Click Here To Listen To “Shake The Cage” On Rolling Stone
Click Here To Watch “Shake The Cage” Video
Morning Parade are a five piece alternative rock band originating from Harlow, Essex that formed in 2007. The band comprises Steve Sparrow (lead vocals, guitar, piano), Andrew Hayes (Drums) Phil Titus (Bass, backing vocals), Ben Giddings (Piano, synths backing vocals) and Chad Thomas (Lead guitar).
Both Steven Sparrow and Phil Titus attended Burnt Mill Academy in Harlow, Essex forming a friendship at the age of 11. Whilst at secondary school they started the band Anotherstory with friends Charles Gadsdon and Michael Pope. After leaving school Steve attended Harlow College in 2003 where he completed the line up meeting lead guitarist Chad Thomas via a mutual fascination with Danish band Mew and Scottish trio Biffy Clyro. Anotherstory split up in 2006 leaving Sparrow to tour the local music scene as a singer songwriter. After a brief hiatus Sparrow and Titus began working with musicians playing on the local circuit, Andrew Hayes and Ben Giddings. Morning Parade was completed in late 2007 when long time collaborator Chad Thomas returned to the fold.
In 2010 Morning Parade signed to Astralwerks (US) and EMI’s Parlophone (UK), a major British label famous for its British musical history with acts such as The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, and Coldplay, with whom they released their self titled debut album. The debut album’s major success came from the US release of ‘Headlights’ which spent 37 weeks in the US Alternative Charts top 40 peaking at no.16 giving the band their US television network debut performing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in Los Angeles.
The debut album saw Morning Parade tour the US and Europe extensively, as well as making a number of festival appearances including Rock AM Ring & Rock IM Park, V Festival, SXSW, Latitude, Rockness, Culture Collide, Kendal Calling, Ibiza Rocks. As well as a headlining a number of shows the band has toured as support to a number of artists including The Smashing Pumpkins, The Wombats, 30 seconds to mars, The Kooks, Biffy Clyro, Foster the people, Miles Kane, Friendly Fires, Silversun Pickups, Walk The Moon.
Morning Parade were also selected as an ambassador artist for the 2012 London Olympic games performing at a number of torch relay events as well as an opening ceremony in London’s Hyde Park.
Morning Parade spent the early part of 2013 writing material for their 2nd album. The tracks were recorded in July and August at Maze Studios in Atlanta, Georgia with producer Ben Allen ( Animal Collective, Cee Lo Green). The album is scheduled for release in early 2014.
In October 2013 Morning Parade signed to UK Independent label SO Recordings and are set to release ‘Alienation’ EP on December 10th.
“Shake The Cage”
Read Rolling Stone piece to learn more about this track.
“Alienation”
“It was kind of born out of a combination of an old jam and some of free-writing I was doing, I just open a TextEdit window and tap away, I let it all pour out to see what’s rattling around in my mind. I find it lends itself to interesting melody and syncopation, I had to be fairly creative with my placement and delivery of words but I think that is why the melody is so novel. The lyrics come from the kind of shit that’s constantly in my peripheral and my nervousness about everything that is going on. For me its about finding solace amongst chaos, feeling helpless and overwhelmed by the meaning of our existence and the scale of the world and what’s going on in it. It’s an anxiety I’ve carried my whole life, I just can’t get past it… “Its an endless ringing and its a silent drone, it is a passenger a messenger, hectic and hysterical inside”.
“Reality Dreams”
“It’s a bit of a list song. I was going through a bit of a shitty patch and I had some terrible people and influences in my life. I’d been burying my head for so long that I wasn’t thinking clearly or making good decisions. I decided to make some changes and just started writing down the things that made me unhappy, the things I could no longer accept, things I told myself I would no longer put up with. Things I would no longer be burdened with or frustrated by. Thoughtless narcissistic fucking reality TV shows, the dickheads on them, people that aspire to be like them being some of them – That’s where the title comes from. That concept grew into the lines ‘No more someday, no lottery or fame, no more fake smiling, no more flat champagne, no more thinking “I won a race I wish I’d lost”‘ . In my mind the song is much more about making changes, detaching from negativity, detaching from the superficial and building a world inside your mind where you can be at your happiest.”
“Culture Vulture”
“A Culture Vulture is actually a studio compressor. We used one on the first album and the phrase stuck with me, I kept thinking “Why has nobody used this yet?”. It was really the song which set the tone for the new album. I wrote it on the road last year staring out of the window watching the white lines on the road. Their motion as they whipped past my eyes put the rhythm for the melody in my head and I started free writing. I wanted to write a song about boring things and make the melody fit the mood, I wanted it to really represent the way I was feeling about the subject matter of the lyrics, repetitive and monotonous, dull almost. Initially it was just a spoken word thing but I wanted to try it with music. Our original band arrangement for it was extremely minimal and simplistic with an acoustic and an old organ but Ben Allen felt it had headroom as a song to be bigger.We tore it apart in the studio and started from scratch which was an emotional nightmare for us, it changed shape so dramatically that I couldn’t bare to listen to it, it freaked me out. Ben A was right, I’m glad we went balls out on it. Culture Vulture was the start of Pure Adulterated Joy, it set the wheels in motion and was the big bang in the universe that we were creating for ourselves.”