No one expected their lives to become a dystopian parody novel co-written by George R.R. Martin and Ricky Gervais. Since my childhood, I have always thought that I will experience the apocalypse in my lifetime. I imagined myself "go off" in a nuclear explosion so many times that the recent Russian-Ukrainian news cycle has never given me a real anxiety.
I live on the 13th and last floor of a building, and the window of the kitchen offers a breathtaking view of the northeast of Paris. The weather sometimes gives birth to delirious twilights, one of which even ended up being the cover of our third EP "Hand Shaking Heart Stopping Moment". Often when I do the dishes and morale is not at its best, my gaze fixes the horizon and I say "that's it, you can drop a bomb, I'm ready for the show ".
A few days after the start of the first lockdown, our drummer left the band. Even if retrospect, the recent years of health crisis almost appeared to us as “calm” compared to recent much darker years, this departure upset us nonetheless. Yet it only took us a few days, even a few hours, to bounce back with a million times more motivation, excitement and productivity than we ever had. From now on we would be 3. A number to which we were perhaps destined to from the beginning. But with this fantasy this time to do it "differently".
These repeated months of forced introspection have been an opportunity to rethink all of our discussions about music and life in general, about all these great albums, cursed or unknown, on our teenage influences. We wondered why there weren't more Michael Jackson or Nirvana in our music, why not a hint of Nine Inch Nails, Boards of Canada, Queen or Beastie Boys, even Celine Dion or Napalm Death. We didn't even have to to change our basic "pop" formula, only our way to approach the music.
From this chaotic time, we would like to thank those who reconciled us with music, notably Stéphane Lemarchand, tireless instigator of many Facebook groups (including the mythical "J’écoute la K7 de la Vedette" and "Les 1000"), but also most streaming sites like Bandcamp or the "big satan” Spotify that we compulsively “binged” in a totally random way.
Spring 2021, we were actors and spectators of a world that barely seemed to look back on what had been going on for a year and half. As musicians, we wanted to start from scratch with a song where we would no longer forbid ourselves anything, and which would be the stepping point to all of the following. Our priority was to "hold on" by embracing the madness, bring a little bit of entertainment in our daily lives and a drop of deliberate carelessness to help us finish the days in the middle of the hole rather than at the bottom.
That's when a melody fell from the sky in the middle of the night, and the memory of ten seconds of an old demo "Farenheit 666" (that was sort of an improbable mix between Fela Kuti, New Order and Sean Paul) were going to give birth 9 months later to the no less improbable "Nevereverland”.
The recording was very fast, the mixing and the mastering were done in a few days by our faithful and fantastic Iséo Furudoi who helped us - for the better - to simplify everything and complicate them at the same time. Since last summer, we have had this game of recording instruments found in people's houses (from children's toys to real African or Brazilian instruments) on a dictaphone. A dozen tracks from the song were thus recorded with this "super professional" (not) process. One day, our dog Fiona managed to bark on time (without doing it on purpose) during a take and we ended up keeping it.
We wanted a video that makes fun of ourselves and makes us laugh while describing all of our little psychological quirks. That the discomfort would border with the gloomy and that without warning the chorus would stay forever in the mind of the listener. Let the fake blood remind of the real blood about to spill. That this "pain (which) does not want to fit to the head" allows us to reflect on our lives : denial, drugs, survival, suicide, depression, anger, resentment, permanent irony. Why this particular song ? Why not another ? Why now and not 10 years before, or in 50 years? Are other people really happy or unhappy? Should we give them a hand ? Should they hand us theirs?
The few hours of filming the video were a festival anecdotes: the fake blood that refused to be washed out (making us very "popular" in our neighborhood), the dog who started licking Pauline's hand because she was thinking she was actually dead, the ridiculous improvised “TikTok challenge style“ choreography that wasn't even supposed to be the there, the few seconds of “Actors Studio” screams followed by minutes of uncontrollable laughter, the fly passing over us in the last seconds, the phone taped to the ceiling ringing during takes, the plagiarized sequences from our favorite memes and GIFs (including the one by Alex Jones where the camera gets closer every time he screams).
Many people have known about the song. We played it for the first time on stage at the Dame de Canton during the evening organized by Kernel Panic Records in last November, most recently at the Bus Palladium, and this is a demo that we regularly play to our friends. For once, we have had a very wide range of reactions, oscillating from "it's totally awesome, it's my favorite" to "it is purposefully bad for laughs ? », as well as « my brain is unable to say whether it should hate it or love it" or "it's the first time one of your songs makes me shake my butt ”.
The (few) lyrics are our summary of the last two years of purgatory, between madness, tears and anxiety.
We doubt this song will have a real impact on anyone, nor that the emperor of the 2040s snobs will make it his reference track for 2022, but no matter how much I delve into my memories, I have never heard this piece elsewhere. It's also maybe my favorite song of the entire history of the band (and I know that my companions Amélie and Pauline are not far from thinking the same). My favorite while waiting for the next one. Of course.
lyrics
Dance was wild enough
To calm you down
These days are slightly gone
And no one knows
Pain don't wanna fit to the head
Don't wanna fit to the head
Don't wanna fit to the head
Never wanna fit to your…
Maze like Babylon
It turns me on
When they turn us
Into cheaters
Enslaved & paranoid
Pain don't wanna fit to the head
Don't wanna fit to the head
Don't wanna fit to the head
Never wanna fit to your…
credits
released March 13, 2022
Amélie, Billy & Pauline : vocals & all instruments
Music & Lyrics by Staircase Paradox
Mix & Mastering by Iséo Furudoï (@Gashasound)
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