Journal of the King

GPO have been busy. We have started work on our next extended-player (assuming, when the time comes, you download the whole thing) which will be called Life Is Cheap. And it kind of is. The first track from these epic sessions is now ready for your listening ears. 

Journal of the King, as the kids call it - for 'tis it's name - is a crunchy-yet-somehow-jangly little number, just right for people who like this kind of thing. We are tempted to call it a tour de force, but then pretension was never our strong suit. Also, as the cover of the single features a stolen portrait of King Richard III, using French seems somewhat inappropriate. 

Instead, and as humbly as we can, we simply refer to it as the greatest single moment in the history of indie rock. We feel that is fitting. Our manager felt that, perhaps, we were underselling the quality of the music by using such conservative language, but after much thought we said:

"Derek," he likes us to use his full name, "we understand your concerns. We do. But the worst thing in the world is when a band gets full of themselves and start sprouting off about how wonderful they are. That isn't really for us to say. We will let the fans decide. We can only say as much as is obvious to anyone at first glance... that this is the greatest moment of indie rock, ever. We know you want us to play the game, but we won't, Derek. We just won't. Consider the children!"

He sighed a lot, but ultimately he accepted our stance. It was very reasonable, after all. 

So, here it is. Journal of the King. The rest of the album is coming along nicely, and should be available to you and yours sometime around February 2013. We can't pretend there haven't been snags and dramas. The recording software (we use ProTools... sometimes people accuse us of being out of touch, but if you want a vintage sound you have to go back to the old ways. That's what Mozart did) crashed on more than one occasion. Downright irresponsibly, actually. Once more and it'll lose it's licence. There was also the issue of internal tensions within the band. Derek seems to think we need a lot more of that for the creative process to really be fulfilling, and to give us something to bitch to the press about in future. Alas, we spent most of the time saying terribly nice things to each other and feeling we were all contributing equally to the sound of the record. With luck the situation will improve, but we all know it will be a long road ahead.

That's the news from GPO. Enjoy the single, and keep an appropriate facial feature out for the next one. Meanwhile, we trust that the children are being considered, in all things. They're the future, man.

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