Are You Happy Now?

Here is the first song by new band Tunc. Are You Happy Now?

We all had quite a lot on so the studio sessions for the most part only featured two thirds of the band at any one time. I went in on the first evening, mostly to help Biff set up for when Laura arrived from Amsterdam the following morning. The idea for the opening section was knocking round in my head ever since it came to me while putting food out on the bird-table a week or two before. There’s a one-legged chaffinch who is a regular visitor to my back garden. He can’t grip onto the nut-feeder so I smashed some peanuts up with a rolling pin and sprinkled them out on the table singing “Are you happy now?” while he lay down among the fragments and hoovered up the crumbs.

Biff and I set the idea down then overlaid a few harmonies before heading off for a drink. I was busy most of the next day with Musicians’ Union stuff but Laura and Biff carried on with the kernel of that idea, extending the round, adding the pulse and drone and generally playing around with noises. When I joined them in the evening we threw a few thoughts around about how it should behave lyrically and what kind of general palette would suit. I wrote lyrics while Laura figured out parts on piano and keyboard and Biff did some wonderfully sinister things on the cello. I’m ordinarily a very private writer and get bogged down too easily with things like narrative integrity, but it felt so liberating knowing we didn’t have enough time to be fussy about what we were doing, there was no room to feel embarrassed about ideas, we just had to get on with it – share whatever we came up with, see if it worked and how it could lead to the next thing. The following day Biff was out shooting a video for the next Honeyfeet single so Laura and I experimented with some lines I’d written and worked out melodies for some basslines and beats Biff had done on his own the night before (he left us a note at the studio “Do with these as you will…”).

And so it continued, each leaving the others a trail of breadcrumbs that led to a song none of us knew wanted to exist. I was away for Laura and Biff’s final session and heard the results in Paris via email. It’s a funny way of being in a band, never quite knowing what it is that one is making. But then, suddenly, there it is. A song full of threat. And I’m happy now.

 

Lyrics

Are you happy now?

We sheltered from the rain in the porte cochère
While a poor bloke choked on thoughts and prayers
Can’t help feeling I’m the wrong kind of sane
Indifferent as the blood swirling round in my veins

Without you I’m blue as a chlorine puck
Feel like my mask came a little unstuck
When I sprang on a spring that became unsprung
Fell flat with a splat like a fat flung lung

Are you happy now?

Got a big bad dose of the mean mean reds
Like mould on a tangerine it spreads
Now my brain is brimming with superstitions
All mangled like the feet of London pigeons
There’s the bite and there’s the sting
Love is a many splintered thing
I’ll do what it takes just tell me how
I can make you happy now

Happy now…

What’s the point in loving each other
What’s the point in loving each other
What’s the point in loving each other if we’re both so fucking sad?

Happy now, happy now, happy now…