Bristol, UK band, Stay Lunar – comprised of Harry Leigh, George Coggan, James Rowland, Tom Andrews and Kate Daggett – have been such a joy to watch flourish. From getting their start in 2019 to watching them make waves and turn heads while cultivating a tightknit fanbase has not only been inspiring but rather wholesome. In an age where meaningful connections are usually tossed aside for clout, social media stats and chart rankings, this is one band who knows what’s important. Always delivering top notch indie meets bedroom/dream-pop vibes for days, the horizon looks brighter than ever for Stay Lunar.
After the release of the band’s debut EP, Every Cloud in early 2022, the band went to work on EP two, and we think it just might be their best to date! Released today, When The Sun Sets is a poignant balance of love (reciprocated and unrequited) friendship and working through one’s inner demons. With an overall theme of reflection and personal growth, When The Sun Sets takes the band’s signature sound up a notch, making it the perfect EP to get lost in this summer, no matter your activity of choice!
We asked singer/guitarist Harry Leigh to break down each track off of When The Sun Sets for this exclusive track-by-track commentary, and he definitely delivered. Enjoy and don’t forget to grab a limited edition vinyl here!
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This is the first time we are releasing an EP of songs that were deliberately pieced together. They were all written around the same time. The theme of the EP is reflection and growth. When the night rolls in, I often start to reflect on my day, recent events and relationships. A lot changed for me personally over the past few years, and this EP was almost a form of therapy/a release for all that change. We wanted the songs to feel very authentic to the feelings at the time of writing, so production-wise we didn’t want things to sound clean and polished, but instead very raw and real, so as not to remove any of the meaning in the songs.
Track 1: “I Like It When You’re Around”
I’ve mentioned previously that this track is a love song about friendship, and that is definitely true. However the further context is that I had moved away from my hometown and was feeling a lot of anxiety and emptiness from missing my friends and family. Luckily, I had a couple of great friends around me which made all the difference. This was the first track we worked on in the studio session, and we thought this was going to be more of a bedroom-pop song, as the demo sounded very chilled, but as soon as the drums were laid down, we knew everything needed to match, hence the powerful guitars and atmospheric feel we ended up going for, made possible by our awesome producer, Alex Quinn.
Track 2: “Distance”
Note to all artists out there: DO NOT move away from your family and then release a song with the line ‘I’ll keep my distance now.’ Luckily, the song isn’t about family, it’s about me keeping my distance from problems I knew I needed to address in life, which I think we’re all guilty of from time to time. This was a fun one to work on in the studio, but also a little stressful; it came to doing vocals, and I forgot that I hadn’t written a second verse, as on the demo I had simply copy/pasted the first verse – so I took a speedy 5 min bathroom break and quickly pieced together a second verse to save the embarrassment of telling the rest of the band that I had forgotten – haha. In the outro, when singing “I’ll keep my distance now,” I moved a few inches away from the mic each time I sang it, to create the keeping distance feel – we thought that was quite funny at the time.
Track 3: “Before You Go”
This track is about hitting a tough point in a relationship, and being able to grow together through it. In the studio, we probably spent the longest on this track as we went through a bunch of different ideas for the drums before settling on the weird, but fun pattern that Tom (drums) and Alex managed to piece together. At the time we were all sitting in the control room saying, “this feels weird, shall we just go back to how it was?” But Alex was adamant that it sounded great, and he was right. In the end we loved how it came together. Myself and James really love the pulsing synth/effects that come in during/after the first chorus and build into the ending.
Track 4: “Coming Back For More”
From weird drum patterns to a song where the drums pretty much don’t change at all! This track was revived from a demo that is a few years old, but never quite worked. Just before the recording trip I had a bit of a eureka moment and managed to re-jig the song into something that made sense. The track is about meeting someone new, and immediately knowing that you’re hooked on them, you know you’re going to keep coming back for more. In the studio, the bridge/ending really gave us nostalgic indie vibes, so we really tried to play on that and make it sound like the outro to a movie.
Track 5: “I Only Love You When The Sun Sets”
Well, I would explain what this song is about, however the last time I did, I completely ruined it for someone who had found their own meaning haha. Let’s just say it’s basically a love-lost story. This is a bit of a ballad, I suppose, but it was never written to be like that. In the studio I straight away expressed that this track needed to end absolutely massively, and be the last track on the EP. Alex decided that we should use only the room and overhead mics on the drum kit for the first half of the song, then slowly bring in the other mics throughout the ending, with a bunch of extra random drums and layers of vocals until everything was almost inaudible. This is one that’s best listened to loud on headphones, we can’t wait to start playing it live and seeing how many sound engineers we can annoy haha.
Track 6: (Bonus Track)
This is only available on the vinyl EP, cough staylunar.com/shop cough :~)
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