"Let Me See You Stripped Down To The Bone"

As you'll hear in a minute from Sean, Song 2 is almost complete! It's got all the parts now, I might just re-sing a few bits in it next week.

Last night I saw Emiliana sing live which was so so so so so incredible. I was still smiling this morning when I woke up! Her show was in a tiny church in Denmark Street, central London, called St Giles' Church. She sang all the songs from her past two albums 'Me And Armini' and 'Fisherman's Woman'. I strongly recommend you buying both of these as YOU NEED THEM IN YOUR LIFE!

The gig was so refreshing and each song she sang gave me a big kick in the stomach - it reminded me why I love making music so much, and why I started writing songs in the first place. Life is good! :)

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Sean McGhee writes the blog: Getting nervous today, knowing it's now a week since we wrote Song 2 and it isn't quite finished. It's nearly there, though! I spent a lot of today just getting the drums right, and making sure the song sounds consistent all the way through, which is harder than it sounds, especially when you're working piece by piece on a computer. I sometimes envy bands who just set up and go, working it out as a team, but then, I make those records too, and it's rarely that simple.

One of our concepts for this album is to make it brasher and more upfront than "The Invisible Line". Proud as I am of that record, I knew I didn't want to make it again, so I'm trying to approach everything in a faster, less precious way this time around. A quick listen to something like "Blame" on the first album will reveal a lot of detail - and it's brilliant, of course - but it was slow, detailed work, with every section revealing a new sound or texture. I still do that now, of course, but now I want to not use 6 noises when 1 or 2 will do.

I think my experience of drilling the band in the rehearsal room has made me think about this - there is so much happening in songs like "Crime" or "Battleships" that it's hard to make it communicate live without stripping it back. For this album I'm using my best time management skills by putting less in to start with! And so far, so good...

Tomorrow, we take a look at song 3. It needs some help before we can make it shine...right now, it's got a great, great chorus melody but the music going on around it isn't right. We know what it needs, though, so we'll get in there and get it sorted. I'll mix song 2 on Sunday.

Also, here's a clue to the title of song 2 - it features the letter "O". You heard it here first...