Over the last few days I finally got my hands on one of my most anticipated releases of the year, it hasn't left my cd player since and probably won't do for quite some time yet. I'm talking about the self titled debut album from There Will Be Fireworks. The Glaswegian four piece, consisting of Nicky McManus, Gibran Farrah, David Madden and Adam Ketterer, have only been together for just under two years but have already built themselves a formiddable reputation as one of the most exciting bands the city has to offer. Despite this they remain somehow still unsigned, so on July 1st they self released their eponymous debut, and I'm glad to say that it delivers on every inch of promise. Nicky (guitarist and vocalist) has been so kind as to write me a track by track breakdown of the album, with some tracks to preview.
(1) Colombian Fireworks
We wanted to start the album with something a bit striking and different - maybe even a bit brave. The spoken word part, I think, was what we were looking for in that respect. Kevin MacNeil wrote and performed it. I'd read his novel, 'The Stornoway Way', and thought it was brilliant; hilarious and tragic and a bit deranged. Kevin came to one of our gigs and we asked him if he would do the spoken part for us and he agreed, happily. He recorded it up on Shetland, where he was living at the time, and sent us the track and we just stuck it in with the instrumentation we'd done. It slotted in pretty much perfectly. The music itself acts, I suppose, as a summation of what the album is about really - a build up and a climax. And noise. Lots of noise.
I think this might be my favourite song on the album. I think it has some of the better lyrics in it and I love Karen's trumpet part - it gives the song a kind of pastoral feel.
(3) Midfield Maestro
The oldest and most straightforward of the songs on the album. Writing it was a bit of a turning point for us. We stumbled upon how we sound now by simplifying everything to write this song, and discovered a poise that we hadn’t had before. The song is named in honour of this little figurine I used to have of Diego Maradona. I got it in Asda when I was six or seven and used to put it on top of my amp but I left it in some smelly practice room and haven’t seen him for over a year. Gutted.
(4) Guising
Just a little vignette which I think is important to how the album flows. The weird noises were all made with an E-bow on an acoustic guitar. Lyrically, it's really just a few vague memories stitched together. It segues straight into...
(5) Off With Their Heads
Loud, then quietens down for a bit, then goes LOUD. A nightmare to sing live because the vocal kind of runs on and I get out of breath and I feel like I'm going to pass out, or burst or something. There a split second break in the heavy bit at the end, just before the piano comes in, where Gibs' guitar makes this serendipitous, never-to-be-repeated squeal. That is probably my favourite single moment on the album, just because of the fortuitousness of it.
Again, it follows straight on from the last song. We did that quite a lot - we were keen to have the album be a whole entity as much as possible. Just a little piano led piece. The brass and violin have been bathed in copious amounts of reverb, which I quite like. Even though it's a short song, it took me ages to get the piano at the end right because I have useless fingers (and you can barely even hear it anyway). Oh, and there are two drums parts.
(7) A Kind Of Furnace
A long, free form weird thing. Gibs wrote a very pretty piano part for this song. My guitar part at the end is lifted straight out of the "Explosions in the Sky: How to Write Guitar Parts" song book. (That books doesn't actually exist.) The spoken word part in the interlude is a passage from the Ian McEwan novel Enduring Love, spoken by Marshall the soundman using a really cool mic that looked like a walky talky. There’s a random accordion and organ progression at the end which we put in for a laugh because we found an accordion and thought it would be in some way wrong not to use it.
(8) We Sleep Through The Bombs
We used the accordion at the end of this as well, actually. It's just a big bombastic tune. The reverby guitar noise at the start was recorded by facing an amp into the hollow of a big piano. It probably doesn’t make much of a difference to how it sounds but we like to experiment with daft things like that and pretend we’re mad sonic pioneers like Phil Spector, but with better hair and less mental.
(9) Headlights
Quite a weird song. Madden is playing his bass with a slide, sitting down, like a lap steel guitar. Gibs put some strange wordless vocals on it that we reversed and weaved in between my vocals. The drums are sparse and there's a lot of wee clicky noises and shakers. So yeah, weird song.
(10) We Were A Roman Candle
Screaming the end of this was really, really fun. Quite cathartic. The guitars, when they go heavy, are ridiculously noisy.
Quite upbeat and poppy. I love AK's drums. The little sample at the end is Edward R. Murrow; we found a random US Government infomercial from the 1950s about the threat of nuclear warfare that he had narrated. The copyright's expired so we couldn’t resist putting it in.
(12) Foreign Thoughts
Again, a bit poppy, maybe less upbeat though. It's basically two chords throughout. Madden plays a non-bassy bass part, using a slide and a since-deceased delay pedal to make a weird noise that sounds somewhere between a sitar and a whale. Gibs used a really old, really cheap Yamaha keyboard played through a guitar amp and delay pedals. This is the one I’m most proud of lyrically – it’s basically a stream of consciousness but I like the scansion and the flow.
(13) Joined Up Writing
Starts off almost orchestral, with the piano, violins and pizzicato cello. Then morphs into quite an optimistic tune, then there's an acapella bit, then there's a big crashing heavy bit. At the end, when everything is fading out, I did a little raggedy acoustic thing, which is lyrically and melodically a throwback to Foreign Thoughts, the song before. It was intended as a not-very-subtle homage to the end of 'In The Aeroplane Over The Sea' by Neutral Milk Hotel. Being a stereotypical indie kid (ugh), I had a period of obsession with that record. I thought the way Jeff Mangum references back to Two Headed Boy at the album’s close was stunning and shamelessly pillaged the idea. Although, as I say, it's more of a tribute than a theft.
