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“With the first two records, the lyrics served a different purpose: they were there to fill the gap over the top of the song, to fit in with the melody. “I knew I had stuff to write about this time,” Alex agrees. And in truth, many of the lyrics feel like they have a more direct message to impart. The title track ‘Gameshow’, driven by a Joy Division-esque bassline, continues on a similar theme: Alex adapting the persona of a Instagram addict (“ I’ll be the souvenir of this cheap champagne year / Spilling bubbles on designer clothes”). And what he wanted to say – or rather express – was a bafflement with, and fear of, what he on ‘Bad Decisions’ calls “generation information”. He spent some time with producer Jacknife Lee drinking coffee and figuring out what he wanted to say.
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There are traces of the crises that he, Sam and Kevin went through (“ I’m a sinner / I’m the victim / I’m an alien when I’m myself” opens ‘Good Morning’), but not too much. Then we realised that to make it sound like us, we needed to be in the room together.” Lyrically, Alex had a lot of stuff to draw from.
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“But then we reached a point that everyone had sent through ideas that everyone else was loving, and we realised we were genuinely excited by what each other was contributing. But they both fitted in perfectly with what we wanted to do going forward.” I’d delved back into the past, while they were more up to date. “They were listening to dance music, electro, more club-based stuff. “I sent them some ELO and some Bee Gees,” Alex says. When the three of them did reconvene after about a year, it was by swapping music that they were listening to and, as Alex puts it, “trying to get into each other’s heads”. Sam stayed in London, having got married at the end of the last campaign, while Kevin and his fiancée went to LA: a city he didn’t like at first but has now come to enjoy (“I don’t really know anyone there,” he laughs, “so I enjoyed spending a lot of time on my own, and… not doing a whole lot”). As well as a place he has in Portland, Oregon, Alex spent a few months at his parents’ house “in the middle of nowhere” in Donegal, Ireland, doing “simple things: like learning to eat better, reading and just focusing on nothing but figuring s**t out”. It did have to come to an ugly end before we put our hands up.”Ĭue a long, open-ended break. So that’s what stopped us giving ourselves time to breathe. It’s ‘living the dream’, but you fear that once you have it, you could easily lose it. But it also generates a fear that if you stop, then everything’s going to go away. The hard work, for all of the damage it does, is undoubtedly beneficial. “It’s hard to communicate when you just want to escape. “Communication had broken down through being in each other’s company constantly for years,” Alex continues. And the physical deterioration was only part of what had gone wrong. Six years of non-stop touring – they wrote and recorded second album ‘Beacon’ in just a few weeks at the end of 2011 after three years, then dived straight back in – had taken their toll. “So that became the point where we had to stop.” Instead, while Lily Allen replaced his band at the last minute and threw in a cover of ‘Something Good Can Work’ for the disappointed throng, Alex was being treated for stress-induced stomach ulcers. He was supposed to be headlining Latitude. The story of Two Door Cinema Club’s three-years-in-the-making third album begins in July 2014, in a hospital bed: a bed occupied by their singer, Alex Trimble.