There Will Be Fireworks

question: We are loving your new song “Classic Movies”, can you tell us a little about the backstory of the song? When was it written and recorded?
answer: We started writing the music for that song sometime in 2016/17. We had booked a residential studio on Loch Fyne, in the West Highlands of Scotland, to spend a few days together writing. And we came up with the core of “Classic Movies” in that session. It started with my guitar, and then Gibran brought his guitar part in at a really weird point in the progression, which the rest of the band played off, so it creates this slightly disorientating feeling where the instruments don’t really come in where you expect them. Adam wrote this beautiful drum part for it and then David played his totally weird and hypnotic bass line. It took us a while to flesh out the structure, then we recorded the core instrumentation during the pandemic (I think sometime in 2021) at Gargleblast Studios in Hamilton, with our engineer Andy Miller. We added some synthesisers close to the end of recording in June/July 2023 and I recorded the vocals at that point too. It took me a long time to write the lyrics. The song had been kicking about for years, and we couldn’t let it go because it’s got such a distinctive vibe, but I struggled to figure out what sort of melody and lyrics I wanted – I didn’t want to mess it up! Musically it’s one of the oldest songs on the new album, and lyrically it’s one of the newest.
question: What have you been up to since the release of ‘The Dark, Dark Bright’ in 2013? What other music has the band been working on outside of There Will Be Fireworks?
answer: Mostly just getting on with life, to be honest. We all have full-time jobs and other responsibilities, and a few of us are fathers now so we’ve just been living and working and all the rest of it. Some of us have worked on other musical projects in that time too. I’ve released records with Dead Modern and New Year Memorial, and Gibran and Stuart have just released the debut album for their project Tiny Skulls. But we’ve been quietly working away on Fireworks stuff for most of that time too, with the first proper writing sessions for the new album starting in 2016/17 and the first recording session being late 2018. We had a lot of bad luck with a bunch of recording sessions having to be cancelled for all sorts of random reasons – technical glitches, power cuts, illness etc. And then we had the pandemic, which killed our momentum for a year at least. But it was all for the best because it allowed us to really focus on what we wanted to do with the songwriting and arrangements.
question: Who are some of the biggest influences on your music? What is the biggest difference between where your music is now and where it was a decade ago?
answer: It’s a weird one with us, to be honest. We all listen to a lot of music and we have quite varied tastes, and that definitely makes its way into the songs, but we try not to be too directly sonically influenced by anyone. On this album, we were collectively listening to a lot of the Wrens, the Blue Nile and – towards the end, when we were deep into production – various Eno projects. I’m not sure how much we sound like any of them but those were some common touchstones. Personally, Guided By Voices, Joy Division/New Order, Kate Bush, Talking Heads, Built to Spill and Modern Baseball have been on heavy rotation for me over the last few years, but – again – we’re not trying to specifically sound like any of them. As we’ve gotten older, and more sure of what we’re doing musically, we’re definitely less concerned about trying to sound like a particular thing. We just want to sound like ourselves and to challenge ourselves.
question: What is your favorite song you’ve released? “Harmonium Song” from the ‘Because, Because’ EP was our favorite song of 2011, what is it about?
answer: Tough one! Like every other band, our favourite thing is usually the most recent thing we’ve done, so it will be something off the new album. From our older stuff, my personal favourites are probably “The Good Days” or “Here Is Where”, but I’m proud of all of it because I remember how good it felt at the time to be exploring the studio and just having fun with my pals. Thank you for the kind words about “Harmonium Song” – that’s a niche choice for your song of 2011! It’s just a little story. I don’t like to be too directive or explicit about what the songs are meant to mean – I think that’s kind of up to the listener and I wouldn’t want to ruin anyone else’s interpretation of it!
question: If you could collaborate with any musician or band, dead or alive, who would it be? What is your ultimate goal for There Will Be Fireworks?
answer: Great question! Initially I thought about John Martyn or maybe Paul Buchanan from the Blue Nile, but I think I’m going to go for James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem. I’m really interested in production and engineering and studio gear and all that stuff, and I love how his records sound. I really admire musicians who also produce and who have a very clear sense of the musical history they are pulling from. He definitely has that and my sense is that the songwriting and the production are inseparable for him. I’d love to see how he works in the studio.