Thirteen years since the release of their ridiculous, over the top and yes quite brilliant debut double album ‘Everything Picture’. Those outsiders Ultrasound are back with their long-awaited second album ‘Play For Today’ and unlike some reforming bands ‘new material’ it doesn’t dissapoint. Indeed the passage of time only seems to have focussed their gaze: ‘Play For Today’ is the sound of a band on top form, stripped of any of their previous excesses: this is an album of pearless statements and wonderfully ambitious music. Tiny’s sneer and biting vocals are still in place, but now they are a matched by his bands slicker craftsmenship: previous single ‘Welfare State charges out the gate with stabbing Who-like keyboards, its urgent lyrics drip with irony zooming to the the point at which self referential meets political irony summing up both the bands situation at the countries right wing lurch in one swoop (“We’ve been away for a while / But we were never in style/We are the sons of mums so everybody could start to make this possible coz nobody ever cared about us …””). While gloriously tragi-romantic space rock of ‘Beautiful Sadness’ and ‘Twins’ and the floating brittle majesty of ‘Deus Ex Natura’ these are possessors of knowing couplets that yearn with the beating heart and dexterous atmospheres of a band of constantly questioning rebels who never approached things the ‘conventional’ way. Harking back to some of their most stunning former glories (Best Wishes, Floodlit World et al), this album takes you right back to the end of the late 90s and early 00s when a unlikely band on Fierce Panda briefly tasted the pat on the back of the NME and Steve Lamacq only for it to disintegrate swiftly afterwards. The glam-punk assault of ‘Goodbye Baby, Amen’ keeps you on your toes. While sprawling Floyd-esque majesty of ‘Soverign’ brings the curtain down on a majestic album that both takes in nostalgia, and self reflexive swipes at the coalition and the brittleness of humanity whilst foring a path to the future, quite simply it’s suprising how bloody great it is! Anyway after interviewing Tiny last year, Ultrasound have kindly sent us their Track-By-Track guide to ‘Play For Today’ the album many fans never thought they’d ever clap ears on enjoy!
Ultrasound – Play For Today
Track by track
Welfare State
Welfare State came about because we felt we needed a statement to kick-start our return. Given the current political climate I felt we needed it to become almost a political manifesto to represent we the underclass, and to document how we have suffered under successive governments who are intent on turning the people against us, and nurturing a non-caring community of greed, which is against our natures. The welfare state initially came about because none of us want to see the poor suffer in our society. We are all in this together. We are not scum – we are human beings. I would happily pay my taxes to help clothe and feed the poor, rather than line the pockets of councillors and MP’s, who are creaming off our taxes to pay for second homes, and travel expenses etc when they already give themselves a very decent wage. The money one MP makes in his political career would probably clothe and feed an entire city of unemployed for life.
Beautiful Sadness
A young man out in the city, neon lights, people out drinking and such like. Feeling isolated and estranged from it all, but rather enjoying that feeling of loneliness. Flash pictures of the past. Little reminders. You start to romanticise misery in your twenties, then forget it was kind of a game, and end up drowning in it. Then you have to try and pull yourself out and it’s really hard. It’s not romantic or cool. It’s just miserable. Surely we all want to be happy really.
Twins
As a child I can remember having fantasies about having a twin brother to share life with. I only found out a couple of years ago that I had a twin brother who was stillborn, so I decided to write these lyrics as a means of communication, an imaginary conversation between the person who is about to go into the unknown, full of hopes and fears about what will happen, and the person who stays behind in an equally unknown world. The gestation period covered the winter of 1963, which was particularly cold and snow swept, and that is the winter I was referring to in the chorus. The initial song came from Richard in rehearsals and came together very quickly before recordings for the album took place.
Nonsense
Humans, I believe are inherently pure and beautiful spirits. It’s saddening to hear people you love putting themselves down. Seems so wanton. It’s the stuff that happens or is done to you. The pain, the losses, the unconscious, allows in words that stick like hypnotic suggestion, burying themselves deep into unseen corners of the mind. They can become commands, putting all manner of irrational thoughts into one’s head. Manifesting itself as self-abasement, self-criticism and illness. Maybe if we recognise the moment that train of thought began, it would show itself for what it is and disintegrate. The song is just a rather clumsy attempt to ask people to notice it.
Between Two Rivers
The initial song came when Richard and me first got together to write new material. I then worked on the tune and lyrics. I wanted to say something about the grass not always being greener on the other side. So many people look elsewhere for their salvation when it can often be found on the doorstep, the place where we are born and grow up, because after all, moving elsewhere, you will only find the same – a place where people are born and grow up. In England the place we grow up and discover life and explore always takes place between two rivers, in my case the Mersey and the Dee, and later on the Trent and the Soar. This was my home turf, my battleground, my landscape and the thing that initially defined me. Plant your feet and stake your claim in this New Jerusalem. I felt the recording needed that most English of sounds, the brass band, to centre it, and we got lucky with the City of Bradford brass band who gave of their time after hearing our initial demo. The inspiration came from Roy Harper and David Bedford’s wonderful arrangements on “When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease” and Pink Floyd’s “Atom Heart Mother”.
