This track is probably my personal favourite of Kane's melodies. The chord progression is beautiful and the vocal melody had me from the start. 
It was one of the first batches of Spring Skier songs, and when we played it live, we would sample an egg shaker rhythm and place it underneath the entire time. 
When we got into the studio, the sounds were so full, and the idea of the shaker became less important, and in hindsight, it was a good move, as the song carries beautifully on its own. 
Kane's vocal take is so humble and honest, and the part in the verse  when he sings "fractured ice" nearly breaking is one of my favourite moments on the album. I took the high harms in the chorus.
After hearing it, we knew straight away that it would be the closing song for the album. RB

The Cold Has Beaten You

I had been working on this riff for a little while when I showed it to Kane. It sounded good on its own, but really needed the atmospheric sounds that he added to it. 
We recorded about five piano tracks on Matt R's upright piano and then looped them backwards, creating this really nice swell. Two mics were set up for the acoustic and my vocals and I played through and recorded both at the same time in a single take. Kane laid down some other keys and Mellotron throughout the verses and then some harms over the top. Keith added some verbed out timpani style crescendo towards the end of the track underneath it all. This moody track we decided would suit best as the opening track for the album. RB

Pockets

Song title came from my work in language, with the meaning of things that go together. Overall, this turned out to be a pretty understated track on the album. We jammed it out as one of the later songs of the batch, and the chord progression seemed to meld together really nicely. In the studio we double tracked the vocals in an Elliot Smith kind of vibe, and Kane put some mega mellotron sounds underneath and also did harms in the chorus. We enlisted Tara Simmons to come in and play some beautiful cello. It was something we agreed to have more of in the next album. It was a fairly straight forward song, and I guess we kept it safe in production and degree of experimentation, but it just sounded so nice in the simplicity that it was. RB

Collocations

While jamming on the tracks that ended up on the album, we had a long list of unfinished ideas and diddies that we didn't really know what to do with. Some of them we have been working into "fuller" tracks, but we did not want to see the ideas go to waste, so we dispersed them through the album tracks.
We threw some room mics up and some targeting the guitar or down the back of the upright piano and recorded all of them live. We felt they gave a nice texture to the album. This one we now tag onto the beginning of Barcelona as an intro when we do it live. RB

Horse Head Nebula

This was another little lighthearted riff that I had been kicking around. We still actually don't know what to do with it, but we got very close to writing in a little melody, and just having one of those really short tracks. Similar to the other "instrumentals", we recorded it all in one take with live room mics and really loose timing. RB

Milky Way

This track started off with the main chorus coming together quite easily. We played around with a variety of different places to lead in and out of it and settled on some ideas after jamming on it for a while. We wanted to keep this track pretty simple to fit with the rest of the album, so we didn't do much to it in the studio; we just added single guitar and piano tracks and our harmonies. This track allowed some stronger delivery of vocal lines, unlike most of the other tracks, and I was able to let loose in the choruses. There was arunning joke that the first lines of the song sounded like an acoustic Meatloaf track, and now I can't help but think about that every time we play it live. In hindsight, we could have pushed the groove and rocked this one out a little more, but we will save that for the next release. RB

College Days

This is the remaining interlude track that we added to the album. Once again, Kane's wonderful melody and chord progression was enough for us to add this without developing it further. We pushed the end of the track to a different place, but ended with a resolution. If this track gets rehashed, we will take it somewhere else, but we had to add it to the album nonetheless. 
Studio work was all live with room mics. RB

Northern Lights

This tracks was one of the earliest written and in the first batch of tracks recorded. We were both listening Pet Sounds pretty heavily and wanted some lightness with this one. The studio tracking was fairly basic in terms of the guitar, keys and vox. We had a little more fun with adding percussion from some things found around the studio. I guess in the end it did turn out like our own Pet Sounds experience, though definitely not as good! RB

Ask The Eight Ball

This is a new demo, guided by the integrity and honesty that the new year will bring. It was recorded in a steel shed and mixed in a lego shed. Enjoy.

Virtues-DEMO

Another demo being thrown around for the new album. Featuring Cass on backing vox!

springskier

Popular tracks