Ruth Cooper 15 Dec 2014
“Lyrically there was definitely a theme, and that theme was basically 2016-2017! Each month, as we wrote the songs, I'd just be singing about what I was going through at the time. A struggling relationship, a break up and the subsequent reforming of said relationship, along with the death of my first dog. It's actually a pretty personal album,” says Thomas.
“Committing to releasing a new song and music video every month is all about sticking to timelines otherwise they would have lost all momentum”, says Shortstraw. While writing the songs each month, some came more easily than others. A few of them came from old ideas reimagined: Ignorance is Bliss was born out of idea of Alastair that is almost 10 years old, whereas Our Simple Minds and The Less We're Together came about in less than an hour.
The best lesson learnt in this past 12-month journey, was that of discipline; if you allow your songwriting muscle to work like any other muscle and put it in a position to write and keep at it, it will develop.
They describe the worst lesson as not being able to give each single the shine it deserved: “If it was a strong single, we had to move on to the next one after a month, and couldn’t give it all the marketing and PR attention it maybe deserved in order to be heard by more people at the time.”
Compared to their previous albums, Those Medding Kids feel more free and bold; the songs are all vastly different and diverse and in some cases, they change tempos and even in the case of Rich Richards, are three different songs in one. The band cared less about what people may have expected, and were more content to do what they think is great and exciting. They tried something new on almost every song and played with time signatures, genres, production elements and collaborations. The result: Those Medding Kids, a music collective.
After 10 years of performing locally and internationally, numerous Top 5 singles, awards, four full length albums and countless shenanigans in between - come January 2018, Shortstraw will be taking a break. Fans need not worry - Shortstraw describes the break as a holiday and will not be going anywhere for good - they will be back!
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