Let Em' Talk: Red Telephone guide us through new album 'Delay The New Day'
Another band to throw their hat back into the ring are Red Telephone. After producing a dark, synth-laden debut in Hollowing Out, that drew favorable comparisons to Low era Bowie, MGMT and Tame Impala, the band have returned with their excellent second effort Delay The New Day. The album sees them on fine form, playing around with the template of their debut and subverting the expectations that arose because of it. Currently on an extensive tour of the UK, Red Telephone were able to send us these insights into the writing, recording and arranging of the tracks that make up Delay The New Day.
1) Who am I Impressing?
This song probably underwent the biggest shift from demo to the finished version. It started as a straight up acoustic song but evolved into the most synthy tune on the album as soon as Dom wrapped the Minilogue around it. In an alternative history, it hopefully would have made it onto the Drive soundtrack. I think this track definitely showcases the contrast in styles of Tob and Kieran on guitar. Tob’s jangly intro and shimmering textures on the chorus are offset by Kie’s angular melodic hooks – I reckon they play off each better than ever on this recording. I’m such a poor guitar player that I feel comfortable laying on the praise and just being a fan here. Part of me feels like I would have shied away from doing this song in the past; the lyrics are fairly open and I might have tried to make them more abstract or weird before, but I’m glad they made it over the line as they are.
2) Faithful
I’ve always been fascinated and unnerved by group dynamics, crowd mentality and the power of social proof. How that stuff influences the way people engage with everything from art to social issues never seems to change very much. There’s a religious aspect to it that I feel we’re all at the mercy of; it’s a place of joy and danger. This is all of that in a song and I think the music reflects the themes… Going from ethereal, churchlike verses to quite straight, pulsing choruses, almost like the uniformity of people in groups who’ve stopped thinking for themselves. Musically, it started out with a bit of St Vincent influence before splintering off into a bunch of things. Kie added this guitar rhythm on the outro which we immediately thought gave it a bit of an Instant Crush feel. We’re all big fans of Daft Punk, and like St Vincent, they’re great at bridging the melodic and rhythmic; something we were definitely trying to draw on with 'Faithful'.
3) Play the Part
Deep down this is a club tune, even if no one agrees. I’m convinced it should be sold to Kylie Minogue as a follow up to 'Padam Padam' and we’ll retire next year on the royalties. There’s some sort of split personality thing going on in the lyrics – the verses are almost hopeful in the face of nothingness. It makes me think about being stood in a nightclub just as they’re turning the lights on and it’s time to go home; just when you realise it wasn’t worth it. Then the chorus is either about faking it to keep people happy, or a deep and selfless love. Or maybe they’re not mutually exclusive and the whole song is just about facades. This is sounding too deep for a Kylie club tune now to be honest.
4) What To Believe
This one was written on piano just two days before we headed off to Cornwall to put together the album as a band. The way it was initially written was more like a ballad - quite slow and melancholy and more in the spirit of a Lana Del Rey tune. When we started working on it as a band though, Dom (bass) and Luke (drums) took it by the scruff of the neck pretty much straight off the bat, shifting it in a different direction by adding the more urgent rhythm that Tob complimented with this really colourful and quite Johnny Marr style picking part. Those three elements combined to really make it move in a different way to how I ever imagined it would turn out. Lyrically it’s pretty abstract - the lyrics came out fast and I mainly just liked the imagery - but it’s definitely got something to do with the problems that come with drowning in an ocean of information, content and conflicting narratives. Not wanting to get seduced or manipulated by things, all while searching for something to have a bit of faith in. I guess in this case, it relates to having faith in the ambitions and paths your past self sent you down. Are you still in charge or are they running you?
5) Let's Talk
The first song I’ve (Kieran) written for the band since our 2019 release ‘Day Off’. I’d wanted to write more but have been battling a bit of a brutal combo of ADHD and OCD, so kept overthinking the process to the point where I couldn’t get anything down on the page. Ironically, I had a breakthrough with 'Let’s Talk' by writing precisely about moving beyond this process; I realised the only way I could move past anxiety or self doubt was by confronting it head on and ‘talking’ directly to those intrusive, negative voices in my head. When I did this, I saw that a lot of what was holding me back was often superficial half-truths or lies I’d told myself, hence the line ‘the doubt seeps in when it’s spoken out loud’. A hugely cathartic experience. I initially sent the song round as an Elliott Smith inspired 2 minute demo on a rattly acoustic, but then Luke’s decision to use mallets on the drums, combined with the droning synths gave it a darker, almost ‘day of reckoning’ feel to match the first verse lyrics. Once Tob added his melodic solo at the end and we layered on the ‘mini moon’ preset for the chorus line (my favourite of all the Korg Minilogue presets) the song felt a bit more hopeful and complete, and ties in nicely with Dec’s original compositions on the record.
