Role Model Hermit, Drum Diary

My band’s debut album came out a few weeks ago, and I thought it might be nice to go through it song by song, writing a bit about my memories of making the album and some of the ideas behind the drum parts! This is as much an act of personal archiving as anything, so that hopefully I can read it back in 40 years and chuckle ‘hmmmm yes haha’, but I hope it has some general appeal as well. In any case, here are some words about Role Model Hermit by mary in the junkyard.

Mantra III

This song came from a sort of ritualistic jam we’d do at the start of rehearsals around the time of recording the album, which was basically us trying to sound like Dirty Three. I think the mantra - ‘It is yours babe, you deserve it’ - was something Clari said to Saya (or Saya said to Clari) when she was giving her the last bit of a sandwich. We made a voice note of the jam, then played it back through the PA in our rehearsal space and danced together around a lamp.

At some point we decided it should be on the album, I initially thought it should be an interlude-y thing around the midpoint but Clari and Saya had the idea of it opening the album and leading straight into ‘Blood’, which I now think works well. In my head it all came together in one go, but I imagine that the guitar riff was the first part of the puzzle, and my drum part responded to that. I think I just played until the wonky feel settled nicely, with kick and hi hat keeping steady in a jazz way.

Using open snare (distancing the snare wires from the skin so it sounds more hollow, and less crackly) was inspired by Dirty Three and caroline; although honestly I’m not actually sure how much they actually use an open snare, but in my mind it’s certainly something they would do. I love the sound of an open snare when you hit it hard, catching a bit of the rim. It’s a wild, organic sound which Oli (our producer) pushed further with reverb and delay effects. We trimmed down the final version from a recording which was about 5 minutes long, I think the shorter version is more effective, but there’s an awesome bit of guitar on the longer one which sadly had to be cut. alas…

Blood

‘Blood’ began as an offshoot of another song called ‘Bloom’ (I’m only now noticing the similarity of the titles). We were jamming it at a rehearsal space in New York, borrowed from our friends in a band called Monobloc; Clari was shredding and eventually played some version of the spidery main guitar riff which became ‘Blood’, though it took a while to develop that riff into a full song.

At some point during conversations with Oli before the main recording sessions, we all agreed that the album needed one or two more songs that really sat on one vibe. Big Thief’s ‘Simulation Swarm’ was a reference point I think. ‘Blood’ and ‘New Muscles’ were the songs we wrote with that brief in mind. Again I think the drum part was something instinctive which responded to the guitar - I tried a few different feels, some which were less busy and more laidback, but eventually it felt like the busyness worked, so long as I kept it consistent throughout.

‘Blood’ is a really fun song to play because all three of us are weaving in and out of each other, sort of all doing our own thing but trying not to get in each other’s way. Although the song mostly sits in one place, we tried to really push the dynamics in the build-up bits (‘nothing to see here , except sweetness’). The mix was important in shaping the dynamics of the song as well, Ben pushed the idea that the verses should sound super tight, then it should open up for the chorus and then zooooooop back in again for the next verse. 

Seek and Destroy

This was one of our soundcheck songs, Clari would play the riff in soundchecks (I think mainly on the support tour we played with Sports Team?) and we’d jam it until eventually it got a bit more shape as a full song. This has been one of the most common ways we’ve written since the band started, I think the time pressure is useful, although to be honest sometimes I get a bit stressed in soundchecks and think ‘no no lets play something we know’, but if we stuck to that idea we’d be missing so many of our songs.

Originally my drum part was a bit more bouncy and in step with the guitar, but it sounded too Spongebob / disco , so eventually it became more settled. There’s a little floppy fill in the middle of the first verse which was inspired by Fontaines’ ‘Starbuster’ and I took the bridge idea from the drums on ‘Suspicious Minds’. I’d played in an Elvis cover band around the time we wrote it. 

