Track By Track: Velcro

The Ocean Party’s CURTIS WAKELING closes a chapter on his solo-project-turned-band Velcro with the odds-and-sods compilation ‘Tidal Wave (2005-2013)’. He reflects on 14 songs from across five years.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

I’ve been recording songs and jams on my own since about 2009. Tidal Wave is all the songs I really liked but just never found a place in the live set or on any other releases. Before we start recording our first album, I thought I should clean out the hard drive and start fresh. Followers of my Soundcloud may have heard these songs before, but I’ve given them a little studio magic for this cassette.

‘Melancholy’

I must have discarded this song pretty soon after I started it. I found this demo on my hard drive and it was just a drum beat and guitar line. I thought it would make a nice intro track if I made it build up a little.

‘Shark Bite’

When I was working full-time I got into a habit of getting real drunk on Fridays, skipping dinner, riding home and falling off. Full-time work is dangerous stuff; I would never recommend it. The title comes from the worst time I fell off and wound up with this really gross cut on my hip that resembles a miniature shark bite.

I took a month off drinking and felt much better for it.

‘Bully’

Before Lachlan [Denton, also of The Ocean Party] joined Velcro we started a side project that lasted about a week. The idea was to write songs really quickly with not much thought going into it. The project was called Wizard Drift. I liked this song so I tried to make it a Velcro song but it never sounded as good as this demo.

‘Dreamboat’

Tidal waves – as in the movie-style skyscraper-style wave, not the slow-rising normal tidal wave – have appeared in my dreams for ages. In one of these dreams there were these sharks snatching people up while the wave was crashing towards me. It was a pretty good dream and it felt like a good idea for some lyrics. When I came up with the music I thought it sounded kinda surfy so I put them together.

‘Stranded’

I wrote a really bad script and got my friends Jordan [Thompson] and Liam [Halliwell] to act it out. It’s a really stupid movie on YouTube called One Evening with Horse Hair. I also wrote the soundtrack, which is where the keyboard line came from.

The song is about a time we played in Adelaide and the band we were playing with put us up for the night. It had a pretty gross uni house type vibe and we tried sleep on the floor. The rest of the house wanted to party all night and we had to get up really early to leave.

‘I Walked Home’

I think the inspiration from this song came around the same time as ‘Shark Bite’. I went to this party way too drunk and got kicked out. It was really embarrassing and I don’t know if walking home on my own was really helping clear my head so I rang Lachlan up and made him get out of bed to pick me up. What a guy.

I recorded this on my four-track tape recorder and tried to keep it really simple. I’m sorry about the really loud melodica; I have no way of turning it down. Enjoy!

‘Stoned’

This is probably the only Velcro song I wrote while I was in New York, which is a pretty poor effort considering that I was there for six months. It pretty much sums up half my time spent there. I’d been listening to The Kinks a lot and I think it inadvertently influenced this song.

‘One Day’

This is probably the first real song I ever finished. I really didn’t know anything about recording at the time and I just looped and layered loads of tracks. I didn’t have any drums so the beat is just tapping on my computer desk and maybe hitting my guitar – I can’t really remember. I think it’s a really nice recording and, like ‘Bully’, I don’t think it’s ever sounded right as a band.

‘Existential Crisis 2’

This is basically a shortened, different version of ‘Existential Crisis’ from our Wagga Wagga EP. I was walking home on my own one day and had a really brief “What is the point of anything?” moment. I got over that thought pretty quickly, though, and got on with the rest of my day.

‘Blood Nose’

I really don’t remember recording these guitars but it sounds like I was going through a Velvet Underground phase. I just put some drums over the top, mixed it a little bit and left it as it was. I think it turned out pretty nice.

‘Only Lonely’

This song sort of ties in with ‘I Walked Home’, recorded on my four-track so I had to keep it pretty simple. I think the simplicity works really well. I’m not really sure if it’s a happy song or a sad song.

‘Daze’

Sometimes after a really big night my brain just loops these really irrelevant pieces of information, like names or anything. I end up just saying the word a bunch of times and have to figure out what it means or who it is. It never end up meaning anything or having any relevance to me at all.

‘Rise’

When I found this demo on my hard drive it was just the acoustic guitar, keyboard and drums. I don’t know why I gave up on it. Musically it really sounded to me like those mornings when you wake up and it’s shitty weather and you really just don’t want to go anywhere or do anything at all, just stay in bed and sleep. Really lazy mornings.

‘Wretch’

I have no recollection of writing/recording this song at all. It sounds like it’s all Casiotone. I’m pretty happy I found it, though – it’s a good way to end the cassette.

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‘Tidal Wave (2005-2013)’ is out now on limited cassette and digitally through Osborne Again.