Welcome to HeartSongs, our regularly scheduled (probably) look at songs and the people who write them. We spoke to Cornwall’s Hypophora about their recent single ‘Headlines’.
“The theme of the song is about friendships falling apart. It’s not a nice thing to go through, especially when it’s not handled well. It felt like it would be a good thing to write about as a kind of release, hopefully listeners can empathise and appreciate what the lyrics are about. It was written with one person and one situation in mind but reading the lyrics back made us realise how it can apply to so many moments in life.
Lewis Pilcher (bass) actually came to practice one day with this absolutely stonkin’ dissonant riff that he’d been working on. We were all a big fan of said riff and that’s where ‘Headlines’ started. Karum had been experimenting with a bunch of open seventh chords for a while so it was a great excuse to sling them in over the top of a grooving bassline for the verse part and a slightly similar chord sound (though drenched in distortion) for the chorus and thus ‘Headlines’ was born.
One of our fondest early memories of road testing the song was supporting LTNT and The Hyena Kill in Plymouth in July last year. We sound checked with ‘Headlines’ (which at the time we nicknamed ‘Stab’ because of the choppy rhythms) and we got a bunch of positive feedback from the LTNT/Hyena Kill dudes - they thought the opening riff was absolutely brill, which filled us with a lot of confidence!
We had so much fun recording ‘Headlines’. We recorded at Momentum Studios in Devon with the ever talented Josiah Manning. The song was recorded alongside ‘Behave!’ and ‘Hipster Blood’ - both of which are set for release early next year.
We were lucky enough to have Josiah feature on his beautiful Fender Rhodes during the second verse and the middle eight - this added an entirely new and super interesting musical layer/texture that we haven’t really experienced on a Hypophora tune before (we had a small amount of MIDI keyboard on ‘Caught’ but that doesn’t count). That really makes the tune to be honest.
Also the ratty guitar tone in the run up to the “breakdown” section was recorded by placing a microphone inside a broken snare drum on the other side of the live room from the guitar amp. So pointless but fun nonetheless.
We stayed in the studio for three nights in a row, drank wine, ate Nando’s, and made music from about 9am - 9pm for three or four days. We went a little stir crazy towards the end of the session but we had such a laugh. We actually documented the whole thing on our YouTube channel through a series of vlogs.
We’ve had a lot of comments about how different this vibe is from our last release ‘Youth/Caught’ - there’s a lot more interesting/experimental chords and overall a much darker feeling to the song.
We think people seem to really enjoy the tune and most people have been pretty positive about the (slight) change in musical direction, but it’s really not that different is it? It’s nice to finally be able to look at our songs available online and see more than just two songs, we’re gradually building up our discography, which is about time! It’s making us so excited for a full album to be released - we’ve been sitting on material that’s been unreleased for ages so it’s going to be so nice to let the world hear it!”
Lyrics:
Without intention, I lost my taste for you,
And now nobody's mentioned the latest piece of news,
Lacking attention, you quit the thing you love,
It's the pretension you need to let go of
Now and again I question if it's just because I'm here
You make a great impression to everyone that's near
Their backs are turned so you're talking, no one needs to know
Now and again I question if it's just because I'm here
Without intention, I lost my faith in you
And now no one's remembered to see the whole thing through
Lacking attention, you quit the thing you love
It's the pretension you need to let go of
