The Story Behind Happy to Be Here. | Lucid Liars

It's Wednesday and you know what that means.

We've always been a band that focuses on moving forward, but for today I thought it might be nice to look back on some of our previous releases, what the initial plan was, and where the plans had to change to accommodate world situations. I've been revisiting the recording sessions on the computer recently and it's always a bit funny to look back on how you used to record and mix.

I'm of course talking about the recording of 'Happy to Be Here.', which we released in 2021 during the height of, you guessed it, bloody lockdowns.

The planning for the album was to compile the best songs we'd been working on from 2019 when we first formed, record all the drums and bass at either Unity Recording Studio or IMOUT Studios, and build the songs up from there. Initially we had booked some sessions in with a staggered approach, where the rhythm tracks for a couple of songs would be finalised before we thought about what to do to turn them in to proper songs. We were in a very different mentality back then.

By the time the first lockdown hit in March 2020, we had rhythm tracks for '3am', 'Cold as Snow', and 'Two Ghosts' recorded at Unity Recording Studio, and 'Pretty Little Things', 'Claymore', and 'Rabbit in Your Headlights' as well as a cover of the Edwynn Collins song 'A Girl Like You' at IMOUT Studios. 6 potential tracks and a cover that could be built up and all of a sudden we can't be in the same room together or record at the studio. Not an ideal scenario.

I remember Jack and I having a chat about the best way to proceed, as Dav had also relocated to the central belt. The thing to remember is that for the two of us in particular, music was our main hobby. Craig still had his hill climbing but we were at a bit of a loss. We initially discussed whether everything could just be put out as is, with half the album being finished songs and the other half being more or less acoustic demos. We had already been drip feeding some of the songs since 2019 on a couple of EPs with some positive response so we were looking to keep up that momentum. When we compiled the in progress album in to a demo version in early 2020 we quickly found another problem as well - 'Pretty Little Things' didn't really fit anywhere. We settled on finishing it up and putting it out as a single in the meantime, which got a bit of traction on Spotify. Alongside this we were looking at old archived songs to see if there was anything else, finding an old demo of a song called 'Tonight' that would eventually release as 'You Can't Win/I Can't Lose' to further bridge the gap. This song was polished up and released to essentially buy us time while we figured out the best way to finish the album.

We had envisioned the 'Happy to Be Here.' album as a narrative thread with key moments so in essence what this meant was certain tracks were always locked in to specific parts of the narrative, thus tracklisting. When we looked over the demo version, it was clear that there just wasn't enough finished material here to put out an album we'd be happy with. In mid-late 2020 the album tracklisting looked a little like this

Two Ghosts - finished

3am - finished

Happy to Be Here - acoustic demo

Untitled #1 - demo

Sad to Be Gone - demo

Cold as Snow - finished

Rabbit in Your Headlights - finished

Claymore - finished

8 tracks of varying recording quality with no connective tissue.

The elephant in the room was always the drum recording. As all the studios were shut, Jack and I had discussed how to best get our heads round drum recording. We had done this ourselves in the past but never quite learned enough about the process. We had lots of debate back and forth, learning about mic choices and placement, software and hardware, moving equipment back and forth between us in what would set us off on a journey of true home recording. We're still looking to understand the process itself as Jack has said in his blog earlier in the year.

With this in mind we continued writing remotely and passing back and forth demos that were becoming slightly more polished with each revision. Lyrics were rewritten, arrangements dragged in to position, new home recording techniques for guitars and vocals, everything became about how to learn the process. I was living alone at the time and had converted one of the spare bedrooms in to a makeshift studio which allowed for a space to simply enjoy writing and recording, Jack had his recording den at the portacabin, and Craig had his Kurzweil setup to record quickly. It was relatively frantic at times as ideas took hold and we'd wait for new takes to be sent over. A very fun but different time in the band.

One of the first drum takes we managed to get "right" in the closest sense of the word was 'Sad to Be Gone', which in the grand scheme of things came together very quickly. One thing about the drums was we didn't really get the stereo field right, the overheads provided a very narrow take. We instead decided to lean in to this to give a bit of a strange effect - the drums are more or less in the middle channel. while the guitars, vocals and organ are very wide, giving the song an almost 60s feel. Leaning in to this gave us a bit of confidence that we could just mix around the drum takes to create something finished.

Things begun to open up a bit, and we enlisted some friends to add brass and strings to the arrangement, usually I'd split these takes in to loops, process them as samples, and drop them in when needed. This approach is best heard in 'Two Ghosts', 'Happy to Be Here', 'Untitled #1' and 'White Lady', essentially rearranging items to fit how the songs had changed since the initial composition.

One of the final songs finished up was 'All My Time', which puts a bittersweet note on the album. It was another one that came together quickly once we sat down to finish it, with the strings being added relatively late - initially the melodies were guitar and piano.

Jack here. Another aspect of this period was me beginning to get to grips with photoshop in earnest. Much like the drum recording, there was a fairly steep learning curve that was often paralysing but it’s not like we didn’t have plenty of time to experiment with logos, posters and album art and developing more of a visual identity for the band.

Looking back at some of those files now is kind of hilarious. The sheer numbers of layers and effects just piled on top of each other in no particular order… I made a poster yesterday for our upcoming Edinburgh gig in about an hour that probably would have taken me a week of misery back then.

But as Rikki has pointed out, that spirit is really what ‘Happy to Be Here.’ was all about. We didn’t know how to do something, we had a go, probably got it wrong a hundred times, and eventually figured it out.

Overall, we learned a lot about the kind of band we wanted to be. Independent, doing things our own way, and having fun doing it. It's amazing how not being able to be in the same room kind of set us off on this journey of 'do it ourselves', something that's become basically the band motto.

Anyways, until next time.