- 2023-05-10
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MUSIC
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Sad Boys Club Releases Debut Album “Lullabies From The Lightning Tree”
London-based alt-rock band Sad Boys Club, consisting of Jacob Wheldon (vocals), Pedro Caetano (bass), Chris Holmes (guitar) and Tom MacColl (drums), released their debut album “Lullabies From The Lightning Tree” on May 5, 2023 via Modern Sky.
The album comprises 10-track, produced by Pedro Leite.
The band frontman Jacob Wheldon said of bassist Pedro Leite as producer, “That’s when Pedro’s role in the band became less about a co-writer and bassist and more like… George to my Matty he has the kind of sonic vision and is the director of that. Obviously it’s collaborative but he’s at the helm of that. It came out of necessity.”
On the album, the band is inspired by Czech writer Milan Kundera's 1984 novel “The Unbearable Lightness Of Being”, his comical scepticism of life is an ever present theme for Sad Boys Club on their debut outing.
Jacob Wheldon said, “We still don't really feel any sense of belonging to any sort of scene. It always seemed to fall between the cracks. There was a sense of [sonic] dysmorphia for a little while, shall we try to compromise to shoe-horn ourselves into these things? But there was an enduring feeling of, no, that's our biggest strength.”- He continued, “Acceptance is kind of what the record is about, it's acknowledging all these things that are out of your control. In my early 20s, I was quite an angsty and angry individual and wanted to right the wrongs of everything. Over time you don't just mellow out necessarily, you just alter your kind of area of concern and get comfortable with what you can control and the things you decide matter to you. Broadly speaking it is like a collection of guys trying to navigate this and mature and be a decent and contributing member of society. Even within that though, there's an acknowledgment that certain things suck.”
Also, the album not only marks a journey of four friends, but a generational rallying cry for self acceptance and love for those lost in the quagmire of their mid-to late twenties.
He added, “It's almost like a little bit of a coming of age record, it's just 10 years later than it's supposed to happen. It's just for your late twenties and realising the ephemerality of all of that stuff, at this age we've all had relationships that haven't worked out that we thought would last forever, we've all loved bands that we thought we were gonna love forever, we've all seen beauty in different ways.” -
The band explained about some tracks for the album.
“Delicious”
“If you compare it to 'Know' [one of the band's earliest and most popular singles, also about the end of a relationship], which I wrote when I was sixteen, that was like: 'death is coming, the apocalypse is near!!'"
“To Heal Without a Scar (Is a Waste of a Good Wound)”
“Sometimes I can have a hard time acknowledging life as reality, maybe I just don't want to. It often results in bad consequences for myself and those around me which I then use songs to somehow justify - some might argue that makes me a toxic narcissist (/man), I'm not sure I'd disagree. I'm working on it. A lot of this album is about working on whatever 'it' is. Getting better? It fell out at the end of a particularly bad period of writer's block and unblocked a majority of the writing on the record so feels like the only place to begin.”
“Lumoflove”
“Born from a demo typo (and a few furious games of FIFA to decide the naming rights), this one means a lot to us, happy we get to share this one with you all ahead of the record. It's a departure from anything we've done before so we're really excited (nervous) to hear what you all think.”
“Coffee Shop”
“We had been trying something for ages and it got to midnight and we were just like: this is not working. We need something. After a while Pedro got up and said 'what if there's a song about me just being fucking sick, all these girls are saying yeah I love him'.”
“Something Else”
“It's the sigh of trying to make something work. It just didn't end how it was supposed to in the script.”
“Cemetery Song, 20/5”
“It's probably the most important song on the record, came out of my brother & I living together and spending everyday together. It's an odd perspective to take but for it to exist my brother had to go through a pretty depressive period, and obviously the brother in me hates that he had to go through that. But the creative in me is like, that sparked something I am incredibly grateful for having, I can't write that song without it coming from that sort of special place. Depending on the mode you're in, it's an uncomfortable truth and I think a lot of creatives probably feel it.”
“[You're] All I Ever Wanna Do”
“We went to Somerset, and did a writing session at Harry Koisser's (Peace) studio and tensions were extremely high. The first night we got there it was really awkward, nothing was getting done, so naturally my response was we've got to have a party. It went terribly, big arguments and we all went to bed fuming. We weren't really talking and out of nothing we wrote 'You're (All I Ever Wanna Do)'. It felt fun but crazy, because it was so awkward in the room. We needed to write a love letter to ourselves because things were about to break apart.”
Photo by Nicholas O'Donnell - source : Apple Music
