Session 2: Air Studios, London.
After a month at home, you would think we would all reconvene rejuvenated and keen to move on. However what with it being nearly Christmas there was a distinctly end of term feel to the sessions in London's 'Air' studios.
We festooned the live room with fairy lights and festive cheer and generally decked the halls, mostly because the normal lights wouldn't dim. So it was we started our second session for " The Invisible Band" in a room not dissimilar to Hamleys window display.
We started off well enough , warming up with a cover of Bob Dylans " you're a big girl now". then immediately started work on a new song "shut the folk up". It took a wee while to work out how all our parts would work together, as all of us are playing a different rhythm in it. But once we had, it gelled pretty quickly.
Indeed it worked out so well that the title was seen as a bit glib, and also faintly redundant as it no longer sounded quite so folky. Nobody could think of what to call it, until Andy Macdonald came to the rescue and suggested "Pipe Dreams". Of course.
"Flowers in the Window" had become a bit of an albatross around our necks. We had tried to record it 5 times with 3 different producers and had never quite got it right. So we decided to bite the bullet and do it next. The feeling was if we didn't get it right now it would probably not see the light of day, a terrifying thought for such a great song.
Because we had been playing it for the best part of 2 and a half years and knew it so well, it was recorded fairly quickly and sounded pretty good, certainly better than the other versions. But something was still up, so we added a few things to it and decided to leave it till we got back to Ocean Way, sunnier climes for a sunny song.
It was now that Nigel unveiled his fiendish plan for "The Humpty Dumpty Love Song". It was to be turned into a full band song, with not only the band , but barking dogs ( courtesy of Neil Hannon ) crying babies ( courtesy of Lola Primrose ) alarm clocks and people waking up (courtesy of the excellent sleeper Mr Francis Healy), and a big fuck off orchestra (courtesy of string arranger Joby).
The idea was to make the song seem like it was somebody waking up then falling back to sleep and kind of drifting in and out. So being the master of authenticity that he is, one night Nige' took Franny's house keys. The next morning around about 8 o clock. Franny woke up to see Nigel, stereo mic and dat machine in hand perched on the end of his bed. No faking it for Godrich.
Neil and Esther's beautiful daughter Lola then came in to the studio, to make her recording debut. We hadn't been sure how long we would have to wait for her to cry, but as it turned out all Neil had to do was take off her wee jacket. A one take wonder already.
It was a bit of a shock when all this stuff started getting piled on to such a fragile wee song, and i dont know how, but it sounded amazing. By the time the strings went on it was obvious it was going to be one of the bigger moments on the album.
We started adding a few things to a couple of the Ocean Way tracks, and Nigel was sprinkling his fairy dust, but it was clear that we had run out of songs.
Nigel bought and built and flew and broke and rebuilt and flew and broke and rebuilt... a model helicopter "it actually flies". Neil set up a huge scalectrix (how do you spell that) in the live room,and we became more and more preoccupied with the webcam that lovely Elliott had so kindly installed. Time to go back to Ocean Way I think.
Dougie |
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