rak studios

Help us hit the Top 40

The single “Come With Me”, which we wrote at the end of last year for the Josh’s Band ad campaign, is being released on Universal Records on Monday 11 January.

If we sell enough copies, we might even make it into the Top 40. Watch this space for details of how to download your copy!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE MUSIC VIDEO.

The track was produced by Bacon & Quarmby (David Bowie, Ian Brown, Finley Quaye) at London’s Rak Studios and, alongside Josh’s Band – which features Chris and George from The Lightyears – includes many of the performers who joined us on the tour, not least our very own Tony Lightyear and his awesome percussion collective Drum Club.

The music video for “Come With Me” is out on Monday 4 January in anticipation of the single release. Keep an eye on this website for updates…

Kate Nash & Her Famous Rabbit

Last night we went back into the studio to finish the lead vocal track for “Come With Me“, the song we wrote for the new T-Mobile ad campaign. The record is being produced by Jonathan Quarmby, whose past work includes Finley Quaye’s seminal album Maverick A Strike.

George and I both lent our voices to the lead vocal track along with an awesome, honey-voiced female singer called Obenwa. The track is being mixed today and, in theory, the finished product will be sent to the record label tomorrow – which is, conveniently, George’s birthday! We’ve been invited back into the studio tomorrow morning to listen to the final product and have our reactions documented by the film crew… and then I suspect we shall head off to the pub for a celebratory pint or two.

Josh was full of beans when we arrived yesterday evening having spent the afternoon taking tea with Kate Nash in the studio green room. She was recording in one of Rak’s other studios and was accompanied – as, apparently, she always is – by her pet rabbit Fluffy.

That’s nothing though. When I’m famous I’m going to cart a basking shark around with me in a skip.

Just you try and stop me.

Setting the record straight

Yesterday afternoon we gathered at Rak Studios in St John’s Wood to put the finishing touches to the track we wrote for Josh’s Band, “Come With Me”. Awesome turns were made by, amongst others, a rather talented tuba player, several trumpeters and the inimitable Russell Ward on the squeezebox.

One perennial truth of being in the studio is that you spend 10% of your time making records and 90% of your time hanging about. It’s vitally important that, during this 90% majority period, you have armed yourself with some quality reading material to divert your attention once the banter starts wearing thin and everybody has grown tired of quoting scenes from Spinal Tap at each other. Yesterday, Tony had picked up a copy of The Guardian and soon enough a vitriolic slating of Josh’s supergroup project, penned by the infamous pessimist Charlie Brooker, was doing the rounds (read it here). Unsurprisingly, Charlie ain’t a fan of Josh’s Band. However, he is very funny and, if you’re gonna be mocked, it may as well be entertaining.

It was quite a bizarre experience to be reading somebody’s skewed interpretation of a project whilst simultaneously living through the markedly different reality. Funny thing is, if I were in Charlie’s position, I might well think exactly the same thing. It’s a set-up. Josh is an actor. The band are all session musicians. But he isn’t, and we’re not. Of course, T-Mobile set the whole thing in motion and it clearly helps to have the support of a production company when you’re organising large events, but I can personally testify that the grassroots movement that Brooker is so suspicious of has genuinely happened.

Clearly, many of the people who attended the gigs on our recent tour came for the TV cameras and the chance of 15 minutes of fame; however, crucially, they stayed for the music. Nobody freezes their knackers off in Edinburgh for five straight hours under fire from basically horizontal rain unless they’re actually enjoying themselves.

As for the music itself, Josh asked us to come into the studio a few weeks back to write a song for the project and the resultant session produced the track “Come With Me”, which has gone on to soundtrack the entire campaign. Charlie wrote in his article that the lyrics were clearly “penned by some dickshoe at Saatchi & Saatchi” and so, in the interest of setting the record straight, I ought to point out that George (Lightyears guitarist and the man behind the lyrics in question) does not and has never worked for Saatchi.

On the other hand, between you and me… he is a bit of a dickshoe.

Writing a song for T-Mobile…

Our involvement with the new T-Mobile ad campaign is now beginning to get exciting. Friends and family have been spotting us all over the UK on TV ads, billboards, bus-stops and train station big screens…. and today we were brought in to write the campaign’s flagship song.

We were invited to the famous Rak Studios in St John’s Wood, which is where Radiohead recorded The Bends. Our brief was to write a song that would provide the basis for the next leg of the campaign – travelling around the country and inspiring mass nationwide sing-alongs. No pressure then.

Joined by Josh on bass and the amazing Mike Glozier on the drums, George and I wrote a song called “Come With Me” – an uplifting, quirky, catchy pop number about gathering together everyone you know and going on a massive road trip (you can read the lyrics here). Various different songwriters and groups of musicians have been asked to contribute material to T-Mobile’s cause and it’s not clear yet which song the ad execs at Saatchi & Saatchi will choose. Fingers crossed – we find out tomorrow…

ps. If you’ve seen The Lightyears on a billboard or bus-stop, send us a picture of yourself with the advert (preferably with your thumbs-up – it’s the only respectable way to be photographed) and we’ll publish it on the website.