The Travelling Band release their third album The Big Defreeze on Monday (25 August), but you can stream it now exclusively on Q – plus they’ve written us a track-by-track guide to the record.
Passing Ships
Jo Dudderidge: Can people can occupy the same dreams simultaneously from different perspectives? I’d been watching Harold and Maude, a beautiful story of two people who’s circumstances collide while they are travelling in opposite directions in life. The films imagery infiltrated a particular dream which involved a faceless man tormenting my soul. I’d always loved the metaphor ‘like passing ships in the night’, and employed it as the main theme to reflect these concepts of missed connections, unfulfilled love, happenstance and the chaotic sliding doors of the subconscious dream world
Garbo
JD: We’d got vibe’d up on the Kinks whilst living in Crouch End making the album. I guess it’s a kind of homage. I wrote this for Adam. It’s a song for your best mate when they’re down in the dumps and won’t leave the house.
25 Hours
Adam P. Gorman: This one was originally called The Big Defreeze but we thought it fitted really well for the album title. It came about when I was trying to throw a flame over a fuzzy frozen memory and realised it’s not always easy to melt the ice. It’s good to, at points, keep it cosmic.
Quicksand
JD: A cautionary tail of a lost summer. Our love for Televison and Teenage Fanclub is obvious.
78.8% APG: The lyrics to this were formulated in the heat of festival battle. This is the backdrop to the song to what is essentially a song of misplaced feeling. Probably the most ambitious recording, we did a lot of fiddling with midi and delay times with this to get it right. The beginning was essentially built from the ground up before the guitars open it out. It’s fun to do it like that sometimes.
Making Eyes
JD: This one used to be a country song, but we drank some beers and got our cocks out instead.
Borrowed And Blue
APG: One of the older songs on the record, three pronged guitar attack. Lots of fun doing this live as we’ve extended the end and we can really let go and get the 3 electrics working together. Was written after a long journey, after returning home and not really wanting to be there.
Sticks And stones
JD: Written at her bedside as my mum lay in hospital. Confessions of a hedonist. Inspired by the incredible Liam Frost, Kloot and Elbow.
Fallen
JD: One for the drunks. When the Levenshulme breaks, you might see the whole of the moon (or at least Brigadoon). Loved recording this in the expanse of The Church.
Pinholes
JD: Shoegazing into Polaroids.
Hands Up
APG: Lord, you gotta keep on moving. This is a look at the cyclical nature of a fractured relationship. It’s too easy to just keep returning to the same problems when you know deep down you just gotta break loose, Hands in the air for this one, we’ve all been through it.
For more head to Thetravellingband.co.uk.
