AT LAST! THE RETURN OF THE SOFT HEARTED SCIENTISTS!
After quite a long hiatus, not helped by a global pandemic and various unpleasant life events, the Scientists return with “Waltz of the Weekend,” their biggest and most ambitious studio album yet!
“Waltz of the Weekend” is a 75-minute double album wild beast crammed on to a single CD to keep the cost to an outrageous £9.99 for the standard CD.
It features 12 tracks.
Four of these are compact radio friendly psychedelic pop singles with huge choruses. They are “What Grows Inside the Garden?”, “Rode My Bike”, “The Fixer” and “Vicious Vivian”. Each one is stuffed to the eyeballs with vocal and instrumental hooks that take several listens to become fully apparent.
But there are also many tracks that stretch out and enter new territory.
“Waltz of the Weekend” is a psychedelic waltz inspired by a day trip to Tintern Abbey. It features an outrageously over-the-top haunted middle section that sounds like “Bohemian Rhapsody” performed by ghost monks, with Hank Marvin playing surf guitar in another dimension.
“Sea Anemone Song” is a huge heartbroken psych ballad, channelling a lot of the awful things that have happened in the last 3 years, with an end section that gradually disintegrates on an asteroid belt.
“Gadzooks!” is the coda to “Rode My Bike” and starts out as a psych rumble that gets progressively more insane, featuring a sly echo vocal nod to Bowie’s “The Bewlay Brothers”, crazed guitars, a string section, speaking in tongues and an ending FAR more over the top than a Bond theme.
“Who Loves The Moon?” is SHS guitarist Paul’s favourite song EVER by SHS. It’s a multi layered lament to lost love with a haunted, ancient, Disney/Night of the Hunter movie feel, and SEVEN vocal tunes. Cashback!
“The Things We Make” starts as a psychedelic ballad about musical creativity itself, but with verses recounting a haunted evening in North Wales many years ago. Halfway through it falls apart after being hijacked by the ghosts of King Tubby and Lee Scratch Perry and becomes an echo laden effects laden dub.
Order/purchase “Waltz of the Weekend” here
“Creepers and Vines” is a tongue in cheek “I’ll never get intoxicated again” hangover song that again transforms halfway through into a series of transitions, sections and sound events that might have your head spinning even without intoxicants.
“The Venus Flytrap Song” is a full-on story song in which Nathan is unjustly on trial for an unspecified crime, but escapes the clutches of a corrupt judge, jury and hangman baying for his blood. It is the most symmetrical song we have ever written. With added ELO vocoders!
Lastly, the longest and perhaps most ambitious song we have ever released. “Lost Mariners” is an 11-minute psychedelic seafaring ghost story sound journey epic, featuring an enormous amount of sound effects, sound events, San Francisco acid rock guitar solos, transitions, and a symphony of analogue synths at the end, hinting at the horror of haunting the seabed.
Frank Naughton produced the album and quite honestly he is a polymath and genius. He even invented some of the special effects on this album.
‘Waltz of the Weekend’ in final stages
The new album, having been produced by super talented Frank Naughton is now being mastered by the super talented Gaz Williams in Bristol and will soon be ready for the factory.
The tracklist of the beast is as follows
- What Grows Inside the Garden? – 4 minutes 38 seconds
- Waltz of the Weekend – 6 minutes 14 seconds
- Sea Anemone Song – 7 minutes 35 seconds
- Rode My Bike – 3 minutes 54 seconds
- Gadzooks – 3 minutes 44 seconds
- Who Loves the Moon? – 8 minutes
Intermission
- The Fixer – 3 minutes 46 seconds
- The Things We Make – 8 minutes 23 seconds
- Vicious Vivian – 2 minutes 56 seconds
- Creepers and Vines – 7 minute 46 seconds
- Venus Fly Trap Song – 6 minutes 58 seconds
- Lost Mariners – 11 minutes 19 seconds
Total playing time – 75 minutes
A magic realist psychedelic waltz
from Nathan
“I’ve seen the Tombs of Tremorfa,
The Sphinxes of Splott,
I’ve seen the Witches of Whitchurch
I like them a lot
I’ve seen the Gorgons of Grangetown
But I looked away
I see the Harpies of Habershon Street
Every day”
From “Waltz of the Weekend” by Soft Hearted Scientists, 2023.
Ever wondered what a magic realist psychedelic waltz about a trip from Splott to Tintern Abbey, with a middle section that resembles “Bohemian Rhapsody” on a budget mashed up with “Stonehenge” by Spinal Tap sounds like? You won’t have to wait too much longer.
New Scientists in May (or, maybe, June)
from Nathan:
Aiming to finish mixing this month, get the album mastered next month and possibly released in May. June latest.
It’s turning into an epic with many songs stretching out, then stretching out some more. Quite cinematic, very trippy.
Probably an hour long. Maybe more. It’s got a life of its own.
Soft Hearted Scientists in the studio
news from Nathan
Mixing a deceptively cheerful pop song with echoes of The Who about bumping off domestic abusers called “The Fixer” (“Right wing views and an atom bomb disposition/Suddenly he disappeared but I’m above suspicion”).
An astonishing amount of instrumental and vocal overdubs so having to be brutal and cull a few for the sake of clarity. Seriously thinking of an alternative overspill album of lost overdubs. Spencer Segelov plays some heroic Keith Moon chaos drums.