Tired Pony began life as a doodle in Gary Lightbody’s (Snow Patrol frontman) jotter. During idle moments on Snow Patrol’s year-long tour cycle for their last album, A Hundred Million Suns, Gary began writing songs for this imaginary band. Forward to January 4th 2010, a cast of characters assembled at Portland’s Type Foundry studio; from the extended Snow Patrol family there was Troy Stewart, Iain Archer, Belle & Sebastian’s Richard Colburn and producer Garret ‘Jacknife’ Lee, who brought in Tired Pony’s final two members, Peter Buck from R.E.M. and Scott McCaughey, the Seattle musical polymath who’s been R.E.M.’s full-time auxiliary member since 1994.
The result is The Place We Ran From a record that begins quietly, and ends with a four-minute feedback storm, with any number of peak moments within.
Joined by a number of guest contributors including M. Ward and his She & Him partner Zooey Deschanel, as well as Tom Smith of Editors, the much rumoured album was released this month in the UK.
Here’s the official video to Dead American Writers, the first single to be taken from the new album. The video stars young actor Joseph Gilgun, who appeared in Shane Meadows’ critically acclaimed film ‘This Is England.’
Gary Lightbody – “We, me and Garret, had just finished the soundtrack to Paul’s [Fraser, director] debut feature and loved his style so we thought we’d get him to do a study of a great young actor for the first Tired Pony video. It is supposed to strip away any thoughts of who made the record and make it purely about performance. A great face and, hopefully, a great song.”
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Buy “The Place We Ran From” from Amazon
