Track By Tracks: Everyday Sidekicks - Hope (2017)

“Hope to us is a hugely important factor in life. You constantly have obstacles thrown at you that you need to overcome, times change and sometimes it's not always good things that come your way. Without Hope for things to get better, life can get on top of you,” say Everyday Sidekicks of the choice behind the title of their forthcomer. Recorded at Monnow Valley Studios with Tom Manning, the band feel Hope is a huge jump from prior EP ‘The Things I’ve Seen’, the release of which led to them sharing the stage with the likes of Marmozets, Slaves (UK) and Coldrain. Thematically the band are attempting to avoid becoming ‘a one trick pony’ and so keep things diverse, with Hope spanning topics from heartbreak to the state of the world. Suppleness doesn’t end at the lyrics either – although they can be currently best typified as post- hardcore – the band reveal “We like to think of ourselves as a blend of teeth gritting hardcore mixed with the pop punk roots that we all come from.” Ahead of Hope’s release, guitarist Tim Brown gives us a further taste of what to expect, track by track… 

1. Glass House: 

This song kicks in straight away and is an energetic start to the E.P. We wanted the fans to have something fast right from the start. We are really happy with how the chorus turned out on this one. It’s uplifting and sounds huge live which is great for the crowd to move to and really get into it. Lyrically this was one of my favourites to write, it’s a song about not being able to move past someone who meant alot to you and just being hung up on your past mistakes! it comes from personal experiences to myself and really means alot to me. 

2. Bury Your Friends: 

This was the first song written for the EP and is my favourite. It has a great balance of heavy and clean so there's something for everyone! I’m really happy with the outro as it's a bit different for us. It has a nice soft delivery which really let Archie get some cool simple vocals over. I wrote Bury Your Friends when one of my closest friends sadly took his own life. I’ve known him since I was 3 years old and he was one of my first true friends when I was a child. He had a lot of pressure on him growing up and I feel like the weight of it all on top of him just pushed him in the wrong direction. 

3. Fracture: 

Fracture was a big turning point for us in our music as it showed a much more technical side of our sound. It really helped us find our new area of music and pushed us more than our previous tracks had, whilst writing our music we tend to focus a lot on how people would react in a live space. It really helps us get a feel for the energy behind the songs! The lyrics for fracture came to me just through being in the music scene. you find a lot of bands seem to be getting places just on image alone now a days and it really brings hard working bands down. Image should never define the music industry. 

4. Lacuna: 

I’m really happy with how this interlude turned out. I love atmospheric/ambient tracks and I feel this song gives the listeners a nice break before kicking back in with the mayhem of Business Secrets. Tom Searle (Architects) was a big inspiration for this track as he always wrote great interlude tracks for Architects starting very spacious leading into a big uplifting end. It’s meant to tell a story and everyone has slightly different take on it. Close your eyes for this one! 

5. Business Secrets Of The Pharaohs: 

This was the last song I wrote for the E.P. we really wanted to have a heavy song to close the EP and something people could really move to live. I had a lot of unused riffs that didn't quite fit the other songs so thought I’d put them all together to make this madness. We all love Peep Show so thought this would be a great name for the track haha. I wrote the lyrics to business secrets about the state of affairs at the time. The world atm just shows people dying in other people's wars just because everyone's so greedy and money hungry that they would use someone else's life to get what they need. I’m very anti-war, i believe it doesn't solve problems it just creates more issues to address and that the only way we will step towards a better life is to work together.