The Seymours (album)

The Seymours is the second studio album by British indie pop band The Seymours. It was released on December 13, 2007 and peaked at #14 in the UK charts.
The album is sometimes considered the polar opposite of The Seymours' debut album due to its dark, depressing lyrics and simplified but aggressive performance format. It is lyrically dealing with Ian Picholl's oft-used characters, such as cynical depressives, misanthropes and sex addicts, and a stream of conciousness technique is frequent throughout the album, mostly attributed to Picholl's declining mental state at the writing of the album. He revealed in an interview that naming the album after the band would signify a "creative ground zero".
The Seymours was nominated for Best Album at the 12th IMAs but lost out to Aerospliff's 5.
==Recording==
The initial sessions intended to record The Seymours were conducted by Ian Picholl, Mat Gilbert and Carl Pinchbeck in mid-October, 2007, after the Take Us to Your Planet EP was finished. Unhappy with what had become known as their debut album, Picholl and Gilbert sought to quickly record another album of songs in order to distance themselves from their bland, guitar-driven sound. They settled for a $55,000 budget and began writing material. Picholl, however, ventured to Amsterdam and managed to blow well over fifty thousand of the album costs, and the band was now on verge of breaking up.
The bulk of the songs that would become the album were recorded in late October and early November during a fifteen-day stint at The Mayfair, a decrepit recording studio in New York City. This recording session was financed by the band members themselves, as they were all present this time. During the recording, drummer Simon Gunn and bassist Twiggy Pop were visibly weak and emaciated due to frequent drug abuse; the former only performed on a handful of tracks while Carl Pinchbeck played all bass parts. Nevertheless, nearly the entire album was recorded at The Mayfair; only Picholl's vocals and a brass section for chorus of "Poptunes" were put to tape in the band's own studio in the Swiss Alps a mere week after the Manhattan sessions, before the band once again relocated to New York for mixing.
==Release and reception==
The Seymours was released on December 13, 2007 to universal acclaim. While some reviewers criticized the album's dark nature, most of them awarded it truly amazing praise, commenting especially on how the band's sound had evolved and taken a 180 degree turn. Andres Lokko of the magazine Pop called the album "disentertainment" and a "musically challenging pop masterpiece", while AMG writer Stephen Thomas Erlewine stated that "[...] not only does The Seymours deliver, it blows away all of their previous offerings with its white noise and raw guitars. If they should have a defining album, let this be it."
==Track listing==
==External links==
RSG Link
Category:Albums