To celebrate Dear Keir being played on the ‘rock and metal’ playlist on Amazing radio we thought it would be cool to take you behind the scenes of the making of a song we’re really proud of – and look at how it sounds and the message behind the song.
The lyrical seed for this track was planted when we heard a politician’s comments that seemingly rationalised the killing of children. That moment sparked a feeling of intense frustration and the crushing realisation of political helplessness – that feeling of being on the sidelines, witnessing injustice and being unable to do anything about it. The idea of writing a letter directly to the politician, and in fact all politicians, expressing this despair, became the core concept of the song.
Interestingly, the musical foundation for “Dear Keir” sprang from a moment of creative serendipity. Our guitarist was playing a chord progression featuring an interesting variation of E (now, I’m like Phoebe from Friends when describing chords so that’s the best I can do), and the melody you hear in the verses quickly took shape. The decision for me to sing in a falsetto wasn’t really a decision, that’s just how I heard the melody in my mind and in that initial jam almost all the words came fully formed. As we finished writing, it seemed that the vocal was a perfect way of embodying the song’s sense of detached observation, and the fragile falsetto (genuinely fragile as I was recovering from laryngitis in the run up to recording) became a metaphor for the narrator’s struggle to comprehend the statements and intentions of politicians.
Set against the driving drums and the warm tonal quality of the studio’s (very beautiful) Gibson Les Paul (a touch of classic rock, whilst still keeping that jangly punk edge!), we wanted to create an interesting and unsettling tension. The reggae-inspired mid-section marks a shift, a moment of fourth wall breaking commentary before the inevitable eruption of anger. Our producer and engineer Laurence introduced the brilliant idea of the echoing, repeating vocal refrains which lends the track the sense of psychedelia that we wanted to permeate the whole record.
We wanted that final ‘warhead’ to literally explode into the final verses, with the screamed delivery and echoing reverb creating an almost onomatopoeic effect that mirrors the destructive power of the word itself. The return of the falsetto, still carrying the echo from the ‘warhead’ scream screeches into the song’s final acceleration and the shouted climax of “standing on the sidelines”. We hope this really captures that sense of powerlessness in the face of politicians treating war like a game and viewing our lives like inconsequential statistics.
Our decision not to record to a click track was also deliberate as we wanted the song to breathe with the urgency and sometimes unevenness of a live performance. What you hear is us, playing live and loud, captured over a series of takes with Laurence’s intuitive guidance. “Dear Keir” is our examination of political indifference, disillusionment, and the power of music to channel those feelings of being on the sidelines into a defiant roar.
We are hoping to release the record as a single at some point, in aid of a charity dedicated to helping children affected by war, and we’re just exploring the best way of doing this. It will feature an expanded version of the wonderful art above, created by our dear friend, Richard Maysey, reunited with me creatively for the first time since 2004. He spent time listening to the song and studying the lyrics and I love the images he has come up with. For me the dark and foreboding clouds represent the storm that is already with us, a world of war, intolerance and hate being stoked by our present day politicians, tech billionaires and toxic influencers.
I hope you like this delve into our process, and please give the track a spin or two at Amazing Radio. Much love, John.
The World Outside the Window 