Leeds Boys Gonna Make Good

It looks like February is going to be a good month:

FOUR DAY HOMBRE 'EXPERIEMENTS IN LIVING'
Released February 2006.

Four Day Hombre release their debut album on their fan-funded label Alamo Music. The band stole themselves away to Black Box Studios in France in early 2005 with producer Dave Odlum (Gemma Hayes – Mercury Award nominated, The Frames, Mark Geary, Josh Ritter, dEUS). Louis Teran (Dave Matthews Band, The Futureheads, Pink, Snow Patrol, etc.) mastered the album at Marcussen Mastering in Hollywood, California.

Partially inspired by the book “Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939” by Virginia Nicholson, the album is exactly this: an exercise in freedom outside the mainstream music industry, and the right to create something to prove that it deserves to exist. Nostalgia, sadness and a pure and innocent hope that things really can get better are themes that run through this album. Its sound is classic: eschewing the ‘loud and the now’; its delicate and intimate melodies blend with enraptured moments of intensity.

The First Word Is The Hardest – The recording captures the sound of Experiments in Living better than any other: a driving mix of fracturable atmospherics, stunning vocals, repetitive beats and a final euphoric release all smothered in Neil Young-esque feedback. The song is an outstretched hand to someone carrying a hundred tons of shit on their shoulders - someone who is repeatedly running at a windowpane unable to see the glass, when all they need is a friend to open it and let them through.

Flame – A simple alt-country song of hope. Delicate and beguiling, its understated production and heartfelt sentiment makes it a real grower. It was written with a sense of clarity only found from being in a field on a clear day or from drinking 10 pints of Stella.

Thirteenth Of The Month – A fragile piano line leads into this stately waltz, Si's superb vocal drifting in and out of a bed of pillowy reverb, sonic treats and statuesque guitars. Simon comments about the song: “A period of life when my relationship seemed to end on exactly the same day every month. The monthly cycle everybody must obey – ‘it's funny how satellites govern the way we are’. No idea where the dressing gown line came from.”

Three Years – Like the E-Street band trying desperately to rock out through a haze of red wine and sleeping pills. A truly moving vocal performance expertly cushioned by barroom piano, woozy guitar and Hammond. Simon: “I wrote the lyrics and the tune whilst driving to my family away from Leeds and all the mess and darkness it held at the time. In the rehearsal room the song just happened perfectly - one of those where you all sit down play it twice and it's finished.”

Inertia – Beginning with the gentlest of out of time guitars, and gritty broken vocals - erratic bursts of electronic noise and beautiful backing vocals slowly and gently mutate into the loudest and gnarliest of guitar freakouts: grinning defiance with the deftest of touches. Si on Inertia – “Driving in a van at 4:30am on your way back from a gig knowing you've got to be at work at 7:30. Oh things could be so different if the planets would just shift an inch or two. Or the record industry didn't move with the agility and speed of a maimed pig.”

Four Day Hombre are most at home on the road. Their live show is simply breathtaking, taking the audience from intimate quietness to overwhelming, stadium-filling wall of sound. Their next national tour is for three weeks from the 9th January 2006. (AP via FDH)

We are really looking forward to it!