Electric!

Where do we start? We had just come out of our deal at Universal after our label there got cut. We released “Desolate Shores” finally and without any bravado on Major Records. We just had to cut it lose after all the delays.

The optics of being on a label with Ladytron and IAMX were great and we suited us perfectly. If only the album hadn’t turned out to be a pop rock mish mash.  We packed up our bags, said goodbye to all the friends we made in Hamburg and headed back to Ireland.

The title track “Electric” was the first song written and when played to Hayo over the phone he was super excited to see we had re discovered our synthpop mojo.

The album progressed along very naturally, albeit with a different workflow to the last few years. There were only two of us in it now, no other producers, and no other ears to guide us. We were happy with this though. After the last few years were we had so many decisions made for us up to and including artwork. Which we now also had input and final say on.

I think we wrote about 20 songs for this album and the ones that didn’t make it for whatever reason are now on the expanded release in their demo form. The last track we wrote was “If I was a pet shop boy”. The album was finished at this point but we really felt we were missing a lead single so this just seemed to pop out of nowhere after we played around with a few string hook line ideas. After we came up with that we just thought ‘that sounds very pet shop boys isn’t it” Oddly enough, the song is not actually about the Pet shop boys. 

We recorded the video to “If I was a pet shop boy” in Ian’s old school. That was a good laugh. We are not much of a video band so it was fun to make one like we did. I see more and more bands just using lyric videos now too so I guess we are not alone in this.  We made new versions of Subhuman and Murder on the mind for singles and “Electric” of course was the other single released.  I remember some strange Xmas remixes of “If I was a pet shop boy” being made for the US market. It was on a Christmas compilation over there and on rotation in retail stores across all North America that Christmas. Even now when I think of the half naked twits standing in Abercrombie and that song in the background we get a laugh.

We gigged all over Ireland for two years, beginning with 3 backing singers. Isabella, Sarah & Tia. There were some great times on stage with the Eden-ettes.

However, ultimately this all imploded rather predictably and by the end of the shows in the Electric run it was just the two of us. The last show was awful, we were both burnt out. Neither of us wanted to be there and it showed. When it was over we looked at each other and knew it was done. We met briefly during the week to put Eden to bed.

We then spent 18 months calling each other pox bottles until it was out of our system.