

Had a day off on the first Monday and Chris went to the protests the Houses of Parliament and some fella was giving him a hard time being like "off and get a job you hippie shit". Which I thought was funny as I reckon Chris does better than most of us.

I really hadn't finished writing the words for it before we went down, it's got a lot of swagger so I tried into that extreme confidence / lack of self-awareness a lot of the Brexit championing MPs seem to have. Mark Francois and Steve Baker big influences on this

lads who truly live on cloud cuckoo land

8. Screaming Speed Machine ... we actually demo'ed this and There's No Time To Waste before the first album came out

Another show stealer moment for @cooljinzo on the backing vocal front. Our first ever false ending as well

I despise boyracer subculture. Even now they're still about terrifying civilians

always young lads too. a weird hymn with toxic masculinity in mind

9. There's No Time To Waste ... as previously mentioned it's an old one. We were playing this on tour with @happyspendy

fairly self explanatory content. tell your friends/fam you love em

10. Weird Country ... started with the chorus and then took it from there. When I first played it to Andrew it had about 6 verses and made even less sense than it does now.

I was genuinely angry writing this, specifically around the treatment of the Windrush generation and the way Grenfell was handled (absolutely fucking terribly)

would recommend reading Mother Country and check out Pozi's great, great song KCTMO

This was the last song written for this record and I wish I'd had a little longer with it, specifically with the lyrics, but I think I'm probably way too close to it. Instrumentally I love it and Lewis' drums are 10/10 on it. We've been opening with this at gigs, gets you going

11. Now To Levitate ... I love when you sit down with a guitar and a song just arrives fully formed out of nowhere. I wrote this song in Warrenpoint Co. Down, was just sitting mucking about and the next thing I know recorded it on my phone and it's barely changed

Everyone's brilliant on this and I think this is my favourite song on the album. Andrew's back on the moaning guitar, Jamie's bass is fantastic, Lewis too. Chris dug out the Jen XS1000 and it's got such a beautiful, wobbly sound. Big Grandaddy influence on this one

12. The International ... I wanted to do this as a full band thing but was convinced to do it solo. Ended up sticking a basic drum machine off the hammond and building it up from there

I was extremely tired doing the vocals for this. We did all the lead vocals in one night, apart from Battlefield Boss Dream. I probably started off really energetic but at this point I was falling asleep and I think you can hear the voice truly going at this point. A weary vibe

Weary but positive. I think of it as a positive ending. Live well, treasure the people you got, stand up for shit that's worth standing up for

We listened to The Three EPs by The Beta Band on the way down and that influence definitely found its way in here

Epilogue. The night we finished recording the first album we went from Chem19 to play at The Old Hairdressers. The day after we finished the second album, after an extremely sleep deprived week we drove up from London and, once again, played at The Old Hairdressers

it was our very good friends The Bellybuttons last ever gig though and I'm extremely glad we didn't miss it. Photo by @neelastica

END. thank you for following this thread. Our new album is available to buy now. Find it at our bandcamp page along with some new merch (t-shirts, hand stamped CDs) https://savagemansion.bandcamp.com/ 

you can also buy from @LostMap along with some other new releases from the label. Would recommend @MarchClementine 's new one, @a_deplume 's new one. If you haven't got a copy of @callumeaster 's debut yet then you absolutely should! https://www.lostmap.com/