Butcher Boy's "React Or Die" Track By Track - a podcast by noreply@blogger.com (God Is In The TV Zine)

Glaswegian act Butcher Boy came to our attention in 2007, with the release of their first album "Profit in Your Poetry". It was a real treat, a excellently realised indie folk pop album, full of literate, heartfelt lyrics about wistful memories: it’s tender, organically produced sound drew favourable comparisons in my own mind: "Think early Belle and Sebastian haunted by a real past, the precise poetic pop of the Smiths tinged with a heavy Glaswegian sensibility. Think the tunes of Lloyd Cole and the Commotions matched to the intimacy of Arab Strap, most of all think wonderfully dark pop music, for nights out or those long dark midnights spent alone by your turntable, reading the inlay, and submersing yourself in the sound." They followed this up with the single "18th Emergency" later that year, a stately ballad it was like being allowed to read someone's secret diary entry, each line consumed with poetic heart tugging imagery that conjures up moments in time, lovers lost and real kitchen sink drama. Their new album "React or Die" is preceded by a single "Carve a Pattern" which you can download here(from the folks at Stereogum): Butcher Boy- Carve A Pattern It reflects a progression a more buffed up, musically expressive sound that still bares the emotional brevity, and bittersweet vocals at the heart of Butcher Boy. We caught up with their lead singer/lyricist John Blain Hunt (who is also the famed DJ behind the National Pop League nights) for an exclusive insight into each of the tracks that make up their second work "React Or Die." Butcher Boy's "React Or Die" Track By Track WHEN I'M ASLEEP I wrote the main melody one Sunday night after watching The Dream Life of Angels on BBC2. Rue des Cascades by Yann Tiersen is over the closing credits, and the film has an incredibly savage and sad ending. I could barely speak the day after watching it. The final frame is still and calm but it is heaving with regret. It's like a sob caught in your chest, grief. Originally, the song was a duet with a completely different vocal melody but when Maya joined the band I went back to it and worked on a stronger cello line, something to suit Maya's style of playing which is very confident and strident. The rest of the song fell into place around the cello. I watched The Dream Life of Angels again and I re-wrote the lyrics to read like a nursery rhyme. Basil plays ten mandolin tracks on three mandolins at the end. Brian, the engineer, said that the last "I never feel..." was a Leo Sayer moment, which I'm quite proud of. I love playing this live - it breathes and it feels very powerful. CARVE A PATTERN I bought a rattly old piano in 2003 and I came up with the melody for "Carve A Pattern" the day I got it - I don't think I ever wrote anything else on that piano. Butcher Boy aren't really a band for jamming but we used to rehearse this song a lot, just because it was such good fun to play. I've got a ten-minute long recording of us playing it in my old front room and by the end of the song we were hamming it up so much it's like the finale of a Broadway musical. This was always going to be the most pop song on the record - I wanted it to be really sharp and snappy. The last chord originally rang out for twenty seconds, like A Day In The Life, and there are lots of little nods to different songs I love in it. Brian said that the backing vocals in the chorus are like Satellite Of Love but I think they're more like Mr Sandman by the Chordettes. They're both odd and unsettling songs though; either one is good enough for me. YOU'RE ONLY CRYING FOR YOURSELF I distinctly remember humming the melody for this one afternoon while we were recording our first record. There seemed to a big leap between the verse and the chorus melodies and I originally thought it could be a call and response song. This song was pieced together in the studio much more than the others. We ended up trying to lighten it a lot, as it had ended up sounding very ominous and serious.

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