Flashbacks

Tracklisting:

1. The Back Of My Mind
2. Have A Little Faith In People
3. Time To Wait
4. The End Of The Affair
5. Flashbacks
6. Welcome To My World
7. Lost
8. Nothing's Impossible
9. Stand Up!
10. Running Back Home To You

'Flashbacks' is the third album from Leeds four-piece, The Lodger. It was recorded in Autumn 2009 on tape at Hall Place Studios, Leeds, by local genius and sociable recluse, Richard Formby, who had just finished Wild Beasts' critically acclaimed, 'Two Dancers', and back in the day played guitar on 'Recurring' by Spacemen 3 as Jason Pierce was too busy taking drugs to do anything.

Richard kept Ben Siddall (vocals, guitar) fed throughout with Ennio Morricone compilations and obscure Bryan McLean LPs while Joe Margetts (bass) and Bruce Renshaw (drums) read old copies of Uncut and played with the analogue vintage toys. Meanwhile Ben began to suffer from Alice in Wonderland syndrome...

After two albums - 2007 debut 'Grown Ups' and 'Life is Sweet' in 2008 - released worldwide on a variety of independent labels including Angular in the UK and Slumberland in the US along with a one-off EP on Spanish label Elefant, the band started thinking about the next thing.

Ben explains: "We'd had a couple of albums out and the first is what you've been doing most of your life, the second is trying to better the first one without alienating anyone who liked the first one, and if you're still ploughing away as a band long enough to make a third it tends to be the one where you cease to have any expectations and just try different things out and dare I say, progress. Without putting on wizard hats and roller-skates."

The new record continues the lyrical themes that informed the first two, including love, loss of innocence and memories of adolescence. These are fused with The Lodger's trademark upbeat melodies, jangly jazz chords, bouncing baselines tied to energetic drums, but with the addition of new textures and a more honest approach to recording as Ben recalls: "I'd had a conversation with many friends about the pros and cons of editing the heck out of recordings to clear the mistakes that inept musicians make and computer trickery in general and I decided to adopt an approach where everything had to be "real". Real strings and horns, untuned vocals etc. Trying to keep the spontaneity and any accidents as I knew we had limited time, being a budget-free band".

All he had to do now was get down to the small matter of actually writing some new songs. "We'd had some false starts and started making a new record even before 'Life is Sweet' had been released, back in early 2008 with our friend Jamie in Wakefield. There was nothing wrong with the environment but we felt that we needed some to time to get inspired and find direction and I personally wasn't 100% happy. Out of those sessions we salvaged 4 tracks which made the 'I Think I Need You EP'. I scrapped the rest of the songs I had written up until that point and tried to immerse myself in music and books as I always do when I'm trying to inspire myself. Every time I was in my girlfriend's car driving somewhere we kept listening to the magnificent first Left Banke album and I started getting a bit fixated with the idea of doing something with orchestral instruments and actually trying to dot it all out on manuscript myself. Not a baroque-pop soundalike necessarily but something that embraced classical music within pop. A challenge."

Thankfully there was now a vague idea of what direction he was going in, and Ben locked himself in his bedroom with no bread and water, some instruments and a Moleskine music manuscript book.

"I fancied trying to make the music more complex and the arrangements more dynamic and the logical thing to do was to bring in some other musicians to reach the parts that Ben, Joe and Bruce cannot alone. We'd used our friend Emil on trumpet for the previous EP we put out in 2009 and had used another friend Sarah on backing vocals as well. I needed to secure the extra instrumentalists before I could write anything with conviction, so I scouted around and asked for several favours and managed to recruit two saxes, a trumpet, violin and cello and another backing singer and Bruce got hold of some timpani drums to add to his kit. As with all penniless independent groups, The Lodger managed to blag stuff for free once more. I could now think on a bigger scale and begin to write.

I used a sequencer and keyboard to write the parts and worked with everyone over e mail, sending over mp3 and jpegs and amusing epigrams and then the next time I saw them all was in the studio. You're aware of time ticking away in there and i had to hope and pray they had learned it all and could bang it out in the minimum of takes. They had paid attention to my pleas, I was lucky this time. The whole recording was done for little more than our BFH*, petrol, endless strong Italian coffee and trays of Fish and Chips"

Favourite tracks? Ben: "I like 'The Back Of My Mind' a lot because it was a totally new approach for me, to layer up track upon track of feedback and repetitive guitar drones. And 'Flashbacks' because the orchestral bits were how I wanted them to sound when I was scoring it all out. I love the baritone saxophone solo at the end as it was spontaneous and created by improvising which is something I've never done before, passing my control of it all over to someone else and leaving it to chance. Lyrically that's close to home too that one. 'Running Back Home To You' is a nice end to it all. It fades and we hear all the string and horn players in isolation and it brings a smile to my chops".

*bus fare home