You can purchase a copy of the album direct from the band HERE. Alternatively, you can download through iTunes, though for the same price you'd be mad not to take the lovely digipack sleeve.
There Will Be Fireworks on Myspace
(1) Colombian Fireworks
We wanted to start the album with something a bit striking and different - maybe even a bit brave. The spoken word part, I think, was what we were looking for in that respect. Kevin MacNeil wrote and performed it. I'd read his novel, 'The Stornoway Way', and thought it was brilliant; hilarious and tragic and a bit deranged. Kevin came to one of our gigs and we asked him if he would do the spoken part for us and he agreed, happily. He recorded it up on Shetland, where he was living at the time, and sent us the track and we just stuck it in with the instrumentation we'd done. It slotted in pretty much perfectly. The music itself acts, I suppose, as a summation of what the album is about really - a build up and a climax. And noise. Lots of noise.
I think this might be my favourite song on the album. I think it has some of the better lyrics in it and I love Karen's trumpet part - it gives the song a kind of pastoral feel.
(3) Midfield Maestro
The oldest and most straightforward of the songs on the album. Writing it was a bit of a turning point for us. We stumbled upon how we sound now by simplifying everything to write this song, and discovered a poise that we hadn’t had before. The song is named in honour of this little figurine I used to have of Diego Maradona. I got it in Asda when I was six or seven and used to put it on top of my amp but I left it in some smelly practice room and haven’t seen him for over a year. Gutted.
(4) Guising
Just a little vignette which I think is important to how the album flows. The weird noises were all made with an E-bow on an acoustic guitar. Lyrically, it's really just a few vague memories stitched together. It segues straight into...
(5) Off With Their Heads
Loud, then quietens down for a bit, then goes LOUD. A nightmare to sing live because the vocal kind of runs on and I get out of breath and I feel like I'm going to pass out, or burst or something. There a split second break in the heavy bit at the end, just before the piano comes in, where Gibs' guitar makes this serendipitous, never-to-be-repeated squeal. That is probably my favourite single moment on the album, just because of the fortuitousness of it.
Again, it follows straight on from the last song. We did that quite a lot - we were keen to have the album be a whole entity as much as possible. Just a little piano led piece. The brass and violin have been bathed in copious amounts of reverb, which I quite like. Even though it's a short song, it took me ages to get the piano at the end right because I have useless fingers (and you can barely even hear it anyway). Oh, and there are two drums parts.
(7) A Kind Of Furnace
A long, free form weird thing. Gibs wrote a very pretty piano part for this song. My guitar part at the end is lifted straight out of the "Explosions in the Sky: How to Write Guitar Parts" song book. (That books doesn't actually exist.) The spoken word part in the interlude is a passage from the Ian McEwan novel Enduring Love, spoken by Marshall the soundman using a really cool mic that looked like a walky talky. There’s a random accordion and organ progression at the end which we put in for a laugh because we found an accordion and thought it would be in some way wrong not to use it.
(8) We Sleep Through The Bombs
We used the accordion at the end of this as well, actually. It's just a big bombastic tune. The reverby guitar noise at the start was recorded by facing an amp into the hollow of a big piano. It probably doesn’t make much of a difference to how it sounds but we like to experiment with daft things like that and pretend we’re mad sonic pioneers like Phil Spector, but with better hair and less mental.
(9) Headlights
Quite a weird song. Madden is playing his bass with a slide, sitting down, like a lap steel guitar. Gibs put some strange wordless vocals on it that we reversed and weaved in between my vocals. The drums are sparse and there's a lot of wee clicky noises and shakers. So yeah, weird song.
(10) We Were A Roman Candle
Screaming the end of this was really, really fun. Quite cathartic. The guitars, when they go heavy, are ridiculously noisy.
Quite upbeat and poppy. I love AK's drums. The little sample at the end is Edward R. Murrow; we found a random US Government infomercial from the 1950s about the threat of nuclear warfare that he had narrated. The copyright's expired so we couldn’t resist putting it in.
(12) Foreign Thoughts
Again, a bit poppy, maybe less upbeat though. It's basically two chords throughout. Madden plays a non-bassy bass part, using a slide and a since-deceased delay pedal to make a weird noise that sounds somewhere between a sitar and a whale. Gibs used a really old, really cheap Yamaha keyboard played through a guitar amp and delay pedals. This is the one I’m most proud of lyrically – it’s basically a stream of consciousness but I like the scansion and the flow.
(13) Joined Up Writing
Starts off almost orchestral, with the piano, violins and pizzicato cello. Then morphs into quite an optimistic tune, then there's an acapella bit, then there's a big crashing heavy bit. At the end, when everything is fading out, I did a little raggedy acoustic thing, which is lyrically and melodically a throwback to Foreign Thoughts, the song before. It was intended as a not-very-subtle homage to the end of 'In The Aeroplane Over The Sea' by Neutral Milk Hotel. Being a stereotypical indie kid (ugh), I had a period of obsession with that record. I thought the way Jeff Mangum references back to Two Headed Boy at the album’s close was stunning and shamelessly pillaged the idea. Although, as I say, it's more of a tribute than a theft.
You can purchase a copy of the album direct from the band HERE. Alternatively, you can download through iTunes, though for the same price you'd be mad not to take the lovely digipack sleeve.
There Will Be Fireworks on Myspace
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