Goodbye Baby, Amen
This is a song about the power of words to corrupt, suggest, quantify, defeat, feed, control, persuade, entice and destroy. Or in religious terms the power of the word. A word can lead to an idea, a concept, a religion, a war – words are dangerous in the wrong hands, and inspirational in the right ones. “Rules are for the guidance of the wise and the obedience of fools” – that was said by Douglas Bader, and it equally applies to words or dogma. Just don’t take it all so seriously.
Deus Ex Natura
Richard had written some words and wasn’t quite sure how to finish them off so he passed them to me to see what I could do with them. They seemed to be about the power of nature, so I started thinking about the man v nature thing and about how nature is always present and ready to step in and take over from our efforts to stop it, which led me to the passing of civilisations and the temporal nature of man, who has only been on this earth a short time comparably. We give ourselves an importance. This brought me to the striving of man to survive and develop from plankton at the mercy of elements and predators, to developing strength, fins, gills, legs, hands etc, seemingly all to make life easier for ourselves. We have suffered in order that we no longer have to suffer. This desire has developed in recent years to the invention of washing machines, toasters, remote controls, the ultimate goal being to make life so easy that our desires can be satisfied. And what do we desire above all things? Well according to Al Murray (the pub landlord) it’s a bacon sandwich! The title came about because, during the course of my research I came across a phrase used in the theatre, Deus Ex Machina, which is a theatrical ploy whereas the protagonist of the play has his problems solved by someone (usually a God or otherworldly being) who is brought in to help, or who steps in, and as the song was initially about nature I changed it to Natura – problem solved.
Long Way Home
Was written on numerous journeys from Leeds to Hull along the M62. Driving east in the evening into an incredible sky of purple and orange. That’s what its about, the thoughts and feelings summoned by those journeys. Trying not to crash as I wrote it on scraps of paper. Bob (Birch) got the impressions of the sky very well with the keyboard panorama, and the vocals have a slight croony romance that I like. There was originally a line about the ghost of Frank Sinatra singing me the blues but I couldn’t fit it in.
Glitter Box
Glitter box is a noir thriller where the evil that lurks is not a person but a council corporation, the biggest thing we have to fear, as they knock down our heritage and take our money to line their pockets and erect monuments to themselves. What can one person do against these crimes? They turn us against each other by feeding our fears, dangling charvers and paedophiles in front of us like carrots while they arrest poor people and evict them from their homes for not having enough money to pay council taxes that the landlords should be providing. Back patting murderers. Arm yourselves because those footsteps you can hear behind you come with God on their side.
Sovereign
“Squalor is at large in tidy suburbia
Filth and dirt abound in every corner yes
Things left on the floor
Abandoned foodstuffs and things left on the floor
Piles of dirty stuff left to go off and things“ – Tim Smith (“To Go Off & Things”)
I guess this verse was a start point for the realisation that Godliness is nowhere near to cleanliness. I was thinking about Dennis Potter and the guilt he felt about his clandestine groping with ladies of the night, whilst maintaining a pretence of being a married man with handed down Christian principles. It made his characters feel disgust at themselves, disgust at the women who debased themselves for him, and disgust at the whole human race for allowing the lie to live. Human beings weren’t born with morals and should not feel guilt for indulging in that that does no harm. In dirt things grow. This song was the very first thing to come together when Richard played the chords that sort of shimmered in their own time. I spent a long time with the lyrics, honing and refining them, wrapped in blankets from the intense cold and trying to get to the truth of the matter. I was just trying to say that it’s alright to be who you are, and what you might think is grubby and sordid is actually the stuff of life.
I have to say that as far as I was concerned Dennis Potter cast a shadowy influence over many of these lyrical themes, and is referenced all over the shop. From the spurting, squirting organs of “Sovereign” to the oedipal gnawing of the umbilical cord in “Twins”, and the wanking and fucking in “Deus Ex Natura”, through to the title of “Glitter Box” (the name of Potter’s first book “The Glittering Coffin” was his own description of England, and many of the themes of “Glitter Box” and “Between Two Rivers” discuss the concepts of a modern view of this country, and the love/hate relationship we all seem to have with it). The title of the album “Play For today” also references Potter and his ilk as he, along with other modernist writers, wrote for the original TV series of this title.
The release of Ultrasound’s second album ‘Play For Today’ pon the 24th of September precedes an album launch party’ on 4th October at Scala in London. Support comes in the form of Scanners and Dingus Khan. Tickets are on sale here: https://www.ticketweb.co.uk/user/?region=gb_london&query=detail&event=516122
