Track By Track: Average Joe - ‘Take It Or Leave It EP’
Stoke-on-Trent crooner Average Joe talks to us about his new EP ‘Take It Or Leave It’ - track by track.
King For A Day
The song is about the vapidness of consumerist culture, and the shallowness of weekend hedonism. Seems to me our culture cut itself off from the transcendent and we have reached the point where our materialism propels us headlong into some dystopian technocracy. Fast food, fast morals - it doesn't sit easy with me. I wanted to reflect this emptiness of meaning, so the song’s a sort of saccharine tv theme styled tune, tongue in cheek, forced happiness. It’s the band's least favourite song to perform, which to me indicates that it’s done it’s job.
Taxi
Taxi’s your sort of classic heartbreak pop tune. A sort of crooner-barfly-jazzy number set in some dilapidated backwater in the Midlands. It’s a hangover tune from (our debut EP) Heartbreaker so I just continued the story from where I left off. Very wordy, I was still playing around with rap at the time of writing, I feel you need to have few bars in the bank nowadays, seeing as the genre’s been such a dominant presence of late.
Promo
Another tongue in cheek tune, sort of a dig at the industry. The idea of celebrity, and the idol worship you get in this business, it’s a crock of shit. I just wanted to mirror the sentiment you find in a lot of rap, pop stuff “I’m the bee’s knees” and all that. Seems to be a common theme in a lot of my stuff so far, I think it’s funny playing around with the bullshit stereotype of being a rockstar. For some reason I think my salt of the earth upbringing allows me to take the glitter away from the sentiment and lets people see it for what it actually is (an act), I have trouble pretending - you cant polish a turd. Nice afro beat Tarantino vibes though.
The Truth
The Truth’s another hangover from the Heartbreak EP. Sort of more classic soul vibes on this one. Sentimental, confessional type of thing. I tried not to overcomplicate things or be too verbose with this one, just a straight pop shot. Same goes sonically, we tried for vintage 60s and got somewhere close, considering our budget bedroom recording set up.
A Weekend In Wales
Not too sure what this one’s about really, I think a few different stories got wrapped up into a general feeling. I was sort of stuck in a rut emotionally, financially, romantically, and so I went for a weekends camping in Wales. Had a great time, felt refreshed whilst I was there, got back and nothing had changed. Sonically it’s sort of do-wop-esque with a Bacharach middle 8, nice tune.