Tony (Lyrics and Vocals):
A new piece to work on from Mark Fleet is always something to treasure! You don’t know what you are going to get, it could be delicate, it could be rowdy, it could be soulful or it could be a dub monster! ‘Round and Round’ was an absolute knee to the head, wall of noise!
I am fairly certain that we actually started work on ‘Spinning’ as I believe Mark called it, about 7 or 8 years ago … before ‘That Has a Nice Ring To It’. He had this idea about adults going a bit crazy, spinning round the way young children do when they listen to music and having that template made writing the ‘round and round’ section fairly simple. After that, we kind of left it to sleep, revisiting it now and again, never really knowing where it should go. To help it along I worked out the ‘spoken’ or ‘rap’ section, which is basically a rant at the government, recorded it and we left it to sleep a little longer.
I was really pleased that Lizard Brain revisited it for the new album. I really love the energy of this song, something that got lost a bit along the way, but something the band managed to relocate in time for release.
Mark (Music):
Another “what would …” question started this one. “What would a waltz sound like if written by Cabaret Voltaire?”
I get bored at most disco’s, parties, weddings etc with the let’s dance bit of the evening (but I do love a dance where you are swept away and will dance all night to the tracks that “move me”). Always the same songs - many of which are fantastic - but just so overplayed. Also, we all have our signature dance - the same one time and time again - quite literally going through the motions. How did that come about? Kids will dance to anything, anyway they fancy. Often spinning with their arms out and head back - just laughing. I wanted to see if I could write some music that got us spinning. I am not sure I have achieved that outcome but perhaps that’s not the point, it made a song. I’d like to see a roomful of people spinning to it to see if it works though - and I know what the video would be like if ever we made one.
I thought it would be interesting to change the feel of the song part way through to a more conventional feel and then change it back - an experiment to see if, and how, people danced to the difference parts.
As with a lot of my songs I can imagine them as an instrumental - but I can’t imagine how they would work with lyrics and a vocal. This is where the others in the band are invaluable. Tony took the song and added a whole other dimension with the lyrics and vocal. As yet I still can’t understand how people do that bit! For me it then made more sense as a song - but … it still took another 6 years to sort it out to make it what it ended up becoming.
Here is a Spotify playlist with some of the songs that somehow resonated with me when writing it: