German six piece City Light Thief have just released one of the best records of the year. Jumping between a series of genres, ‘Shame’ is, at its core, honest. The tracks discuss political and social inequality, self-deprecation, introspection and ironically, writer’s block. As vocalist and chief songwriter Benni Mirtschin reveals, each track is a slow and painful process; one that involves all the band but that needs to adequately reflect the song’s meaning. It’s a meaning presented through a combination of hardcore punk, pop-punk and a new wave reminiscent of La Dispute and their ilk. With the four tracks taking the listener on a ferocious, thoughtful and unpredictable journey, Mirtschin talks through ‘Shame’.
‘Plus & Plus’
When we started writing these new songs in December of last year, we took the approach to write very to the point, direct songs with clear lyrics. As an “after-day-job-band” that takes their music very seriously, this was no decision in order to sell more records, but to find a new angle to writing music. On our last full-length ‘Vacilando’ two years ago, we wrote some of the heaviest stuff we had ever done, not caring at all if a song turned out very long or without a chorus or twenty different parts. We still love this record very dearly, and we felt that we just can’t write “better songs like that” right now – so this approach was a great way for us to try something new.
I think that ‘Plus & Plus’ shows that – it’s by far the most straight-forward song we’ve ever written, and it’s also one of our shortest songs. It never calms down. I especially love the lead guitar that comes in just after the first chorus, it sounds like something a calypso band would play at half the speed. It gives the song a cool, positive vibe. Lyrically though, this song is very serious, as it is about the unequal treatment of same-sex couples. It’s the first time ever we are giving a “political statement” in a song of some kind, but its a topic that is important to us, and also a really big part of my life.
My big sister is ten years older than me, and she came out as homosexual when I was very young – it always was the most normal thing to me, even when I was just six years old. She has been married to her wife for many years and naturally they wanted to have a child at some point. That started their weird odyssey through German bureaucracy. I don’t know about the laws in the UK – but in Germany you can buy a sperm donation from a sperm bank, but if you are a same-sex couple you are not allowed to actually “put it to use”. That meant they had to go to the Netherlands for every attempt to get pregnant. As a human body is no machine, it took many, many tries, and of course these were costly. It was an exhausting process that resulted in so many repercussions in their lives that the years of trying really put there relationship to a test – and isn’t that fucked up? I was so angry when my sister told me all the struggles they had to go through.
Still, this story has a happy ending: their boy was born two years ago, just a few weeks after my own daughter was born – there is no difference between them, they are both awesome human beings. It is just so out-of-this-time that our law still makes a difference between homosexual and heterosexual, and I really hope that we can do our little part in making people think and talk about this big injustice.
‘Wild Truth’
I am a very, very slow lyric-writer. The band is always ready with all the music for a release long before I am with the words. This time was no different – after all music was written I only had the lyrics to half a song. It felt terrible because I was halting the process of finishing the songs. I was ashamed I could not really hold up my end of the deal.
I somehow can’t “lie” in lyrics – I have a really hard time exaggerating feelings with grand words and I’m also silly protective of the lines I write, so I only like to present them to the band when I’m done with all of it. This makes the process painfully slow and I guess often frustrating for my band members. It felt so bad that once again we came to the point where everybody had to wait for me. I told our bass player Bringo, who often writes lyrics for us too, about it, and the next day he presented me the lyrics to ‘Wild Truth’. He hit the nail on the head with it. It tells of the struggles I have with writing – even though I enjoy it so much on the other hand. Opening up to him really helped me not being so afraid of writing more lyrics and this loosened the knot that kept me from finishing the rest of the lyrics.
Musically, this song is super hectic, and was even more in its demo-state – it reminds me of one of the first songs we’ve ever written as City Light Thief – ‘Domino Sparrow’. The fast changes between verse and chorus make it physically super hard to sing, because there’s only few seconds to catch my breath. We just played it live on stage for the first time on our last show, it was such fun.
‘Younger You’
This is literally the first City Light Thief song without any shouts or screams! It’s also the most stadium-rock song we’ve ever done. When I first heard the demo for the song that the guys did, I immediately fell in love with the guitar bending in the chorus, and I also liked how the choruses stayed the same with every repetition, but the music in the verses kept changing all the time. The progression of the verse seems so natural and one thing gently leads to another, that I think that though it is kind of simplistic, it might be some of my most favourite musical bits we’ve ever done. It just feels so organic and its great fun to play live. Not screaming on this song was no conscious decision, it was just something we all felt was right when we were searching for the melodies on this one.
It’s kind of funny how these lyrics came along, too: most of the words in the verses are direct translations from a rant about myself I typed into my phone when I walked home drunk three years ago. It was one of the nights where I was angry at myself for not being a better person, and I think I lost my headphones or something. So to pass the time on the way home, I started writing down all the stuff I used to like about myself and how most of it just vanished over time. I only found this note on my phone a few weeks before recording started, and I read it and I thought to myself: “Maybe you’ve been a bit too harsh on yourself – but your younger you just didn’t know better at the time”. So I translated some of that and added the new lyrics for the chorus. It’s kind of a “pat on the back” from my older self to my younger self, telling it that the negative feelings will pass and things most likely will turn out okay.
Even though there’s lots of darkness going on in this song, the chorus gives it a positive spin and that’s why we wanted a “positive vibe” video for that song – we ended up doing our infamous ping-pong tournament video as it reminded us of being young again. I suck so bad at playing table-tennis.
‘Quick Fix’
I feel that “Quick Fix” is the angriest song of the bunch. The first draft of this song came from our keyboard and third-guitar player Mario, its the first full demo he brought to the table. I really like that it adds new elements to our musical palette. The songs crackles around the edges and it showcases best that the whole EP was recorded live in just three days. There’s little vocal and guitar fuck ups still in it that we didn’t want to take out, because we liked the vibe of the recording. In the little video for ‘Wild Truth’ we released a few days ago, you can see how we also recorded all the vocals live after the music was recorded – such a fun process I can recommend to any band that doesn’t hate each other!
Lyrically, again, I’m kind of angry at myself in this. I do have some talents and qualities, but most of them are not really great character traits. For example I can be pretty manipulative if I want to, and I always hate it when I catch myself doing it. So this song is me trying to figure out how to change and … be a better person.
‘Shame’ is available now digitally via iTunes and physically. “Thanks a lot for reading – I hope that you enjoy ‘Shame’ as much as we did when we wrote and recorded it,” Mirtschin adds.