In The Bag: Left With Pictures

After last year’s very fine ‘Secretly’ EP, Left With Pictures full debut is ‘in the bag’. Toby Knowles tells Ragged Words about recording in walk-in-wardrobes and parents’ lofts.

What's it called?

It's a secret. Well, we haven't really decided yet. And I'm sure there'll be plenty of late night debates before we come close to it!
 
Where, when and with whom was it recorded?

We started recording over Christmas. We've mostly been recording it ourselves with equipment purloined from the school I work at, so it's lo-fi but done with care and attention. At present we've recorded at my old walk-in-wardrobe in Whitechapel, my current flat in Hackney, my parents' loft conversion and at our label boss' flat in Chelsea. More recently, we recorded with Pete Baker, the drummer for Emmy the Great, at his studio in Bushey. That was a new experience for us - we were able for the first time to record songs 'live'. Prior to that, we could only ever play one instrument at a time. For our previous EP, we were even forced to play and record each part of the drumkit separately!

What can we expect?

The style is fairly similar to our previous EP, Secretly. 'Chamber Pop' is the best term we could find to describe it. I think that means, 'pop music played on acoustic / classical instruments'. I personally get fed up with albums by hot new bands, where every song is the same but in a different key and so we're eager to structure the album in a fairly 'classic' way - an even share of up-tempo numbers, ballads and quirkier numbers. As for comparisons, I must have listened to Andrew Bird's The Mysterious Production of Eggs about fifty times since Christmas - he has a distinctive violin sound which we've borrowed in places. You could also make a link or two to Jonquil, Johnny Flynn and other members of this 'new folk' movement. I'd love to be compared to folk acts like Richard Thompson and the Fairport Convention but the truth is that beyond our instrumentation and a few narrative lyrics, we're really just a pop band. More Beatles than Kylie though, on the grand pop music scale.

When's it due out?

August has been mooted, as has a mini-tour then to promote the album.
 
When will it leak!?

Well, there's already been a 'pre-release' of our single, Every Stitch, Every Line, which comes out officially on 18th May.
 
In three ragged words?

Long time coming