More about: Lou Price

Lou Price (who will identify as 'old' in this piece but is anything but!) is sharing his debut EP today on Hand in Hive Records. Wholesome and delicious — like marmalade and butter on toast — Parkside Grooming is an impressive first project for a new artist.

Here, Lou takes Gigwise through each of the tracks on the EP, and give us some insight into the emotions and musical intentions behind his isolation-produced project:

'Figure It Out'

'Figure It Out' was the first track I recorded for the project so it feels quite apt that it's track one on the EP. It marks a slight change in approach for me lyrically compared to previous avenues - I suddenly felt more comfortable putting down more personal experiences, feelings and thoughts rather than inventing a metaphorical dreamland or character. It was written in March 2020 in a moment of anger and confusion about the chaos and blatant mismanagement of the pandemic by those in power and about how epidemically narcissistic our society has become (probably around the time "toilet-roll-gate" was going on...). Musically it happened very organically, I wrote the general progression on my acoustic one morning and finished the full demo in time for dinner. One of those nice times where a song almost falls out of the sky and into your lap.

'Hang Tight'

'Hang Tight' is a simple love song really, about my partner of over 15 years and how our life is panning out, but also sort of a dream of how life could be. Like everyone else, the past year has given us time to re-evaluate what we were trying to achieve and what we really wanted. We have been in London for eight years and, as much as we love it, we feel like it could be time for a change. There’s something slightly disgusting about the amount of money needed to live a remotely comfortable life here now and it’s a massive shame because it’s going to lose a lot of young (not me, I’m old) creative people that add so much to the lifeblood of the city. So many of my friends have already left. Also, I can't bare thinking about how much money I’ve given to greedy landlords since I moved here...

'Sunfire Setting'

'Sunfire Setting' was the last song I wrote for this EP: in fact it was probably recorded a good four months or more after the other tracks. It’s almost a sister track to 'Figure It Out' as it borrows pretty much the same chord progression, just changing the last chord to a 7th rather than a minor. I had originally intended to put it beside 'Figure it Out' but accidentally recorded it in the wrong key and didn't want to re-record it as I liked the vibe. A happy accident as I feel it helps the flow of the EP where it is now.

'Caroline'

'Caroline' is a song about a couple of things really. She was an international student that rented a room in the basement of our house when I was a kid and she was there when my parents’ marriage was pretty much imploding - fuck knows what she witnessed. The chorus line that keeps repeating is "Life keeps on moving all the time" which is a reference to the crazy amount of times I moved house with my mum after that. I remember getting the first mix pass back from my producer/friend Paddy Baird and hearing that reverb swell he put in at the end of the bridge and loving it, we also added a nice mellotron in at a later stage which at the time we were unsure of but I really think it helps lift the song now.

'Hit Me Up'

Another song written in a moment of anger about the general state of our society and mismanagement of the virus. We now live in a country where politicians that get paid £80k a year can get their subsidised fillet of beef lunch in the Houses of Parliament restaurant for something pathetic like £3.50, while there are families queuing at food banks up and down the country for their weekly shop: just one tiny example of how broken our society is. We must do something about it. If there’s one good thing to come out of the past year I think it’s the amount of art that has been, and will be, created and the societal changes that are happening in reaction to it. Oh, and it has a big fat six string solo in it too, so that’s nice.

'Love Can Pass You By'

'Love Can Pass You By' was the song that started this project really: I wrote it way before the others. It’s probably the most personal song I've ever written: it’s about my mother, about our life and how I think it’s harder to love than hate. The easy thing to do is to hate on others, the hard thing to do is to love them anyway even if you don't agree with their world outlook or opinions. Maybe it should have been called 'Don't Let Love Pass You By' but there you go. Will Blackaby and Zoë Mead (Wyldest) put some wonderful backing vocals down on this one (as they did throughout the EP) that really lift it, it also has my favourite bass tone on the EP. All the bass was actually recorded on a guitar and pitched down...not out of choice, but because I didn't have a bass at home. I had intended to re-record it all using an actual bass but liked how it turned out so left it, another happy accident.

Parkside Grooming is out now.

More about: Lou Price