Easter Weekend saw two “problem child” tracks worked through. These two tracks, working titles “Jack” and “Pop Em” were intended for an EP in 2019-2020 but got put on the back burner. UK drummer Emily Dolan Davies (The Darkness, BBC) played some great arrangements but I was struggling to make them song-shaped in the Catnyp style. After a lot of slicing and dicing and abandoning my quest for safe verse-verse-chorus-solo-verse-chorus territory, they opened up a bit. Jack begged for some sloppy, raunchy distorted slide and chunky chords and lots of dynamic ducks and dives; Pop Em went all surfy with the Jaguar tracing two different surf guitar lines and lots of Pixies-type jagged edges.

They both move well and sound like they’ll explore the edges of the harder sound for Catnyp IIII.

Bombay & Butterfly is a sweet acoustic fingerpicking composition (my first, really) that was above my pay grade and skill level so has taken a few months to nail. I’ve got a usable take on my Epiphone Texan, but when my new Eastman E10D gets back from George, my trusty luthier, I’m pretty sure it’ll replace the existing track. The Eastman is an unexpectedly stunning copy of a Martin D18, the top end Chinese guitar you can buy and it shows.

Melodies are actually pretty well formed for about half of the tracks as well as nascent lyrical ideas, but that’s the next hill I need to take.

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