New Muscles

My main inspiration for the drums on ‘New Muscles’ was a live video of Pentangle playing on Belgian TV in the 70s. I think this video is semi-legendary in drummer world. I love the way Terry Cox plays with the tambourine in one hand and the other on the snare, it sounds so cool, almost like a trip-hop beat, and he looks sick. I took the tambourine-kick-snare idea, and the one handed fills around the kit for ‘New Muscles’; although I look much less cool and relaxed when I play it, because it’s actually very tiring - ironically I think I need to develop some new muscles in my forearms to make it easier.

I think I showed the video, and my version of the beat, to the others and it developed into an instrumental idea with Saya on bass and Clari on accordion (she plays Cello instead on the final version). Like ‘Mantra III’, it was something we’d play a lot in rehearsals, then the breakthrough came when Clari started riffing over the top with ‘new muscles all over my back , new muscles I’ve got a six pack’. It was slightly jokey, slightly making fun of me having joined a gym recently, but it sounded cool so we took it to the studio and developed it into a song.

The second, rattly drum part was something Oli played on a tiny snare drum. When we recorded it and dropped it into the song, it was accidentally offset by half a bar - which ended up sounding really cool and wonky, and really makes the groove work. Then later I had a couple of percussion days where I added loads of layers, and the final drum track is a trimmed down version of that. I like that it sounds a bit like a big metal creature falling down the stairs, or like it’s being played by one of those one-man-band guys, with a bass drum on his back and little cymbals on his shoes. 

Myrtle

This was something we wrote in January 2025, during a couple weeks recording demos at Unwound studios in Greenwich. I’m not certain, but I think it started with Saya’s bass part. The song was originally much slower and we referred to it as ‘the Khuarangbin one’. Later down the line we played it to Mura Masa when we were working with him on ‘Drains’ and ‘Midori’; he said that it sounded a bit Motown - which I leaned into for the recording with the fills and the random toms which come in at different points in the verses. The main groove was maybe loosely inspired by the Stone Roses’ ‘Fools Gold’, but really it’s just one of those grooves which every drummer knows how to play. In another world the song might have ended up a bit more like ‘Fools Gold’, because I really wanted to record a conga part, but we ran out of time. Probably for the best…

My favourite bit of ‘Myrtle’ is the organ part which comes in during the bridge. I find it really moving even though it’s quite subtle in the mix. There’s also some acoustic guitar chords in the choruses which were played on a guitar in Nashville tuning, which I believe is meant to mimic the sound of a 12-string guitar, often used in Country music. I reckon it’s probably our most American sounding song. 

Peter the Dog

Clari brought this one to us pretty much fully formed, and we made a fleshed out demo in Unwound - with the doo-dooos and the piano chords. I knew it was one where the drums should be super simple and quiet, and I was trying to sound a bit like the American Analogue Set. The chimes in the chorus were played on a triangle, sent through a ring modulator effect unit - honestly I found it very difficult to play the triangle, I had a similar feeling to that thing darts players get sometimes where they’re so focused that they find it hard to actually let go of the dart. But I got there in the end, thank God.

I love the production on ‘Peter’, especially the second verse where the guitar drops out and the bass goes all wobbly, and it has some of my favourite of Clari’s lyrics. I think she’s so amazing at translating feelings into imagery, she always comes up with unusual representations which still make perfect sense. I feel very fortunate to be in a band with her, because she’s one of my favourite songwriters. 

Crash Landing

Another song which started on accordion! That was a very generous instrument to us. When we first played it in rehearsal, Clari had the chords, and the ‘Crasssshhh Landinnnng’ vocal melody, and then I came in with the sort of hip hop inspired drum beat, with sixteenth notes on the hi hat and it felt like a very exciting, cool new vibe. Initially, I couldn’t really play the beat for the whole song, because I hadn’t practised much of that fast right hand stuff before and I was pretty sloppy. But I knew it was the right feel, and, with practice, I got better at it eventually, and could actually play the song!

