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Athlete on 'Tourist'

added 25 January 2005 at 16.52

Athlete take an altogether more sombre tone on the follow-up to 2003's jovial 'Vehicles & Animals'. Hear Carey Willetts and Steve Roberts talk us through the Deptford boys' sophomore effort track-by-track plus hear 'Tourist' for yourself in full.

When Athlete emerged onto the Rock Scene in 2002, they were a group of fresh-faced young optimists armed with a bunch of uplifting, infectious tunes like 'El Salvador', 'Westside' and 'Beautiful'. Three years on they've delivered the altogether darker but no less beautiful 'Tourist' album. Bassist Carey Willetts and tub-thumper Steve Roberts talked John Kennedy through the whole record, track by track.

Hear their commentary below and click here to listen to the album itself, in full.

'Chances'
"It feels like a really good opening track to an album 'cos, like you say, take all your chances while you can is really positive; 'Right, okay, gotta grab hold of this, make it go somewhere' And it felt very much like that to us at the time." [listen]

'Half-Light'
"It's kind of about the great aspects of being away and also the hard aspects of being away; you miss people. And that song and 'Tourist' are probably the most obvious ones that are 'I love being here but I miss you'." [listen]

'Tourist'
"It's probably the most self-explanatory song on the album but it was a really enjoyable song to make, partly because it has the strings on it which we really enjoyed." [listen]

'Trading Air'
"I suppose it was kind of written around the story of me and my wife getting together, which looked like it wouldn't happen for quite a while, what with her moving to Germany and then coming back engaged to someone else..." [listen]

'Wires'
"You write songs for a variety of reasons and for him, he didn't intend on writing a song about his newborn daughter almost dying, it's almost like therapy in some ways." [listen]

'If I Found Out'
"It was almost that the song became about it self, in a really weird way. 'Cos you're writing the song and the lyrics are almost about the process you've gone through writing the song." [listen]

'Yesterday Threw Everything At Me'
"We spent some time trying to think of some things that are inherently a lie, but kind of trying to turn that around. For example; plastic flowers." [listen]

'Street Map'
"The whole thing is a really beautiful song but it needed an edge to almost allow it to be that beautiful, you need an element of dirt or something that's off-kilter somewhere." [listen]

'Modern Mafia'
"It wasn't really meant to be a completely agressive 'We hate you, come on!' kind of song. It was more just kind of the positive side of how we are together." [listen]  

'Twenty Four Hours'
"Because it was one of the last songs I think we knew where we were going with the album and we felt a lot more confident about the sound we were creating." [listen]

'I Love'
"I think we all agreed it's possibly the best way to end this album and it does sum up a lot of the feelings that we've gone through on it." [listen]

www.athlete.mu

Hear 'Tourist' on the Xfm Listening Post

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