A band we’ve had our eyes on for quite some time now, NOIRE have fully blossomed into something irreplaceably beautiful on their debut album Some Kind Of Blue.
We were lucky enough to get an early listen to the album when it was entered into our Needle in the Hay competition, and we loved it so much that NOIRE eventually secured second place.
Now, with Some Kind Of Blue well and truly out to the world, we asked NOIRE to run us through each song on the new LP. Read on to hear their thoughts.
As a prizewinner in our Needle in the Hay competition, we’ll happily say that NOIRE’s Some Kind Of Blue is one of our favourite albums to drop this year.
Dark Was The Night
Dark Was The Night was the name of Ry Cooder’s instrumental in the movie Paris, Texas which was based off Blind Willie Johnson’s song, Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground – possibly one of the most beautiful songs you’ll hear. I always loved that title and wanted to use it on something.
Real Cool
Real Cool was our tribute to AIR, we love their synths and how immersive their sound can be. We used the CS80 emulator sounds on the whole album but this song really shows off the beauty of that synth!
Not Feelin’ Good
I had just started to play guitar and this was the first song I wrote. I’ve since retired! It’s a song to be listened to when driving alone down a highway.
He’s My Baby
The music is so beautiful to this one and has a real purity to it, that’s why I loved it straight away when Billy played it to me. And those sweet, sweet guitars! Basically our writing process out at the farm was to drink coffee, pick flowers and soak in bathtubs – most nights I would put on Mazzy Star while I lay in the bath for hours and they were the inspiration for this song title.
I Saw You At The Store
Hopefully this song sounds like chips on white butcher’s paper, burnt feet on hot bitumen, wet hair drying in the summer and a small shop in a smaller town.
Baby Blue
This track was on our EP but it was the last song we wrote for it and I guess it started the direction the album ended up heading in. The nod to western/country guitars and the bluesy feeling. The track for me looks like barren landscapes and hopefully it has the same feeling of emptiness and loneliness too.
Dreamers
Dreamers is my favourite track on the record. While we were working on it, Billy and I drove to Bundaberg in Queensland to see a psychic my mum had gone to. We drove a couple of hours to get there; her house was in the middle of a cane field, with wind chimes blowing on her verandah. She was sitting in a rocking chair out the front waiting for us when we arrived. I recorded the session and sampled some of what she said in the track.
Born To Be Blue
We were listening to a lot of ’60s girl groups, and when we wrote the song we wanted to have a similar feel with the drums and the spoken word verses, like The Shangri-Las (ha).
Don’t Know Where I’m Going
As soon as Billy wrote this we knew it sounded like the end of something and we wanted it to be the closing track. It’s New Years Eve, drinking wine, you’ve quit your job, left your house and you’re not too sure what’s next.
Check out the other winners of our Needle in the Hay competition here.
