Let me take you back to the 17th June 2011. It was the day after my last GCSE exam, and I was finally free. A year of revising subjects to a strict timetable created by my mum was over. It was done. I could forget everything. I was lying in bed watching Freshly Squeezed on Channel 4, early in the morning, it’s a show that ran its course after a while, and to my surprise came the new music video for Dananananaykroyd’s new single ‘Muscle Memory’. This is a story I’ve told already, most recently in the post for that song a couple years ago. I was always vague on the time all this happened though. Why I can be so precise now is thanks to the option of being able to see my timeline on Facebook, where the 16-year-old me made it clear that exam time was finished and the world was his oyster.

Unbeknownst to me, the band’s new album There Is a Way – their second and what turned out to be their final LP – had already been out and available to purchase for four days by that date. According to the ol’ family computer, I downloaded the 21st June. It must have been on that day that I realized that There Is a Way wasn’t something that was months away, but was actually out and existing and available to hear. I got to downloading it. Shame on me for not fully supporting the effort and buying the CD, but I needed to hear it, there’s nothing much else to say. Especially after becoming a fan through their first album Hey Everyone! ‘Reboot’ starts it all off. The band kick into gear, droning on an open A chord for the most part while a guitar pulls off some melodic licks over the top. The main riff of the song doesn’t arrive until just over a minute. The first chord change in the track doesn’t happen until just under 1:30. You’re waiting and waiting in anticipation for some vocals to enter the frame. I know I was all those years back. And they do, eventually, with two and a half minutes of the song remaining.

It’s only just occurred to me that vocalist John Bailie Junior being the first voice you hear on the album may have been a very conscious choice. On the band’s previous album, he also provided vocals, though served more as a backup to fellow vocalist Calum Gunn due to the fact that he was also the band’s second drummer. Two separate drum kits can be heard on both channels throughout Hey Everyone!. But during a gig, he fell offstage and broke his arm in two places which put his drumming duties on hold. Bailie Junior is very much at the forefront alongside Gunn throughout There Is a Way. And it all begins on ‘Reboot’. The track itself is just a statement that the band were back in something of a new form – a reboot of their old selves you could say – with two proper vocalists, one drummer only and a new bass guitarist, and ready to unleash some havoc through dripping gloss, candyfloss and planting seeds that spread disease. I remember being so happy experiencing this new song on this new album, and when that final chord hit with the band cheering and whooping with the cymbals sizzling away… gotta say I got some goosebumps. Felt so good to be playing this record. Shame they had to go ahead and split up some months later though. Interestingly, the main riff of ‘Reboot’ was around as early as 2010, as in this tutorial by one of the band’s guitarist, they start busting it out spontaneously around 39 seconds in.