By last autumn it had been a while since Decoration had played live or recorded any new material, despite this the cogs had still been turning steadily if slowly. An ever growing batch of rough cuts and demo recordings had been continually developing, sent to and fro through the ether on an insistent flow of email communication. Then out of the blue the last minute offer of a gig seemed to sharpen the attention; there had been very little rehearsal during the preceding months but for some reason it just seemed to be the right thing to do. It would also be the bands first ever hometown gig.
The assembled throng at Butterflies in Bolton were treated to a set that was fine tuned during the day in a rehearsal room converted from a decommissioned old folks home. I have a feeling that it was that gig where the spark was re-ignited, all agreed that the next album should become a work in progress rather than just an idea that would probably some day be got around to. With that, the demos were worked on, tweaked, changed, re-written, discarded, revised, resurrected and re-evaluated. The momentum grew steadily and new ideas flowed and flushed. Over the winter things settled and by early spring the band was ready to step back into the studio.
By the time the band converged on Modern English, a studio in a mill basement on a Colne hillside, there was a pretty good idea about how the new record should feel. There had always been issues with previous records that the compositions, with layer upon layer of sound had been hard to replicate live. This was a new set of songs and should be structured so that they could translate to the live setting more readily. That was basically the mantra, the only rule that would carry any weight.
An evening rehearsal ensued prior to recording, and of the new songs three were selected:
While I Played Misty for You
I Was a 97 Pound Weakling
Kay’s Catalogue
The weekend flew by, old structures were soon settled back into but with the new ethos of a stripped back, almost live feel to the tracks a once lost lively nature was rediscovered. Things were sounding fresh and exciting, and whilst retaining a rudimentary feel there was still the sophisticated elegance that so often has done battle with the edge of the seat dynamic that has gone before.
By Sunday evening everyone was satisfied that progress had been made, we were a way off perfection but without doubt solid foundations had been laid. A driving and deliberate Kay’s Catalogue was tempered perfectly by a melodious Mistys with each balancing opposite ends of a scale teetering around the melancholic desperation of 97 Pound Weakling, which by this point had become This Kills. All would require future tweaks and maybe a quick coat of emulsion, but if nothing else this all too short session in the studio had proved to the boys that they really could do this – but then again I’m not entirely sure that there really was ever any doubt of that.
