Guest Column - Eugene McGuinness' guide to new album Chroma + hear an exclusive track

Eugene McGuinness is set to release his new album Chroma on Monday (7 July). To offer a little preview and guide you through its songs, he’s written us this guest column, track-by-track commentary to the record.

One chord, loud and proud, dumb and joyful. If you’re intelligent and miserable then probably swipe left.

Joyful but not so dumb. Writing about girls is always a good way of getting some strange ideas across. But not in the “boo hoo, you’re mean” sense. It’s about feeling… Well… Amazing… Grace…

This song’s old as the hills. There’s a Bill Withers tune called Who Is He And What Is He To You that’s always been in my blood… I think it tickled this a bit. It’s not about tasty drinks; it’s that Daniel Day Lewis quote from There Will Be Blood. Milkshakes are tasty though.

This is a weird one. I have no idea how it came about or why. Which is enough for me. Maybe you’ll want to dance to it. I think I heard the term in The Sopranos or something where if someone paints houses, they kill people. Be careful.

I have a tendency to ramble, and this one rambles and rants. The demos on my iPad can sometimes be these manic barks that I listen back to and later find to be upsetting and confusing or proper exciting and confusing.

I wrote this over the same pot of coffee as Amazing Grace. The two just flew out of me. I was thinking of early Marvin Gaye here.

The intro sounds like dinosaurs dancing. It might be the most poppy thing on the record, and one my favourites.

The oldest song on the record. Leo and Tom from The Invisible were the rhythm section for Chroma and they were incredible. It’s a fragile song. Dan Carey the producer set the tone for it just right.

I always loved the song Motorhead by Hawkwind (or Motörhead, whatever) it’s sort of me doing an impression to start with but ends up going somewhere else entirely.

Heart Of Chrome (listen above)

My brother Dominic from The Bohicas wrote this with me in Ireland last summer. Something strange always happens when me and him take a tune on. We adore this, not really sure what it is exactly but live, it kicks off.

This wasn’t originally gonna be on the album. Me and Dan did it a year ago and the rest of these were done within a couple weeks in March. It did point us in the direction of Chroma sonically though, so we figured it was important to sneak a bit of it in.

For more head to Eugenemcguinness.net.