Es ist mit das schwerste, was eine Einzelperson durchleben muss: die Trennung deines ehemals geliebten Partners. Leider musste Flyte-Sänger Will Taylor im letzten Jahr diese durchleben. Wie man am Albumtitel This Is Really Going To Hurt erkennt, war es alles andere als leicht. “You’ve stripped me of everything and I hate you I really do / Still I don’t think I’ll get used to losing you” (Losing You). Diese hohe Emotionalität ist der entscheidende Faktor, der dieses atmosphärische Album so gut macht. Ja, beim Hören regelrecht gefangen nimmt, wie ein guter Film oder die spannende Serie. Für uns hat die Band zum Album ein Track by Track geschrieben!

1. Easy Tiger

This song is born from a very dark place, full of shame and jealousy, the fresh remnants of recent heartbreak. The lyric is so personal it was difficult to frame. So we gravitated towards a small, twisted arrangement, full of claustrophobia and tension. The percussion is the sound of producer Justin Raisen opening and shutting a casette case in time, adding a mechanic but somehow domestic backdrop that’s hard to place. The final, repeated line “this is really going to hurt”, serves as an emotional warning for the what is to come…

2. Losing You

We recorded this track with Andrew Sarlo and we learnt so much from that session. He made us realise that we could make this great sound together without adding anything synthetic or elaborate. I think it’s the best sounding recording we’ve made. It’s an old song, borne of an earlier break up, but felt so fitting we couldn’t let the opportunity to use it be passed. There’s a video on YouTube of us playing it live in a forest in the rain that’s worth a watch.

3. I’ve Got A Girl

This track feels like a moment of bombast and release of tension. We chose to draw inspiration from another kind of break-up; a musical separation. There’s a playfulness to the performance which is the result of a late night, inebriated studio session, improvising our way through the track with no real plan. The keyboard is recorded on Tim Rice-Oxley of Keane’s magic electric upright, although we didn’t tell him how hard we were banging on that thing.

4. Under The Skin

This track is a bitter lashing out, a build up of ominous anger. It started as an acoustic song, so we tried to stay true to the tight, restricted aspect for the front section. With the latter half of the song, we sort of lost our minds, just piling more and more on in a frenzy. Will’s vocal leaping up the octave brought that sort of energy to the track.

5. Everyone’s A Winner

This song serves as a sort of God’s-eye-view of the whole story of the album. The lyric goes from personal, to widescreen and back to extreme intimacy between the three verses. The final verse holds possibly our favourite lyric of the album: “except the friends who must choose/which one of us they wish to lose”. The music video is put together from home-made footage shot on an old super 8 camera, it’s a worthwhile visual accompaniment.

6. Trying To Break Your Heart

When we wrote and demo’d the album, I would say it wasn’t an incredible moment for us personally. When we recorded it, we chose to do so in America, which we had previously driven across and toured earlier in the year. The country had been the backdrop to us getting back on our feet. The 6 weeks we spent in LA recording were joyous and even though this song tells a foreboding warning, the sound of the track is of us having a truly good time. The benefits of being in LA was access to incredible musicians who could feature, Bo Koster of My Morning Jacket coming in for the day to lay down piano on this track.

7. Love is an Accident

Thematically this song ties in with Trying to break your heart and they come as a pair. We tried many times to get this song right, and it turned out that the key was to not try too hard. The string parts in both this and the previous tracks were incredibly satisfying to write. In fact I just find this song quite satisfying.

8. There’s A Woman

This song was a great means for us to stop taking ourselves too seriously, drawing from our influences and playing out a bit. The whole thing has a sun-drenched CSNY feel that we offset with a mad horn solo at the end courtesy of Kelly Pratt (Beirut, St Vincent).

9. Mistress America

This track is the ray of light at the end of the tunnel. “Where do we run to now” felt like a little glimmer of optimism right at the end of an album so consumed by this monumental break-up. We used to sing this song every night on tour across the US, it seemed to connect with those who were standing by, like us, perplexedly watching the world unravel at the time. That was in 2019, little did we know what was coming.

10. Never Get To Heaven

This song was written by Will in his bedroom at the age of 14. The tag line is stolen from a scouts chant and refashioned through the singular wiseness of teenage-hood. It acts as an epilogue to the album and is a moment of calm after the storm. We decided to pare the song back to its most simple components and not distract from the vocal harmonies and simple, lullaby-like nature of the melody.