6) We Broke It Again
Industrial noises and lyrics about technological alienation; which I figure is sort of like a Red Telephone safe haven. If it sounds like the world ending because everyone fell in love with ‘Her’ style AI chatbots and forgot to get enough sunlight then the song is a success. It’s also the first song we put together as a band for this album and arguably has Luke’s best tom fills, or the most raucous at least. I’m worried that wild tom fills are a dying art form, so hopefully this helps the cause. I reckon this one has Kie’s most Joey Santiago moment on the album, just at the beginning of the outro. I swear it always happens somewhere in a Red Telephone recording sessions where I end up saying; “Reminds me of Santiago.” That’s when I know things are gonna be okay.
7) Sentimental Dreaming
It was initially written on an acoustic guitar in about 15 minutes while trying to fix the chorus of a completely different song. Being quite a straight up acoustic song at first, we didn’t want it to end up too Britpop by numbers, and it really got put through the mill in the practice room. At one point we were trying to arrange it more like a Robyn song, but we weren’t convinced we’d nailed it so it ended up shelved as we started working on other songs. When we went into the studio to start recording it literally wasn’t even on the list of songs to do, but the last night came around, we had a bit of time left and figured we wanted an extra tune. We started listening back to practice recordings of all the different versions we’d attempted and there was one with this really rhythmic, catchy bass line by Dom. We were basically recording it ten minutes later on the fly and didn’t leave the studio until about 2am.
8) Willing To Wait
Lyrically, I guess it’s sort of a cousin to 'Faithful', except that it’s coming from the heart of an outsider. Someone who’s realising that trying to please a group of perceived insiders is pretty much a waste of life. It’s probably one of the more hopeful songs on the album, insofar as it’s about being honest with yourself - or asking the right questions rather than staying on autopilot, at least. We’ve frequently found ourselves fighting pressures to fit in and play the game. Sometimes it’s seductive and you’ve really got to fight those temptations, remind yourselves of the bullshit, and I think that ultimately this album, as a whole, was about us embracing the creative process and our instincts for the sake of our sanity. We wanted to embrace a spirit of independence and reconnect with the process; the things that got us excited and gave us meaning when we first started out.
9) Leave Me Be
I’m gonna stake a claim that this is some of Luke’s best drumming on the album. I don’t think anyone else would have chosen to play that chorus with a cross-stick. I also reckon I sang this one pretty well, so I’m especially pleased with it as a vocalist, especially as I had a cold at the time and was lathered in Vicks while wearing a Robbie Fowler style nose strip. It’s probably the first Red Telephone song where Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons were an influence in the studio; I remember us trying to make the chorus bass line sound a bit like 'The Night'. In many ways, this one is about going too far down the wrong rabbit holes and how we have this pretty awful ability to torture ourselves by focusing on the wrong things.
10) Delay The New Day
Why start a new day when this night could still be so good? I guess there’s some flawed, romantic sense of hope in this tune. A belief in the perfect night out, or that a more cinematic version of our life is just around the corner. But really, I think it’s about hiding. Taking refuge in the night, dragging it out, rarely finding very much substance in it, and all at the expense of getting on with the things you actually want to be doing. That verse organ is undoubtedly influenced by 'There'd Better Be a Mirrorball' by the Arctic Monkeys, but I guess it nicely sets a dreamy & drunken scene before we launch through a bunch of mood shifts.
Much like the feeling of being on a long, never-ending night out and all the emotions that go with it, One minute it’s a buzz, then you’re down on it all and wondering what you’re doing there. The whole outro section didn’t exist on the original demo, but it came together in a flash during our Cornwall sessions, a week before we were due in the studio to record it. Someone seemed to sense it could go further – I remember Kie pushing for more - then I flippantly said to Dom something along the lines of; “Do something like Paul McCartney”. Within about five minutes Dom had conjured up the full outro hook on bass, and about ten minutes later we were playing it very similarly to how it ended up on the finished record. For me it was easily one of the most euphoric experiences across the whole album process – we finished up the day buzzing about it.
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