Just last week we heard Angus Oastler’s Sad Song for the first time, and it sucked us in like a maelstrom. His delivery is vital and his lyricism is magnetic – safe to say we were excited to hear what was coming next.
Today Oastler reveals his new EP, titled Take Me To The Ward. To celebrate, we asked the artist to run us through the release one track at a time.
Enter the spellbinding world of Angus Oastler’s new EP Take Me To The Ward, brought to life by careful craft and a timeless songwriting sensibility.
Take Me to the Ward
The title track is the most straight forward song on this EP, it’s a little bit of a sob song but it was very carefully written. It’s self explanatory in the way that it’s a plea for life to get better or making it better for yourself, it really takes a dive into an anxious mind, someone who is calm but unstable in thought and alone. The song opens up about someone who is quite vulnerable really and takes a look at mental health. I would see this as being the most personal song on the EP… well, close to personal.
Keeping a raw, honest vibe to the track, Fletch and I managed to create something that was a quite special. Because of how carefully crafted Ward is, the song takes quite a progressive direction and goes on quite an interesting journey, there were a whole bunch of references we chucked at each other prior to production, which gave the song a real unique perspective.
Sad Song
We really focused on the songwriting aspect for Sad Song and basically brought it to life and made it as good as we could get it. The whole song thrives on a chord progression that flows really well and is basically what I wrote the song from, its a nice steady folk rock tune. As well as the songwriting aspect we focused closely on achieving a good acoustic tone and let the song naturally unfold. Whilst being very careful in production, we tried our best not to overload the track and keep a certain amount of simplicity but still leave a nice space for the lyrics to be heard.
Sad Song isn’t as straight forward in meaning, it’s kind of clouded by a poetic structure; the best way I can sum it up is that it takes a look at the loneliness and frustration that one experiences after rejection but in the process still stays true to themselves. There are a few little lyrical quirks here and there but it just makes the song interesting. This song represents me stylistically and what I’m about, in the meantime Fletch added some really nice keyboard and a touch of glockenspiel to add to the dynamic aspect. I think we came out with the result we hoped for.
Tigers Way
Tigers Way is a song that I have always wanted to get recorded, it’s a song that’s been laying in my arsenal for some time and this was the perfect time to bring it out. I had always envisioned it being recorded in a more heavier rock element, with the aid of hammering electric guitar tones and a strong back beat which ended up sounding very reggae-like.
The words to the song contain more of a surreal approach. Compared to the other songs on the EP which are quite honest, this song squeezes out a lot more poetic imagery and required more from my vocal range when recording with Fletch. Of course the guitar is one of the main instruments that drives the song, we definitely had to keep the energy in the track to match up to the tone we were trying to get. Another thing that Fletch is really good at is listening to whatever ideas you have and making it work to his way of producing, I’m glad there is a song here that stands out on this EP.
Take Me To The Ward is out now.
