Cut Ribbons are a curious proposition.
Capable of crafting hook-laden, immediately contagious songs, the Welsh group also have a literary bent. Switching between fragrant melodic-ism and something more intriguing, more cerebral, the band have lingered on the horizon for some time now.
Patiently working on new material, Cut Ribbons are now able present their debut album. Partially recorded with Rocky O'Reilly in Belfast and in singer Aled Rees' own studio in Llanelli, it's a bewitching document.
Out this week through Kissability, you can stream it below before finding a full track-by-track guide penned by Aled Rees.
Indigo
This track always stood out as an opener to the album. It's got a sense of urgency to it and feels really bright. We only added the arpeggiated synth line in the chorus at the very last minute and I think it works really well. The line in the chorus is a particular favourite of mine and live it's full of energy, jangly delayed guitars and a massive middle eight.
Clouds
‘Clouds’ is the first single off the album. It's a big synth driven summer song. We recorded this in my studio and each guitar track was split between an Ac30 and a Leslie 145 speaker. All the tracks recorded in my studio were done like this. It adds lots of movement and swirl and gives a real dreamy quality. Jeremy Murphy, our producer, worked his magic on this track and it just sounds huge.
We Want To Watch Something We Loved Burn
This is the title track of the album and it's another big synth song. It's got an 80s feel that’s foundation is firmly planted by a Juno-6 lead line. It's got a breezy quality to it and the production has captured the essence of what we were trying to do with the track. Again Jeremy Murphy just got it right straight away. Working with someone like that is a pleasure and his passion for his art comes through in the mix.
Truth In Numbers
This is a song that just wrote itself. I wrote it on an acoustic guitar in the wee hours of a weekday morning. The organ in this track just makes it for me. It sits real nice and builds to a crescendo that feels great to play. It's nice to see all the smiles on stage whilst we are playing it.
In The Rain
Another one that was recorded in Belfast. This is the track that we first started experimenting with synths in a big way. I wrote it on piano on December 27th, a day before my birthday. We were in the studio on January 5th so this was arranged whilst we recorded it. The juxtaposition of the somber lyrics and the bright synths is something that really appeals to us and had become a paradigm in our writing. The video was so much fun to film. I had to talk down a rather irate police inspector who didn't like the fact that we hadn't asked permission to film in the area. The protagonist of the video is actually a good friend of ours who I work with in the studio on all the new Cut Ribbons tracks. He helped record many of the songs on this album.
Walking On Wires
This is another one of our favourites live although it's one of our oldest songs and has taken us three rewrites to actually make it feel as though it's finished. It's more guitar based, a bit of a dancer and it's got a great groove that comes through really well in the mix.
White Horses
Repetition is the key to this track. We wanted to build a song around a simple lyrical idea which was actually more work than it sounds. To keep it moving forward and be interesting musically, we played around with dynamics a lot with big builds and drops. The first incarnation moved in and out of our live set frequently, it's one of those tracks that you can read the crowd and play as a closer when it feels right. The album version is the hardest hitting on the record. It's a new spin on the old and is just huge. Jeremy Murphy had a big hand in this track and we gave him a lot of free reign to experiment with ideas that might not share the commonality of the other tracks. We wanted it to stand out from the rest, it's the crazy one.
I'm A Wretch
I wrote the initial idea for the song after a friend and I were meant to go to Paris for a few days but at the very last minute, as often tends to happen, something came up and I had to cancel. Three days later I received a parcel through the post with a Parisienne post mark and inside was a copy of Kerouac's Satori In Paris. There is a line in there which reads, "My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet. As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind. I'm a wretch. But I love. Love." I liked it so much that as soon as I read it, I picked up a guitar and wrote the song. Also Jen Long plays some mean trumpet on this.
Bound In Love
I like the imagery of this song and I think Christian's guitar is especially good, across every track on the album his lead is really inventive and well thought out. There's a sheen over this though, and I think it reminds us all of that first day of sunshine after a pretty bleak Welsh winter, there's a kind of excitement to it. It's another smiler stage wise.
Sink Ships
I keep a couple of my guitars tuned in 5th and 'Sink Ships' is a track that couldn't exist in anything else. Recorded again in Belfast, we and Rocky O'Reilly played around with big ambient background sounds to give a atmospheric, soundscape type feel. It starts small and builds with a constant kicker then drops down to a stripped back chorus before we throw everything at it. The interplay between the vocals is something that we worked hard on making it feel seamless and fluid. This was the obvious choice to close the record.
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'We Want To Watch Something We Loved Burn' is out now.
