For Brisbane’s The John Steel Singers, the past couple of years are tinged in endless toil; listening to records, hoarding wild and wonderful new instruments, writing endlessly and playing music together tirelessly. Emerging victorious, the fruits of their labour are now yours to revel in, with second album Everything’s A Thread.
Although a work that’s clearly been laboured over, Everything’s A Thread holds thrilling sparks of creative spontaneity – a record that embraces both their growth and the giddying joy of becoming an entirely new band. The album flaunts a band with enviable confidence in the ability to let their songs take them where they need to go; to just play rather than meticulous contrast. The result is an accomplished piece of work that instantly grabs, yet rewards repeated listens through its robust grooves, eccentric melodies and those trademark harmonies.
Now, on the day of its release vocalist/ keyboard player Scott Bromiley takes us through a track-by-track description of the record!
The Needle
An after-thought shoved on the front of the album with a convenient title to play on the ‘thread’ theme. How clever…
Happy Before
This song started out as a 20 minute jam that we distilled the finer elements from and added a vocal melody. The chorus was an attempt to capture the lushness of The Byrds’ harmonies. Contrary to the opening line, I really don’t think Annerley isthat bad.
Everything’s A Thread
Possibly the oldest song on the record, this song existed in our live set as far back as 2011. Luke came up with the Townshend-style guitar riff in the verses, and Tim came up with the fuzzy guitar line in the chorus and we doubled it up with bass playing the same melody. For some reason I feel like I’m in Thin Lizzy when we play that part live. Also, Robert Forster christened the song with its name which greatly informed the lyrics that we hadn’t written yet. Thanks RF.
MJ’s On Fire Again
Started its life as a funky-ass bass line courtesy of yours truly. Tim liked it enough to come up with some melody ideas and we went from there. Everyone brought their A-game to the recording of this tune and we’d like to think that this is the song that might get stuck in people’s heads the most.
Common Threa
Hopefully, another song that gets ingrained in the listener’s skull. It was quite hard to get right in the recording process. One – because it seems to be a pretty straight-forward but hook-heavy song, and as such you want to get the optimum joy out of the sound. Two – because the outro as we’d originally recorded it seemed quite flat dynamically, rather than taking off like we’d hoped. It took a bit of cutting and pasting in pro-tools, and a bit of the ol’ Curtis Mayfield ‘Move On Up’ treatment to satisfy us. Now, I love it. Check out the video here.
There’s a Bird
This started out as a chord progression I wrote on guitar one day, and the band nutted out the arrangement at Luke’s parent’s house on the Sunshine Coast. The lyrics are loosely based on Patrick Susskind’s ‘The Pigeon’. It all came together pretty swiftly. Pun intended.
The Marksman
I’d had the lyrics and melodies pretty much written before I brought this one to the band. Basically a ‘woe-is-me’ break up song set to a funky beat with a bit of chorus effect on the guitars. The outro was also a product of the editing knife. Brought to you by Pro-Tools.
State Of Unrest
This song had been recorded and arranged in quite a few different forms, before we settled on the punkier, Buzzcocks-style arrangement in a particularly spritely jam. We chose this as the first song to be broadcast on social media, owing to its prickly sound and deviation from the feel of our last record. Watch the film clip here.
The AC
This song started out as a chord progression that Pete was playing while being secretly recorded. Pete seems to work well in these discreet conditions. Tim wrote most of the lyrics and the whole song was pretty much tracked in a single evening at the now defunct Wizzard Studios in Bowen Hills.
Never Read Tolstoy
I’d written this song a while ago but was a bit hesitant about bringing it to the band. I needn’t have worried however, as we were able to record a demo-that-became-the-album-version of the song in a single evening. The lyrics deal with the self-imposed ‘cultural inadequacy’ of being a Brisbane musician amidst the grandeur of Melbourne’s art scene. And the pronunciation of ‘Read’ in the title is in past tense. As in ‘Red’. I wouldn’t want to impose my literarily lazy standards on the poor listener like that.
Lambs
A song that was quite hard to piece together for some reason, perhaps because there was never any set vocal melodies to begin with. But the instrumental alone was promising enough, so we persevered and our mixer, Nicholas Vernhes came back to us with a pretty inspired mix. I may have written the lyrics but I don’t have a clue what it’s about.
TGI Tuesdays
Another jam that started out as a bass line and all the other elements came together quite quickly, including the vocal melody. It’s a great thing when that happens because it means there is lot less evaporating of inspiring ideas throughout the grind of the recording process. I can recall with fondness all of us (including Pete’s friend Simon) sitting around with a pad and paper giving thoughts and ideas about the lyrics on a pleasant afternoon at Luke’s folks’ house. It was like that scene in Some Kind of Monster without the interfering life-coach. Just Simon.
MJ’s On Fire Again (Again)
This ambient final track is the organ part lifted from MJ. It’s me on organ and Pete on a microkorg running through the same amp to create this weird, burbling sound that we loved. Kind of incidental but we clearly loved it enough to give it its own space in the spotlight.
