Making hay while the sunshines: The New Eves follow up their album with single ‘Red Brick’
What do you do, when you’ve dusted down your instruments and call a wrap on recording a record? You call it a job well done and head to the pub.
Especially if you’re recording in Rockfield Studios, where, thanks to Liam Gallagher, is well known for being within walking distance of one. But let’s face it, The New Eves are operating on quite a different level to Gallagher and so decided to do the opposite, and lay down the foundations of a triumphant follow-up track in ‘Red Brick’.
The band explained, “After 9 days recording we had finished the album and were really riled up, so we used the studio to jam, leading to the intro of Red Brick. It took a while for us to revisit it but we did just as Violet been working on a poem about our trip to New York and she just started saying it all over the music. Everyone was like, what the hell was that?!”
Clearly, the band were striking while the creative iron was roaring hot, for ‘Red Brick’ is an accomplished and captivating song that serves as a whole lot more than just an outtake. It’s a perfect example of how delicate and minimally arranged songs have an ability to stir up a powerful underbelly, as the rhythm section of this song alone swirls like a rising whirlpool, allowing for Violet Farrer’s entrancing poem to pull you in through the vortex in the middle.
The tension forebodes throughout the entire first half of the track before finally releasing, allowing the pressure to materialise into a complete paradox, a sound that is both euphoric and dark in equal measures. While Ella Oona Russell’s drums play a crucial part in building the atmosphere of the track, it’s hard to look away from Nina Winder-Lind’s guitar playing, which features her debut guitar solo for the band. It crunches beautifully through this soundstorm the band have created and opens the door for an exciting new future for the band.
But then ‘Whale Station’ kicks in and the mood shifts. Kate Mager’s bass rocks back and forth, like a boat atop the water, while the rest of the instrumentation splashes around it, including the welcome introduction of some piano stabs.
All in all, it’s a fun track, which isn’t a surprise given its genesis. Russell adapted the words from the book ’Whale Nation’, which were suitably hypnotic for a band of this sort of instinct. But when the book denied them the chance to outrightly use the words, they never gave up on the idea and its esoterica, instead soldiering on to find an original arrangement to fill in the gaps left in the prose.
“Coming into the studio, we didn’t have a set plan or structure and that was kind of the whole point. We wanted to make something mainly improvised and see what would happen. Marta who produced the session was really on board with this and facilitated our ideas in an amazing way. We recorded most of it live. The song knew what it wanted to be and we followed.”
That’s exactly how these two singles feel, from a band riding high off of the creative form of their most recent album. Original ideas and exciting song structures seem to naturally bleed out of jam sessions, for they are accomplished enough to take their sessions anywhere they like, while being inherently in tune with each other enough to make it concise.
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