The fruits of our labour are nearing your ears. That is to say, we’re releasing our tidy wee EP ‘State Hospital’ very soon and wanted to let you know a few things about it. It contains five songs. The title track is the first snippet from our next album, but the rest of the tracks are unique to this release, even though they were all contenders for the full-length at one point or another. I suppose certain songs just don’t fit in to an album, but we thought these four still deserved to be given more than simply ‘B-side’ status. Because we had been writing and demo-ing for this record for some time, we found ourselves sitting on a lot of songs at the beginning of the year. Too many really, if there is such a thing. You’ll be glad to hear that we didn’t even toy with the idea of a double album, probably because we weren’t taking any drugs. So this seemed like the best way to show off the extras and give you a taste of things to come. So, a bit about those other 4 songs then…

Boxing Night had been given an airing in some our live shows earlier in the year, and the version on the EP is the third or fourth incarnation of the track. Some songs take time to find their feet and this was certainly the case with this one. I think it was worth giving it time to distill and then improve a little with age. Some of the lyrics are pretty old actually, and for me it has a lot in common with much of the Midnight Organ Fight material, sonically and thematically, which is probably why it felt a bit weird sitting on the new album.

Home From War was one of the only times I have succeeded in making a full song out of a 10 second voice memo. I sing into my phone fairly often to note down ideas, but upon listening back at a later date it’s usually indecipherable and very often shite. This melody stuck though, and it formed the basis of the entire song. From small acorns etc etc…

One day last year I was rifling through a pile of old receipts and amongst them I found the lyrics to Off, written on the back of an invoice of some sort. I had completely forgotten about it, and may well have thrown it out were it not for Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs’ demands. It’s not often that a lost idea is found again, and even less common for it to be of any actual worth, but I was really pleased when I unearthed this one.

The final song on the EP, Wedding Gloves, is graced with the wonderful, dulcit tones of Aidan Moffatt. Aidan (along with Bill Wells) wrote one of my favourite records of the last 10 years, ‘Everything’s Getting Older’. To have him collaborate on this song was just incredible as I had already been heavily influenced by his lyrics whilst we were writing the new record. It’s two voices telling the same story from the same perspective and it’s a reasonably common tale: a husband and wife find themselves bored with one another, but still manage to find a way to make things more, ahem, interesting… This song ties in well with some of the themes visited in State Hospital, as I was starting at this point to write about the lives of others, as opposed to my own.

Scott

State Hospital EP will be released week commencing September 24th globally. You can now pre-order the EP in vinyl, CD and download. Heavyweight vinyl includes a download redemption code. Click here to pre-order.