Crows guitarist Steve Goddard spills the beans on his band’s debut album, ‘Silver Tongues’, out later this week (Friday, 22nd March) via Joe Talbot of Idles’ Balley Records.
1. We recorded the album in the dark. Being in a brightly lit room just didn’t feel right for us or the record. I think we all felt a little less under pressure, like moving a spotlight off us and allowing us to get into more of an atmosphere suitable for our sound.
2. We were rescued by the fire brigade from the studio. We managed to break the lock to the studio at 2am on the last day of recording. There was no fire escape, so the legends that are the men and women at Willesden Fire Station came and rescued us like the damsels in distress we are.
3. During the guitar tracking, I had six amps in a row, using three at a time to save my sanity from the monotony of having to play each song the whole way through and then change amp and do it over and over. It saved me a lot of time, but I could feel my ribcage vibrating due to the volume when I was playing.
4. The studio we used is called Fish Factory. It is inside a fish factory and fish wholesaler. You can buy fish right down the other end of the hallway to the studio. It was surprisingly not as fragrant as we had expected. We all loved the studio and their fishy neighbours.
5. James did his vocal takes on the stage at Moth Club. When we came to record the final vocal takes we didn’t need as big a space as we had used for everything else, we wanted to allow James a space that didn’t feel too constricting either. He recorded on the stage at Moth Club, and it really helped get a couple of takes that were more like a performance and unhinged.
Taken from the April issue of Upset, out now. Crows’ album ‘Silver Tongues’ is out 22nd March.
