Northern Pop-Punks FIGHT FOR FRIDAY Discuss the Recording of New EP ‘Someone You Could Trust’ [Exclusive Studio Diary]

Taking the title of their new EP from a beloved The Wonder Year’s song, vocalist/guitarist Seb Harper reveals: “Someone You Could Trust is relevant to the context of the EP and the message we are trying to portray: the effect that other people can have on someone’s happiness, health and life experience.” As their first band, the project began life as an extra-curricular school activity at the tender age of 14, picking a name which “sounded pretty cool. Not so much anymore.”

Now seeing the eldest member turn 20, they say: “We’ve achieved more than we’d initially hoped – playing at huge venues such as Manchester Academy, releasing our first EP in 2016 and having toured the UK twice. We are nothing more than a high school band that didn’t stop, carrying on to get to the stage that we are now. It wasn’t the quickest journey but its definitely been the most fun.” Within the genre they are inspired by the likes of The Story So Far and New Found Glory, creating a scrappy and lively pop-punk, in combination with flairs borrowed from classic rock and hardcore. Following the recent release of their new record, Seb from the band discusses the process of making it…

We’re so glad to finally have Someone You Could Trust out there. Release day was pretty much the date that our entirety of 2018 had been building up to, so it felt amazing to finally get to that point. We’ve spent the best part of 7 months working on this record and trying to get everything in place to make the outcome post release as great as it can be.

The studio was 100% the highlight of the whole process and probably one of the best weeks we’ve ever spent together as a band. To record this EP we went with David Page of White Bear Studios. He’s a really cool guy who knows how to get the best out of us by now so it was an obvious choice.

We managed to record some demo tracks at my college which was really cool as it gave us an idea of what the tracks sounded like from a listener’s view, but it also really helped us to figure out what sounded good and what needed improving, especially within the small details. That was a pretty intense day, recording 5 tracks in 1 session with barely any first-hand studio experience (We’ll get the demos out there some day so you can see what we mean!). We sent these over to Dave and started preparing to travel.

We spent a week down at White Bear, staying at Lloyd’s student flat in Manchester each night. Living conditions were about as glamourous as you’d expect, four dudes cramming into a tiny room at night with a solid movie night ahead of us. Every night.

Day 1:
The first day was basically a massive pre-production session. We spent some time listening to the demos and talking through the tracks. We decided what worked, what didn’t work and what needed changing. With this, we ended up changing the key of two tracks and rearranging IFBBYSFW which gave us the new breakdown section. Finally, we got to work. We ended up recording guide tracks for Gee on drums and ended the day by setting up and sound-checking the drum kit, making sure we were ready for the next day.

Day 2:
On day 2 Sol arrived after being stuck in work! We didn’t need him yet but it was cool to have him in with us. We spent all of this day tracking Gee’s drum parts. These needed to sound spot on so it took a bit of patience but they ended up coming out really nicely so it was a day well spent.

Day 3:
The main aim of today was to get all of the bass tracks done. Sol smashed through these but it took some time to get them done perfectly as there was a lot of details that we’d changed to improve the quality of the songs. Getting the bass done quick meant I was able to start tracking my rhythm guitar parts which I was mega stoked for as it was the first time I’d been able to track with my Orange Jim Root Terror (An absolute beast). Dave managed to get a huge sound out of it and with the rest of the day we tracked rhythm for “Life Hits You Hard” and “Take it Or Leave it”.

Day 4:
For the first part of this day, I finished off all the rhythm guitar parts, aiming to get them as tight as they could be. Next up was lead guitar. Lloyd did a really good job of laying these tracks down and the sound of the songs was really starting to come together. We had a lot of ideas for layered parts and harmony parts so we spent all of this day making sure we had everything in there that would make the tracks sound huge. It was a really good day and we were finally getting a solid idea of how the songs would end up sounding. At the end of the day we listened through the finished instrumental tracks and we were really happy with what we heard.

Day 5:
Before we could move onto recording vocals there were a couple of thing that needed sorting out. We recorded the acoustic guitar tracks and the piano part for Headache. The piano part in the bridge was written on the day and it ended up being a really cool addition! We took a quick break before I went to warm up for vocal tracking. Doing vocals was really intense but fun at the same time. It gave me a chance to put in all of the vocal harmonies that I’d always wanted to hear on the tracks and they sounded amazing. The most fun part of this process was recording all of the layered parts at the end of Take it Or Leave it. It sounded exactly like what we had been imagining for months so we were stoked to finally get that done.

Day 6:
This day was our last day in the studio and even though we were almost done with the EP we had a lot to achieve. We spent the first part of the day recording gang vocals and adding in any finishing touches that were missing. That was the recording process done, but we had one more thing that we were stoked to get done. To end the week Dave and his brother recorded a live session of a brand new acoustic song in the control room that we’d written the week before heading to the studio. Nobody has ever heard this song and it is yet to be released, but we’ve got a feeling you’re gonna love what you hear when it does finally drop! Recording this track was a great way to end the week as it gave us a chance to unwind and take everything in before we headed home!

We went into the studio with our hopes and expectations set high, but every expectation that we had set was completely blown away and we couldn’t have been happier with the outcome.

Someone You Could Trust Track Listing:

01. Life Hits You Hard
02. Take it Or Leave it
03. I Feel Bad, But You Should Feel Worse
04. Target Practice
05. Headache

Check out Fight For Friday’s video for “Target Practice” here