Dubstar: New Friends VERSION

The writing process for Dubstar ’s Third album Make It Better had been fraught with difficulties. But by the time the recording was complete, sometime around May in 1999, there was an opportunity to return to some of the songs that hadn’t fulfilled their potential. Maybe update them for use as bonus tracks? My Friday is a perfect example of this process, where a demo that had been rushed and then rejected by the record label blossomed into one of the best tunes from that era.

Make It Better Japanese import version

New Friends had a similar fate. I’d written the song using this rather odd chord sequence, a bit of a nod to the chromaticism I’d employed in the Disgraceful era, with songs like Just A Girl and Disgraceful itself. But when it came to recording the demo for the new album, for some reason I decided to remove all that exotic harmony and record something simpler, a style that resembled a 1960s American ballad. The thing is, when you know the song’s melody was written for a different chord sequence, you can’t un-hear the join, if you know what I mean. So…

I revisited New Friends in 2000, turned back the clock to the song’s original harmony. This is the result. Is it better than the version on the Japanese edition of Make it Better? I’m not sure; it’s certainly odd. You can hear me going into full sci-fi synthesiser mode in the second verse… I’m not sure why I did that, I’ve never been sure. I don’t like much from Make It Better but I do like this version, so the answer is yes, probably.

THINKING BACK NOW

I like the lyric to New Friends though. It depicts a situation that actually happened in real life, on a sunny day outside Lloyds Bank by Grey’s Monument in Newcastle. It’s an exploration of how you haven’t moved on as much as you’re pretending. And how you feel a tinge of guilt that in reality you’re longing to return to a time when neither of us needed our new friends.

It’s another example of a song I couldn’t write I’m in my sixth decade. It’s an entry from a diary of a much younger man, struggling with the stresses of relationships in his mid-twenties.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be single now, in this era and at this time of life. And what the songs I might write would be like. I suspect they might be the key to brand new duster material. But… I’m a lucky man. We might never find out.