Funny thing about time; it’s brazenly and frustratingly irreverent to our attempts at contextualizing it. In terms of our human experiences, no matter what span we try and measure, it’s always destined to somehow maddeningly be both the shortest and longest time. Time; the bewildering confounder, parading around in all its contradicting brevity and extensiveness, thumbing its nose and laughing at our exhaustive attempts to make sense of it all. Us, meanwhile, trying and failing to understand how — our lives at once so brief and fleeting — are still the longest thing that any one of us will ever experience.
That’s how we feel, more or less, about the fact that our first album, Let it Lie, came out a little over ten years ago.
We feel like we’ve managed to cram a few lifetime’s worth of memories into this past decade, but in terms of anniversaries, ten might seem a bit indulgent, a bit young for a retrospective. But this record is important to us. And we know that it means a lot to many of you as well. Regardless of how long or short a decade may feel, let’s not miss a chance to celebrate something we care about, something that connects us. if you are reading this, chances are that this music has brought us together in some way or another.
When we first made this album, writing and recording through the winter of 2012 and 2013, we had no idea what we were doing. We were flying blind — simply chasing melodies, sounds, and ideas that felt right. We were being playful and honest and open and the songs and performances that ended up a part of this batch of tunes were the direct result of that curious exploration. We didn’t realize how little we knew about who we were, as artists or simply as people. We were bright eyed and excited, with a perfectly dangerous combination of innocence and ignorance.
This record ended opening up our lives in ways we never could have dreamt. We travelled the world, we met and played with our heroes. We got to rock and roll with our very best friends and had our hearts both bursting at the seams and broken to pieces more times than we can count. We got to be on the radio, the TV, and picked up a few trophies along the way. But, most importantly, we found out that you connected with the stories we were telling. You cared about what we had to say and how we were saying it. We suddenly felt seen and understood, by a whole pile of amazing beautiful people.
For its tenth birthday, we decided to revisit Let it Lie by playing it just the way we had written and demo’d it ten years ago — the two of us, our producer Murray Pulver, the songs in their simplest iterations, a handful of different guitars. When we sat down to try and remember how the songs went we were struck by how comforting and nostalgic it was, like catching up with an old friend. Suddenly the memories came flooding back. Suddenly ten years was just yesterday.
These new acoustic versions of the songs are a fond and reverent look back on this time that has passed, both so quickly and so slowly. We hope that you enjoy all of this as much as we do. We hope it sparks a little joy or reminds you of something important, something you care about. Music can be funny that way, time can be funny that way too.
