The Twelve Steps... a Christmas EP

Hello and happy festive greetings to you lovely patrons...

Your December main "thing" has arrived! 

It's a... 🎄CHRISTMAS EP 🎄

I'm giving it to you early, as the EP will be going on sale later this month to the public... however, you guys are the only ones getting all four tracks including a special cover of Roxy Music's Bittersweet, whereas the public release will only have three. 🙀

For the EP, I've been collaborating (again) with Matthew Landis and Nathan Carter on the tracks. Both are incredible song-writers and arrangers, and to be honest, I've not had to do much writing this time around, just singing, and arranging. I think the EP has come out amazingly, and I really hope you guys like it! 

Thank you as always for supporting us.

THE STORY

Matthew Landis is responsible for 3/4 of the tracks, so I've asked him to write a bit about himself and the songs...

Right, so.....I started playing classical piano when I was 6, i still even occasionally take lessons, taught myself blues, and jazz, and improv, and songwriting myself, just copping other people's stuff by ear. I play in The World/Inferno Friendship Society. I used to have a weird proggy/gothy band called The Minor Arcana, but now, my "solo" project is called Poison Street. We just started playing and should be releasing our first single "Nightmare Alley b/w Don't Have a Choice (for Erik Petersen)" pretty soon.

This duo of songs were both written in the aftermath of the end of my 8 year relationship with my fiancée. It was, initially, a fraught situation, but we've become friends again since (this happened 1 year ago in November). It precipitated a long, long, long bout of drinking and depression, as one is want to do when your heart is shattered. One of her favorite albums was the newest Nick Cave album, The Skeleton Tree. I introduced her to Cave and his music was a biiiiig part of our relationship and my life—I discovered them I guess when I was 17 or 18 and I have been obsessed ever since; I remember the first time I toured Germany with World/Inferno, I went to every spot I'd ever heard Nick Cave mention in Berlin in an attempt to somehow, by osmosis absorb him. I am weird.

Anyway, "No Accidents" was born out of listening to The Skeleton Tree & Push the Sky Away obsessively post-breakup and adding in bits of other people whose unique mix of artistry and depression inspired me (Scott Walker, Kate Bush, David Bowie mainly). I wrote the lyrics by waking up from a dream and singing the melody into my phone at 4am, whiskey drunk and stoned.

"The Future Won't Be Long" was also about the breakup, but sort of 3 to 4 months later, when I was really processing it. She broke up with me via text while I was on tour. So the second verse ("Coded for heartbreak..." with the reference to a van full of tricksters is about Inferno). Anyway, I was driving around a neighborhood we often hung out in and I was listening to Aimee Mann's spectacular record Bachelor No. 2 and Lost in Space and all the houses were lit up and kids were in the yard playing in the snow, and the first line of the song hit me, so I pulled over and wrote it in my phone. The next day I was listening to Joe Henry on my way home from work and the music and melody and rest of the lyrics hit me. I got home from work and wrote the song in a flash.

I picked "Bitter-Sweet," the Roxy Music cover, because it's my favorite Roxy Music song, because my ex and I loved it, because I am obsessively in love with Babylon Berlin on Netflix and the song figures into the show, and because the lyrics captured this perfect mixture of despair over lost love and the world going to hell, and being an American and getting Trump as President and losing the love of your life within the same 12 months gets a man a-thinkin' and, well, that song is what I thought about.

So really, in a way, the songs are exorcisms. I'm not sure it worked. I still have terrifying nightmares, speak in Aramaic randomly, and feel the compulsion to vandalize churches...

---

Nathan Carter is an old friend of mine, we've played together a lot over the years with his band Buffo's Wake (check out my favourite song of theirs here). There's a rumour I might be producing their new record...

Anyway, the song he's written, Twelve Steps is about an alcoholic crawling back home to his missus' house on Christmas Eve, drunk and regretful. The lyrics tumble out in a stumbly, mis-timed, frantic way - it's perfect for the subject matter.

12 Steps is about love, loss, addiction, depression, hope and acceptance. All those Christmassy things 😂

We put the track together over a few nights, adding one instrument at a time. My favourite bit is the sleigh bells. We think it should be a number one 😉

Anyway, without further ado you can download the four songs HERE.

Hopefully you'll enjoy and they'll be many more extra treats coming out coming out this month (but you won't be charged for any of them), this is December's main thing.

Love & Feathers,

x Birdeatsbaby x