Ten fun facts about the songs on Parrot Stories, GO:
1) A Thousand Hours, No Sacrifice and Hearts were all written in the same week during December 2008, a month when I had no internet access and was subsequently far more productive. I wrote Don’t Look Back a few weeks afterward, as well as three other songs that didn’t make it on the album. (Bonus facts – Holding On and No More were written around the same time in summer 2008, and Impossible Dreams was the last song for the album, written in summer 2009 several months after the rest of the tracks were finished).
2) The line I’m proudest of on the album is “If you ever need me, I’m only a vodka away from you” from No More.
3) My least favourite line is the description of “perfect glossy hair” in Hearts. Imagine being asked to describe someone’s hair in two words and saying: ‘perfect. And glossy!’ – What a tosser.
4) Holding On took its production style from a song by Roses Kings Castles called ‘Horses‘ – in the studio I played the song for Tom and said ‘we need to make it sound like this’.
5) Candy Floss was written under a tree one night with Mhairi in an attempt to write a cute song similar to ‘Birds‘ by Kate Nash.
6) Impossible Dreams was inspired by the rhythm of a Slipknot song called ‘Circle‘.
7) Some of my lyrics sound really creepy. Most of the ones on the new album do, including lines like “Now I know how to make you mine … I won’t let you go” (from You Can’t Trust Me), and “lay down and close your eyes – all things have to die” (from Not Just Yet) but the creepiest one on Parrot Stories is ”She was gonna go, but I said ‘no, I don’t think so’ ” from Candy Floss xD
8) How We Were nearly didn’t make it on the CD. On the night before the final day of recording, I decided to take one of the planned tracks (titled Standing In One Piece, a uke song) off the album and replace it with this one. (It was a good decision.)
9) In the CD booklet for Parrot Stories, Lex is described as doing ‘lighting’ because our engineer in the studio had a lamp shaped like a duck, and Lex looks a bit like a duck (a recurring joke to the joy of all but Lex).
10) The font on the cover of the CD – and the logo of my name on this website – is a completely original font, because it’s the handwriting of Alan (co-owner of DFTBA Records).
ALSO: A worrying amount of people in my last blog post said “wait … you sell physical CDs of Parrot Stories?” – yep, see how on my blog on the right hand side there’s a link that says ‘buy on CD’, and you notice how on every music video I upload there’s a link that says ‘buy on CD’? RAWWR. THIS IS NOT MY FAULT.
Yes, I sell physicals. xD And the physicals have a HIDDEN TRACK (well, sort of) so you’re totally missing out. If the link on the right of this page isn’t enough for you – maybe you’re seeing this through an RSS reader – here’s the link again. Bonus last fact: the last time I checked, I’d sold 599 copies of my album, so you could be the six hundredth! :D
x
