The Weight of the Sun

Hi dears,

Now that the Weight of the Sun is over the yard arm I feel finally I can put my head into it a bit and share with you some of my thoughts. This was a bit of a journey for all of us. It’s funny finally hearing what other people hear in it. I don’t think anyone can really pin down your influences, least of all yourself.

There are some wild suggestions out there that I won’t propagate here but I suppose we are influenced by everything and anything that ever enters our ears. I have a possibly unhealthy habit of never switching off what I’m listening to (a bit like my other problem of never not finishing a book) even if it’s not to my taste, because I choose to be informed by what I do not like as much as by what I do, and I guess it all weaves in there somehow.

I think some people have a goal in mind and they work out their recording process backwards to get to that point, but particularly because we live far away from each other, we’ve always worked a little more like gardeners: Each sound we make shifts in its importance over time, but generally Thing 1 informs Thing 2 and onwards, and colours shift and vibrate and work together in a way you couldn’t have imagined if one of those elements was missing. And some of those elements are pure accidents. Oh the joy of that! This can also mean you might know when something is done, but you might not know what it is, and so, Happy Release Day, all, we’re excited at last to share this record with you, it feels like a thing now.

Here are my top 12 accidental happenings on this record, one per track in order of listening, in case you want to be a nerd and play Accidental Happenings Bingo.

1. The beeeep of the omnichord switching on in the middle of Photograph, like a dial tone on a phone.
2. The whiz bang science fictions in the middle of Run for Cover. Automatically generated, and like the magic porridge pot, virtually impossible to stop if we pressed pause while they were engaged. And the xaphoon, obviously, some people might think it an accident that such an instrument was ever invented.
3. Oh my holy god, the wonder that is the magic bird that Pete created on a scraped violin at the end of Heavy Water. It will truly haunt me forever, possibly my number one Accidental Happening ever.
4. We had a lot of discussion over the processing of the drums on She. The original version appears in the coda, the new version opens the track, and the point where it switches to me sounds like the Coney Island roller coaster and I love that, a bit like when Bjork went into the bathroom.
5. Lots of layered upside down violin and viola Pete and I played on Corridors and beautiful inconsistencies in our (large lower-strings hands playing upper strings instruments) tuning and vibrato resulting in mournful robot cats, sad about their own demise.
6. In Signs of Use, Rob capos his 12-string and clonks the tape delay a quarter beat before one of the choruses (he is always prepared) and I loved the glitchy bleepy sound so much we stuck it in the other chorus, you might not even hear it now in the mix, but I know it’s there.
7. Brother, the way the handclaps and a jangly snare together sound like someone saying a sort of Fleetwood Mac-ish ‘hah!’ Is that just me?
8. Not an accident but Joe’s backing vocals on The Blue of Distance “lately I’ve been tryin to come down” are so in his Glasgow accent, that that’s the way I sing it to myself now, if that’s not being rude.
9. The outro of Back to the City has some funny side-stepping space invaders in the background, made by fecking around with the chord buttons on the Philicorda in an off-duty moment. Pete now has to recreate this on the bass with a special dance when we play live.
10. Jacqueline is less of an accident but more an intentional white lie actually, the name Jacqueline was just more lyrical than “jackkkeeereeee!” which was what the kids outside my old flat yelled, I imagined calling down their pal to play. I still don’t know in fact if that’s a name, or a battle cry, or what.
11. The accident here is originally calling the song Spaces, Faces, which in a northern Irish accent is open to being misheard. A good save, I feel. There’s also a beautiful wrong note in one chorus on Rob’s guitar. Not wrong as in wrong, but a complex harmony note, that Pete then had to recreate in the second chorus on the cello, because I couldn’t live without it.
12. Rachel Simpson’s lovely flugelhorn and Joe’s secret talent for mellotron melding into a soft custard pie.

Thanks for listening folks, and being there and supporting us, we feel it. We hope we can tour soon and see you in the real life.

Love yous, from Emily & the band. xx

(Cover pic by the ever talented Vivien McDermid)