Track By Track: Little Cub on Still Life

Too Much Love

It's a song about cynicism and the first song that we wrote as a band. Ady [Acolatse, bass] had a bass line and I had some lyrics but Duncan [Tootill, keys and vocals] knew how to put it together. He was living in the states at the time so we used to share the Ableton session via Dropbox and sort of take it in turns to work on it.

Living in London you do find yourself doing the same things and seeing the same people over and over again in a sort of Groundhog Day loop. Before you know it things that were exciting or shocking have become mundane and I think this applies to the way you view people too. Ballard and Bret Easton Ellis have both written a lot about that numbing effect that mixes extreme banality with shocking images. Here the narrator is a sort of modern Dorian Grey figure but without the charm. Like the film The Comedy or Being There, rather than being glamorous or interesting, it is just other's lack of interest that allows him to carry on living the way he does. Ironically the first producer that we played it too said that we should change the lyrics to make it more commercial but I guess we were never very good at being cynical really.

My Nature

Our favourite Pop Stars always have a certain amount of playfulness with how they approach the absurdity of getting up on that stage or trying to promote your work. Reality TV talent shows are a horrifying contributor to the culture of seeking fame for fame's sake and yet is what we do really a million miles away from that. When I look at the contestants I don't think they are embarrassing or ridiculous because a lot of them do have beautiful instruments, they just don't understand the fundamental drive to create and not just perform that separates the Lady Gagas and the Beyoncés from the rest of the pack. On top of this, the British contribution to the arena of filmic bad guys seems to have now spilled into the reality TV domain, but who are these judges and why do we even listen to them?

This song's influenced by our friend NZCA Lines' production; we wanted to write something where a synthesiser and the vocals are both vying for your favour, in this case that synth is our favourite, Roland's SH-101.

Breathing Space

A sort of cautionary tale about 'casual relationships'. I was with someone for a while that insisted all they were looking for was a casual relationship and actually encouraged me to see other people as long as they didn't know about it. Even though I wanted to just be with that person over time this effectively numbed the relationship and my feelings towards them. Eventually I ended up doing something that they didn't like, but by then it was too late to rekindle that original affection. The line about filling holes always makes me think of the Beatles.

We were listening to a lot of Hot Chip when we made this one. They have an incredible talent of getting 'serious' on the chorus coming out of more playful verses. I wouldn't describe the verse as playful necessarily but we definitely wanted the chorus to go up a level

Mulberry

The idea that we may have already passed the point of no return for carbon emissions with the environment seems to be the main elephant in the room right now. That regardless of what small decisions we make over the next few years this could be the end of our species on this planet. There's a great Auden poem where he's looking at the natural world and thinking about no matter how amazing we think nature is, nature has nothing but indifference to us. That whilst we may notice the gradual effect of our own aging, our lives are just a brief speck or rash that the planet is just waiting to go away so it can return to normal service.

Death Of A Football Manager

A song about suicide. I think a lot of people were greatly effected by the death of Wales manager Gary Speed, not least of all because it was such a shock to have genuine tragedy interject with a pastime which for most people is primarily escapism. Rather than dealing with the issues in the song through personal experience alone this time we tried to use the language and lives of some of our heroes (Plath, McQueen, Ian Curtis) mixed with the personal. Sonically in some ways this song is a hark back to some of our indie roots, A eulogy for guitars as the time for synthesisers is here.

Hypnotise

Writing a song about politics that wasn't overly preachy or sanctimonious was a big goal for this record, and taking influence from the first couple of lines of "Still Ill," we wanted something that utilised satire to show that whether you feel complicit in what's going on, you still have a voice and still have a right to be part of the conversation.

The drums and atmospheric pad never let up in this one, their relentlessness makes you feel like there's no escape from what's going on right now and as the political landscape seems to be venturing more into the grotesque, to not engage with this seemed at the very least unrealistic and at worst a wasted opportunity.

Closing Time

I dropped out of college the first time to deal with some family stuff and it was at that point that Duncan and I first met. A few years later I wound up finishing my degree at Goldsmiths and was going to student nights there. Another song about the numbing effect of life in your late 20s and that weird relationship between still feeling young and over the hill simultaneously is something that I think is identifiable for a lot of people. We started the second side of the record with this one as a bit of a palate cleanser after the intensity of "Hypnotise". like "Too Much Love" it starts stark and ends big, hopefully easing you in to the second half of the record.

October

There is a pretty vulgar relationship between British Politics, Class, Sex, and Drugs. Both David Cameron and George Osbourne come from extremely old and wealthy families and their sphere of influence was present whether they are in office or not. There was an expectation in their family that they would be involved in politics and the story that there was a call from Buckingham Palace to get Cameron's candidacy for the Conservative Party stinks of old school patronage.

They have both dabbled the seedier side of life, if stories of the Bullingdon Club are to be believed, and yet their public image is presented as very clean cut. The media's obsession with politicians having upbringings free of indiscretions actually contributes to a culture of dishonest MPs from the get go and I think this can be very damaging. As with a few tracks on the record I've used sexual perversity to sort of highlight how grotesque these figures are and maybe look at them in a slightly different way.

Loveless

This song is about the breakdown of one of Ady's past relationships. It's about two people who may be lovely as people and to others but by the very nature of the intimacy of their relationship fading they cannot help but say things that are anything but nice even when they still love each other. It's partly about the public spectacle that is being with someone in a group of friends, that creates even more of a performance to it and the repetitive nature of the chorus only reinforces the going through the motions feeling that comes when something is on the way out.

Snow

The first song I wrote and is the only song that hasn't really changed that much lyrically or in terms of structure. I wrote it for my Mum's funeral and so is probably the most personal song on the record for me.

Television

The final track on the album. It's another track about sex, the grotesque and celebrity, but this time within the Church or the BBC.

When we were writing this one we struggled with writing a chorus that fit, but had this synth line. Laurence Bell at Domino said to us that we didn't need a chorus, just have the synth line go one for ages at the end and make it the last track on the record. Never thought we'd have our A&R telling us don't need to write a chorus ha.