For me, this and ‘Mouse’ felt like two songs which pushed our sound into somewhere new, and felt like anchor points for the album. It’s that sort of distant, hazy, dreamy thing which is folky and futuristic. A big part of that is Saya’s viola effect pedal, the Chase Bliss MOOD, which she was very kindly gifted by our friend Shahzad. Honestly I have no idea how it works, but it seems to twist the viola up into something synth-y but with an animal wildness and an uncontrollable element. On ‘Crash Landing’ and ‘Mouse’ I think it sounds a bit like a distant lighthouse. 

Welcome Break

Like ‘Blood’, this was a song which grew out of another one. In this case it was a song called ‘A Little Bit of Love’, we were jamming it in the studio at Unwound and at some point it mutated into ‘Welcome Break’, which we then played on loop for aggggggeeeees. Moments like that are probably my favourite thing about being in a band. Having that shared creative world with other people where something can spontaneously grow out of you is such a strange and magical sensation. But even though the song started as something organic, it took quite a lot of work for us to perform it in a way which sounded good enough for the record, because it’s a song which is inherently quite loose and can easily fall apart or sound unpleasingly wonky.

It’s probably my favourite guitar part Clari has come up with, I love the way it sounds like it’s constantly falling, and I love Saya’s deep dubby bassline as well. There’s so many layers and textures on the recording that it’s probably going to be mainly a headphone song, rather than one we play live a lot, but I think it would be cool if we figured out an arrangement which felt right for the live show. Who knows…

Candelabra

This one’s just Clari and her acoustic guitar. She’d actually released it already, on her solo EP ‘Thus Spake the Cake’ about 5 years ago. I remember when she sent me a soundcloud link to that EP and to this song, I was outside in the woods somewhere, camping I think, and I listened to it over and over. It was very magical then, and is very magical now.

Thou Shalt Sprout

Zooooom back to Unwound studios, January 2025. We had all gotten a bit bored of playing in our usual guitar/bass/drums arrangement, so Clari moved to cello and I moved to a Conga drum. We were playing together and Clari just sort of came out with this song all in one go, like she was reciting an old folk tale. She and Saya then worked on a grander string arrangement for the album version, but the tale remained more or less the same.

There’s so many words to remember that we made flashcards like they have on SNL, for Clari and Saya to read from when they were recording vocals. Oli put some lovely plate reverb on the congas, which takes the sound slightly into Massive Attack world I think, and there’s a feedbacky guitar rumbling under the surface. The song’s shifted a bit as we’ve been developing the live arrangement, with the guitar more forward and the drum beat a bit more booming, which has been exciting.   

Mouse

The big finale! Clari wrote this song while we were on our first trip to New York, and we played it as a band for the first time in a friend’s office space. It was quite a big room, with especially high ceilings, so the drums sounded pretty huge. The cymbals were a bit abrasive, but the snare drum sounded great, which I think inspired me to play the verses mostly on the snare.

It’s funny how incidental things like where you first play a song can have such an impact on the final version, but then I think songwriting and arrangement are slightly mystical, oblique processes, and never something that you are totally in control of, you’re always slightly at the mercy of circumstance. Another example which comes to mind is ‘Marble Arch’: when we played it for the first time I had no bass drum pedal for some reason, which led me towards a different kind of groove in the verses and a more tom heavy chorus…

But anyway, back to ‘Mouse’. This was always going to be the last song on the album, and at one point we were planning on naming the album after it – I reckon it’s probably the song which most precisely achieves the kind of sound we had in mind for the album as a whole. I find the story of the sweet little mouse very moving, especially because on the in-store tour we had quite a lot of people tell us that the song reminded them of their pets and the bond they had with them. I think that’s a lovely thing, the relationship people can have with animals despite the communication barrier. Your elderly family dog, the mouse on your shoulder, or the fox you meet eyes with across the road.