While the groop do their groop vocals I thought I’d share our thoughts on Alanis Morrissette’s Ironic.

I know, topical reference point. We know that comedians have been and done this before us. But we heard this song last night in the Bay Horse, the only pub in West Hamilton without a pentagram on the wall.

We decided to give “Ironic” proper analysis, taking each situation presented to us by Alanis on it’s own merits and marking them out of 5, 1 being not ironic, 5 being… Ironic (we then quickly abandoned the scoring system realising that things are either ironic or not, and slightly ironic doesn’t really exist).

I was hoping that through this analysis we would discover more ironic situations in Ironic than are popularly believed to exist within the song.

Here are our findings:

An old man dies after lottery win

Not ironic – sad

It’s a black fly in your chardonnay

Not ironic – racist

It’s a death row pardon two minutes too late

Not ironic – travesty

It’s like rain on your wedding day

Not ironic – unlucky

It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid

Not ironic – philosophical

It’s the good advice that you just didn’t take

Not ironic – belligerent

Mr play it safe was afraid to fly etc. (dies on first flight)

Not ironic – self fulfilling prophecy

A traffic jam when you’re already late

Not ironic – late

A no smoking sign on your cigarette break

Not ironic – idiot

It’s like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife

Not ironic – just not ironic

It’s like meeting the man of my dreams and meeting his beautiful wife

Not ironic – Slag!

We are the most prepared we have ever been for a recording yet there are things you only find out about yourselves until you’re in the studio.

For instance, I’m often slightly late to the beat. I see this as an extension of the lateness I commit on a nearly daily basis to my understanding workmates and my more beleaguered band members.

With work, I don’t call in if I’m going to be ten minutes late, for that is my normal time of arrival. They get a call when I think I might be later than late. I became a manager so I couldn’t sack myself.

I’m not the manager of our band though, so I could be sacked. (Actually, we do have a manager who keeps sacking himself. His name is David and he is our manager even if he says he isn’t).

I know I infuriate Shrag with my lateness. I know this because they told Marc Riley during our 6music session as they regaled him with stories of my legendary lateness. I forget these stories. Boring.

But I do remember I nearly missed the beginning of our second song for Riley as I wanted pictures of me doing a funny face next to a painting of Riley and Mark Radcliffe they have hanging in the 6music corridors. What a funny guy I am. Dickhead.

(Pierre, if you’re reading this, can you send me that picture? I’ll Blog IT!)

So Andy Miller, our producer, has spent a lot of time staring at threads of sound on his computer moving my bass around until it arrives on time. Even though we are talking in nano-seconds my pride is a little hurt.

You start to wish that you could be a full time band having day long rehearsals for weeks before recording. Or some such nonsense.

Last Saturday in Glasgow, Bob and I met up with John Mckeown from The Yummy Fur and 1990s. He gave us a great pep-talk, something along the lines of “producers always want things to be perfect, so what if it speeds up at the end – it’s a fucking rock n roll song! That’s how we like it!”

If you didn’t already, re-read that quote in a Glasgow accent. See how comforting it is.

And so I think, so I’m no Bootsy Collins, what the fuck, I’m not at work. I’m 37. Doing this is a fucking treat.

I will consider wearing some Bootsy-style star-shaped sunglasses at our next gig.

Hopefully, this is a link to a video of Maya and Cat from Butcher Boy who came in to the studio this afternoon to add strings to four of our new songs. They had only been here for 5 minutes before launching in to this practice run through and it was already sounding great. They were done and dusted in two hours. I, however, have spent four hours trying to upload this video.

Bob and I are on a date in Glasgow. This is the wine we bought at Stereo.

Shrag are unable to converse without a “Dirty Bastard” or a “Dirty Bitch” being wheeled out for an imaginary double entendre. It makes speaking to decent human beings difficult once we meet them again outside of the Shrag.

A wine with a slightly rude name passes for humour between us. I sent a picture of it to Helen who commanded I “Blog IT!”

Here it is. What the Internet was made for.

My great-great grandmother was a Spanish Jew who rocked up in Scotland and married a vicar for the hell of it. Despite this ancestry, I am sometimes embarrassingly inept at understanding Scottish accents. I can’t understand Spanish either.

However, by the 73rd take of You’re The Shout I instinctively knew what “play it less Scarpy” meant. I am a quick learner. By take 147 I was certainly less Scarpy.

Day two was tough in the studio. In the past, we’ve recorded with people who’ve swivelled around on their mixing desk chair and asked us: “are you happy with that?” And as we’ve usually been drinking since midday the answer is always “Yes! We are very happy with that. It’s a HIT! Let’s go home, play it on repeat, and talk about ourselves ’til 6am.”

Andy Miller swivels too, but says, “That’s good, we’ll keep that version, but let’s try and beat it.” This is a great attitude and just the challenge we wanted. We are also sober. Which is strange. I wouldn’t usually recommend listening to Shrag music sober let alone playing Shrag music sober. We’ve changed.

Not been offered skag yet.

So day two was a bit more on Show Us Your Canines, and from scratch, Devastating Bones, You’re The Shout (forever), On The Spines of old cathedrals.

Scottish shopkeepers call me “son”. As in, “what can i get you son?” This makes me emotional, and I linger a little too long at the counter after my purchase, with the words, “Are you my new Dad?” almost leaving my lips.

Andy Pyne enjoys his white wine warm.