These Were The Earlies

It was twenty years ago today. My today, which is yesterday to you if you’re reading this on Saturday. If you’re reading this at some random date in the future then that’s up to you, but all the symbolism of it being twenty years ago is a bit knackered.

Anyway my friends and I recorded a beautiful, expansive and ambitious album that’s been all but forgotten since. I’m crouched over the dying flame trying to shield it here, looking around for someone to help me. On that July morning in 2004 I wouldn’t have been able to imagine a future where we didn’t really do this anymore. On that day, as the gushing reviews poured in, it felt like we were truly anointed.

I mean look at them! Apart from the iD magazine one, I actually wrote that myself as they said they’d give us a positive review but they couldn’t be arsed writing it themselves. Moving swiftly on though, “the best debut album of 2004,” “journeying awestruck through an imaginary wild west,” and “Insane pop genius?” We got ten out of fucking ten in the NME! Nobody got ten out of ten from those clever dicks. Not even their cover darlings like the Libertines and the Strokes. That must theoretically mean that we’d made the perfect album right?

It wasn’t perfect but it was beautiful. By the time the album came out most of it had been released on the various tiny vinyl runs we’d done, hence the name These Were The Earlies. Some of them were limited to 200 copies but still, they’d been out there. We managed to get in a studio together for one day right at the end, to create one last song. Our first time all in a room together. Dead Birds is the last song on there and a fitting close to the album.

JM had written the words and a simple melody that he’d written the letters down for. Brandon started singing it and I wrote the chords around it. I made the chaotic middle section with Gaz and Nicky and a whole host of brass instruments. Semay went apeshit over the middle and then did beautiful chordal lines to sweeten the end. Sara did about five seconds of stacked harmony over the fly away part that made it infinitely better by going lydian for a moment. Tom Knott played trumpet and engineered the whole thing, making it sparkle that bit more than our previous bedroom attempts.

It capped off the album, the Mother Mary, take me home refrain made the whole thing sound vaguely conceptual. Not ‘on the nose’ conceptual like War of the Worlds or something, just a fleeting sense of yearning and homesickness that seemed to link it all together. There were moments of brilliance throughout, One of Us Is Dead had the psychedelic chopped sermon from JM’s Grandmother’s memorial service. Wayward Song was driven along by pulsing bassoon, more than a little bit inspired by Tears of a Clown. Morning Wonder is of course astounding, with understated bass brilliance from Alex. There were stacked knackered pianos and skittering, nervous programmed drums on 25 Easy Pieces, an army of 50 brass instruments blaring through the Devil’s Country and the mechanical, motorised rhythms of the Fatherland in Bring it Back Again. That’s not even all of it, and all of it is good. Everybody did their bit but JM did more than anyone, whenever I listen to One Of Us Is Dead I feel like I really see into his soul. The rest of us did stuff on it but it was very him. Giles had flourishes of brilliance in 25 Easy Pieces and Wayward Song. Brandon had one of those supernatural voices that let you know we’re being watched over by something benevolent and caring, even if you don’t believe. And his accent is so Texan, imagine how shit this album would be if he sounded like me?

It’d have all been worthless if it had a picture of us all stood in front of Burnley Bus Station on the front cover but luckily we kept ourselves off the packaging completely. Billy found a wonderful German artist living in London called Rina Donnersmarck who as well as designing the cover did an illustration for every track on the album, often incorporating the lyrics. This is the Devil’s Country one:

If you were buying the CD instead of the vinyl the disc face looked like this:

The sheer amount of work she did for us was astounding. She did all that in the album cover, she did all our singles, the on body vinyl designs, our gig posters and our Christmas cards. She even took the time to go through the drab photographs, that were our very best efforts to look palatable, and embellish them with birds and flowers.

Here’s her design for the pre-release tour we’d done the week before:

She even seems to have done original art for magazine articles, I don’t remotely remember what this was and I’ll never know because it’s foreign:

The album was capped off by sleeve notes written by Paul Taylor, who was a friend of Giles and JM from Manchester. He wrote a small essay that had nothing to do with the band, about a magazine where people were encouraged to write in and describe items they’d found. He ruminates on the implications of this in all sorts of deep and metaphysical ways before concluding that the magazine was created by someone who cares. “Just like the Earlies do.”

We cared, Billy cared, Rina cared, even 679 cared for a bit and it all showed in a package that was worth having and holding. You wouldn’t have dreamt of streaming it even if you could back then.

And what did a band do on release day in 2004? If it were today we’d be updating our Instagram stories every hour, organising a listening party, doing TikTok videos with a dance routine, putting out tweets saying we were “super excited to announce the release,” encouraging fans to tag themselves and the Earlies in videos describing their favourite song etc etc etc…

But in 2004 you just sat in your house. And waited.

I thought we’d got to this point in the movie of our lives.

We hadn’t gotten to our “rich and famous” moment though, not in the slightest. We were at the front end of a couple of difficult and ultimately disappointing years. We would fail spectacularly. There were too many of us, we moved too slowly and too expensively. Every tour cost us two grand in flights before we’d even rehearsed. We didn’t really rehearse so that saved us quite a bit. We didn’t really ever pay ourselves so that was also a saving. We should’ve been more ruthless. We should’ve streamlined. We should’ve sacked the band. The boat was filling with water from the second we set sail. We were the greatest cultural tragedy of my life but now I’m 47 I don’t think I could ever want it any other way. I love everybody in that band and I could ring any of them today and ask for the kind of big, intrusive favour that you would normally only dare ask a family member for. They’d all deliver without thinking. When I’m failing I like to make sure I’m failing in the right general direction. I think the direction of the Earlies was absolutely right even if we charged off full speed and fell over face first in the mud.

If the flame I was crouching over was any bigger I’d be telling you tickets go on sale for the 20 year anniversary tour today so you better hurry and snap them up. They don’t though. Or I’d be telling you there’s a deluxe box set of limited edition vinyl out today full of bonuses and outtakes. There isn’t though. It’d be easy for you to respond to those things too, parting with cash is easy so you could buy a new vinyl and never play it whilst feeling like you’d done your bit. The most generous thing you can give in this insane future we’ve landed in is your time and attention, so today I’m going to ask those of you. Today, I’d like you to take 50 minutes out of your day and listen to These Were the Earlies all the way through. On headphones. Or a really fucking amazing pair of speakers. On a CD or vinyl if you have them. Or even shitty old Spotify if that’s the best you can find.

Listen before we’ve been forgotten forever.

Listen with love and imagine what we might’ve been.

Listen, and Bring It Back Again.