Better Than Never - 'Head Under Water' (Track By Track)
Vocalist James Harris says of his band’s forthcoming record: “Head Under Water covers the idea of how dealing with depression and anxiety can sometimes just feel like you are drowning in a sea of hopelessness, the ball and chain in the imagery showing how you can feel chained down by those struggles and anchored at rock bottom.” Better Than Never decided to take maximum advantage of their girthy line-up during the writing process, the members sitting down as a group and working together on every track for several months, trying to perfect every aspect. The result is an EP jam-packed with hard-hitting layers: the dual vocalists are used to maximal effect, triple stacked guitars cleverly interplay and the lyrical content delivers a punch to the feels. With the release scheduled for December, the band are pleased to give you further insight into what you can expect from the EP, track by track…
1) 126: 126 is named after the house where we tracked our pre-production demos. The place means a lot to us, it's member’s Will & Jim's flat so we spend pretty much half our time there. With this song we wanted to create something that really reflected the rest of EP, and featured a bit of what we've got to give throughout. It was so good being able to work with Ian (Sadler at Emeline Studios, Producer) on this track as he helped us really perfect it; it was the first track we recorded with him so it got us in really high spirits for the rest of the EP.
2) Learning To Swim: Sometimes we write together and sometimes we write alone. "Learning To Swim" was a song James wrote and the concept of it lyrically is all about how struggling with mental health issues can almost feel like you're being held with your head under water. James said a lot of lyrics came from endless nights of just sitting on his own, with nothing but his thoughts and how they can really tear you up, and you just have to try and reassure yourself. We we're really pleased with how this track came out, every track Ian did just seemed to have this magic touch to it, that makes us feel really proud of the final mix.
3) Dreamland Ain't All It's Cracked Up To Be: Dreamland is a reworking of our song we used to play a few years prior, which was called "Cold Endeavour". We were never really happy with the original, so Will spent some time reworking it, taking the best parts of the original song and fixing up the bits that didn't seem to work. It's gone from being one we didn't like to one of our favourites to play live, we open a good 90% of the our sets with it because it's just one of those songs that gets us all jumping about and it's easy to sing along with.
4) Forty Eight: Even though we've changed the sound a lot since, when the band formed in 2013, we'd originally been inspired by a lot of the heavier pop punk bands, like Four Year Strong, A Day To Remember and Chunk? No, Captain Chunk! With Forty Eight we wanted to make something that was a bit of a throwback to some of the heavier songs those bands had released, and as such Forty Eight was born. This one is such fun live, lyrically it covers the recent results of the EU referendum and the divide it has caused between a lot of people, the more aggressive vocal parts are a great way to just relieve any pent up anger.
5) Lowhill Lane: Lowhill Lane deals with how past happenings can shape your future. Up until the early 2000's James' dad worked at the Rover/MG plant in Longbridge, situated on Lowhill Lane. When the factory got bought over, his family had to move away from Birmingham to Oxford. At the time it was quite a big thing, during that time in your life, most your classmates are your friends, and moving away meant starting afresh. As a result it covers how it can be tough trying to integrate into an entirely new world, different from what you are used too; yet at the same time, you want to do your best to hide from your family how much of an impact such a change has made, especially as no doubt they are all feeling it too. It's one we've been playing live for a while as well, and it's always a good one as James and Will share a lot of the vocal responsibilities in this song.
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