Track By Track: The Slow Readers Club – Knowledge Freedom Power

Today sees the release of Knowledge Freedom Power, the new album from Manchester’s anthemic post-punk supremos, The Slow Readers Club. The band’s vocalist Aaron Starkie has kindly taken part in our Track By Track series, giving us an a wonderful insight to the writing and recording of the album, which is the follow-up to 2020’s 91 Days in Isolation and The Joy Of The Return albums.

MODERNISE

This one started off with a keyboard riff which I started at home and then we jammed around it in practice. It’s a song about the constant need to learn and adapt to changing circumstances, bit of a techno fear song. Partly inspired by having to work again when covid hit.

It’s a familiar TSRC theme I guess about struggles with systems, life’s pressures, and conformity. It took on a new life in the studio when, working with Joe our producer, we properly established the structure and dynamics. Joe suggested a really aggressive synth sound for the main riff and got the bass and drum sounds sounding really powerful, it makes for a great album opener and single, we can’t wait to play it live.

AFTERLIFE
Started with a riff from Kurt, he shared it over Whatsapp and I ad-libbed the vocal melody over the top – think we had just the verse to begin with. We then worked this into a full song in practice with Jim and David contributing their parts and ideas around structure and dynamics. It’s a song about the dying embers or a relationship – where everything feels hollow and there is no communication and imagining a future with / and without that person.

SACRED SONG

This was a lockdown guitar idea that didn’t make 91 Days, mainly because it lacked a chorus and needed jamming out in a rehearsal room! It was codenamed Lemon for a while because the feel of Kurt’s bubbling guitar riff reminded me of Lemon Jelly. It’s one of the brightest songs on the album sonically and thematically, it’s a song about an imagined goddess saviour, a mother figure who sings a lullaby and takes the pain away.

LAY YOUR TROUBLES ON ME

This was born out of a jamming session in our rehearsal room. We were jamming around the verse idea at rehearsals and then went for a brew break. When we came back, we started on another idea but soon realised it was the same notes but with a completely different groove and feel. We didn’t want to lose either version and we loved the idea of the tune getting progressively louder and intense, so we combined them. Working on this one in pre-production Joe helped us make the crescendo work well with a cool synth sound.

Lyrically it’s a song about recognising someone going through difficulties, reaching out and offering support. The vocal melody mostly came in the practice room but the high melody ‘hold on for dear life the ones you love’ over the crescendo came in the studio.

HOW COULD YOU KNOW

This was a song built around a piano riff and verse idea I had at home, then we worked on the chorus together in practice. These kind of songs can be the hardest to get right in terms of how it builds and the general dynamics but it came together really well. It’s a gentle song about ignorance, anger and lashing out – about someone that’s good deep down but puts up lots of barriers and pushes people away.

KNOWLEDGE FREEDOM POWER

This one transformed a few times, and it took a while to land on the right structure. The original idea was a drum and guitar loop but as the song developed it moved away from its origins and more synth focused. The synth part originally mirrored the verse vocal melody too like Blossoms’ Charlamagne – but we moved away from that.

For a while we only had the synth intro, verse and chorus and we went around in circles with it. Once we got the middle section ‘won’t you say a little prayer’ in place it just made so much more sense. Lyrically an exercise in sloganeering, a mantra for education as a means of emancipation from social / psychological confinement.

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

Verse and bridge came together very quickly, and it had a great groove and interplay between the guitar and bass riffs and the vocal melody goes off on a mad little journey. We couldn’t get the bridge vocal line out of our heads for weeks and it kinda blocked us for a period because we couldn’t think how it could get to the next level. So we tried minimising the chorus and the contrast works really well. It’s a song about a lost love – imagining how life might have panned out with your ex.

SECONDS OUT

This was one I demoed at home and then brought into practice to flesh out into a full tune. Might have been just the verse and bridge and we arrived at the chorus together – not sure. Lyrically it’s a song about watching the world go to shit, and feeling powerless in the face of it, a theme we’ve touched on before with songs like On the TV and All I Hear. It was written as troops were gathering on the borders of Ukraine though not specifically about that. It could equally be about financial and environmental collapse, I guess.

FORGET ABOUT ME

The last song to be written on the record, we went in the studio with the track still in development. Joe our producer added the lead synth part in pre-production. It’s a breakup song with a few great hooks.

Kurt sent across a chord sequence over Whatsapp and we knew we needed one more track so this was going to be that track. We had a verse/bridge worked out, but I got Covid a week before the studio, so the track wasn’t finished before we started pre-production. This probably meant we were writing this one in the studio and over Whatsapp with me at home and it felt a bit more experimental.

NO YOU NEVER

When writing the lyrics, I was remembering how it felt growing up on a council estate, where your horizon feels limited by social and financial conditions – ‘No you never did dare have those grand ideas.’ It started out as a piano track but grew into a full band tune in rehearsal and the studio. Originally the piano part mirrored the vocal melody almost completely, we worked on simplifying this so there was more space in the track.

Knowledge Freedom Power can be purchased in vinyl, CD, and cassette version on the band’s webstore. The album is now streaming on Spotify, Apple Music, and Deezer.

The Slow Readers Club tour the UK throughout March and April, with dates in Ireland, Portugal, and The Netherlands also featured. Head over to the band’s website, or Facebook and Instagram pages for more details.

The band hosts an album release party on the 28th of February at Manchester’s famous Band on the Wall venue. They’ll be performing an acoustic set of material from the new album, as well as hosting a live edition of Tim’s Twitter Listening Party.