[Premier] The Climbers: 'The Good Ship'

We do love an exclusive every once in while here at TLOBF and today is no different. Yes, we’re thrilled to be able to premier the debut video from The Climbers. Already responsible for one of the debut albums of 2010 with The Good Ship, they’ve just revealed the video for the title track – and you, dear readers are amongst the first to see it.

For those yet to acquaint themselves with The Climbers, you can read the review of the TLOBF Recommended album here. And, right after the video we have a track-by-track guide to The Good Ship by songwriter Tim West and producer Christian Hardy.

‘Book Shop Folk’
Tim: I just noticed one day the pure contentment of people that worked in a well known chain of Book Stores. They all seemed at one with the world. No aspiration other than to be surrounded by books. No Machismo, no capitalism, in any sense of the word. This is us having a bit of a bash at mashing up Can with Portishead.

Christian: I’ve always enjoyed the variety of songs that Tim brings to me and this is one that I really wanted to record as soon as he played the basic version. Nick suggested a song by Can called ‘Deadlock’ as a reference for the drums and Bas got it straight away. I mixed it loud and dirty so that Bea’s pretty vocal sits on something garish. It’s a funny old start to the record but it makes sense to Tim and I. The noise at the start is an electronic harmonium starting up.

‘Anything’
Tim: Just me looking at the world, feeling at my lowest, where it just seems like everybody does everything better than I do. We got Jake from Sons of Noel & Adrian in to sing it and his kinda world weary brogue made it seem to mean a bit more.

Christian: This is one of those fairly ancient recordings from the early sessions in a Welsh cottage. The drums are played by Ollie, who used to be in The Leisure Society when we first started. It’s a kid’s drumkit that Tim found in a shed.

‘The Good Ship’
Tim: Off the cuff number, which I wrote on guitar and then Chris turned into a piano song with this amazing riff. The Good Ship’s a kind of metaphor for your ‘happy place’.

Christian: Tim and I have been playing this song forever, definitely one of the first ones. Marc Riley described my piano playing on it as Dudley Moore like when we performed it on his show recently. My brother Ben plays Mandolin on this.

‘In A Circle’
Tim: Some friends of mine were at loggerheads with their mum and the songs just about calling for both sides to do what’s right for all, not just what’s right to win an argument impressively or flamboyantly.

Christian: This is probably my favourite recording on the album. It came to life when Nick recorded the call and answer electric guitar parts, then Mike added the violin lines and it made us happy.

‘I Will Never’
Tim: I’d just finally broken up with a girl I’d been seeing, off and on, for a while and I started writing this song, I played it to Nick and told him I was having trouble with it and a couple of weeks later he came back to me and he’d finished it off. It was one of the earliest recordings we did and we mainly did it live. It was important because we’d got that amazing old room sound and it gave us a belief that we were making something special.

Christian: It’s a bizarre methodology to revisit recordings from several years ago and add overdubs, but with our diaries getting fuller over the last year or so its how this record had to be made, and I think it makes it sound quite special. I love Sharon and Nick’s vocals. I fiddled as little as possible with the live take, just adding a little Helen Whitaker flute magic and not much else.

‘Something Good’
Tim: It was a song I wrote the music for, but couldn’t find a melody to go over the top and played it to Chris and he had these great lyrics and melody that just flowed mercurially over the top. And then with that I stuck my ‘did you hear..’ refrain bit on the end.

Christian: I got up early one morning in Wales and absent mindedly sang my lyric ideas, which is why I sound all croaky and there are washing up noises in the background.

‘I Keep Falling’
Tim: Just a little fireside ditty that I wrote to for people to sing along to at parties.

Christian: There’s cheap synthesizer fun at the end of this. You can’t beat a bit of that.

‘Uncommon’
Tim: I remember it coming together, (apart from a lyric or 2) quite quickly and easily. It was just inspired by being round too many parties where people weren’t concerned about the coming together of humans and the joys which that can bring but were more focused on how they could win every conversation they were involved in and be the most impressive at the ‘picnic’.

Christian: Tim wrote this very quickly but the recording was a challenge, eventually it came together with Jake’s whistling, Bas and Ollie’s drumming (there are two drum parts playing in unison) and Nick’s big guitar action. I felt that Dan Michealson’s deep tones would play well with Sharon’s sweet singing, and I filled out the middle ground with some obscure harmonies. I love this recording.

‘From Now On’
Tim: I think everybody had a bash at singing this at some point and it was never really a contender for the album until Cathy (Sons of Noel & Adrian) came along and sang it beautifully and gave it this new ethereal quality and so it snuck in right at the last minute.

Christian: Sometimes it takes a while to realise Tim’s ideas and this song is a case in point. I’ve tinkered with it many times and Tim always felt it missed the mark. In the end we stripped back pretty much everything and it suddenly had an effect on us. Phew. I only wanted Cathy to lay down a few takes of the vocal for fear that it would sound too polished or familiar otherwise. There’s a hesitance in her voice as a result, which I like a lot.

‘The Fellow Ship’
Tim: I just wrote this little thing that went really well into the chords of the Good ship and then decided that’d be good to give the album a ‘reprise’ track. We threw everything at it and wanted it be a grand old exit. I think its really uplifting.

Christian: Mixing this was pretty joyful, it was the last one I did I think and I felt like a kid in a sweet shop with all those violins, cellos, pianos, guitars, shakers, banjos, choirs and whatnot to play with.

‘If There’s Anyone’
Tim: The last song on the album was actually the last song I wrote for the album. It just came from me sat at my mum and dad’s house one day noodling on a guitar. I think the lyrics speak for themselves and although I didn’t write it consciously, I was aware that I needed to wrap up the album somehow, and this just popped out. It’s one of my favourites.

Christian: What can you say about Nick’s vocal? Amazing singing. No reverb, mixed in about 3 minutes.