Christmas Newsletter 2025

 

HO HO HO! MEEEEEEEEERRY CHRISTMAS! A special time of year when, on the supposed birthday of a religious figure you may or may not be fond of (I personally think Jesus was pretty alright, a good socialist, although he had a tendency to self-mythologise) we all return from our adult lives to the family of origin, sit around an indoor tree, remove the shiny paper and ribbons used to conceal the true nature of objects, and drink and eat ourselves into a catatonic state. Really really spectacular - my favorite part of Christmas day is the wee small hours of the morning, 9 bottles of real ale deep, watching auld crap on YouTube in my new polo neck shirt... hope everyone got the gifts they wanted by the way. If nothing else, you got a card from Four Blokes.

As with all Four Blokes Newsletters this is essentially an anecdotal recount of events in chronological order, only this time we're doing a whistle-stop tour of ALL OF 2025! Christmas is a good time to reflect on the year's events, as "the monarch" does on the television each Christmas lunchtime. Of course, if you're a white liberal, you can tune over to Channel 4 to watch Stephen Fry or someone like that give their version of the Christmas speech while you eat your salmon en croute. Christmas Day 2025 actually marks the 1 year anniversary of this publication so even more reason for reflection. On Christmas Day 2024, this was the state of affairs: Four Blokes hadn't performed live in 4 months, they had put 1 song out all year, the 1st album was in production hell and the 2nd album had just commenced recording. Shall we see where we find ourselves 365 days later?

On January 1st I worked my last shift at Tesco Superstore, and on January 2nd I wrote a hymn about my experience working there - after a trip to the local Catholic Church to hear the experts do it, me and Tiago popped down to Maisy's house to record it. Got to ring that ceremonial bell, lads! This song later became known as Godless Hymn. In January I also wrote Off The Drink (in a John Lewis furniture display) and Xylazine Addiction (in Queen Victoria's stately home on the Isle of Wight - Queen Victoria never gave a Christmas Speech on BBC1 due to technological shortcomings of the era).

 

On the live front, 3 members of  the "shoegaze" band Cherry Waves were brought in on a 2 gig loan deal - Oscar and Reagon were first time Blokes whereas Tiago was the record appearance maker for the band making a return, this time on the drums. The first rehearsal was a success and a Heartbreakers headline was booked for April.

Feburary was largely uneventful, only further rehearsals for the show as well as the writing of our first Spanish language Flamenco song Una Vida, Con Ella. In March we taped the instrumental in Tiago's uni dorm - the room smelled of meat and red wine and boys. A few more rehearsals, a diplomatic trip to Poland (nevermind about the strip club incident - it's all water under the bridge now) and suddenly it was gig month! 

On April 24th, Four Blokes returned to the stage after their longest absence to date. Four 2nd Album tracks got their live debut - Murder of Crows sounded good, Heaven's Co-Ordinates got off to a good start before Oscar's string broke and the guitar started rapidly de-tuning itself). Muscovado was our first use of a keyboard on stage - a solo ballad which i made everyone sit down on the sticky floor for. We ended our set with a 9 minute version of Xylazine Addiction which may be our greatest ever live moment artistically - 3 minutes of atonal angular jamming before settling on a Dmaj7 / Emaj7 vamp, over which i delivered the soft melodic section of the lyrics - we then divulged into industrial noise and desperate screams of anguish. Of course, the crowd were shouting "Play Popworld! Play Popworld!" so we indulged them, with Myles subbing in for Reagon on guitar.

May saw many happy returns to the studio - I taped Off the Drink at Planet Sounds in a fun 2 hour session playing drums, keys, bass, and singing. Our first recordings of Murder of Crows and Heaven's Co-Ordinates at Solent University were deleted by accident, so we returned in June. 

That month we got sick of waiting for Finn to master the songs - it had been 6 months since we last heard anything back - so Tiago kindly stepped in and finished the tapes for our debut album. It was released on July 25th to a mild reception - too little, too late in my opinion. It was a year since we finished recording it, 3 years since we started, and by now we were simply capable of better. It's nice to have those songs out for the people that want to hear them but my mind, at least, was already firmly fixed on our new material. 

We also returned to Rehearsals in July, ready for our Palestine benefit concert at The Stage Door. That gig really was something... our set, unchanged from the April performance, was going great up to the 4th song. During my little piano interlude, however, something completely snapped... was I annoyed at people talking while I was playing? Was I annoyed at myself for playing and singing poorly because I'd had too many beers? Was I just generally mentally unwell and had been for some time, and was liable to go crazy at any moment? It was all of the above really - the red mist came down and I threw the keyboard and the table it was on into the crowd. For the last 5 songs of the set my head was completely gone, screaming "I DON'T WANT TO BE ALIVE! I WANT TO BE IN MY GRAVE" in between the lines of Torture, but the band soldiered on regardless. 

We ended the night with Xylazine Addiction, this time only two minutes long but featuring Eight Blokes - two guitarists, a bassist, a trumpeter, a drummer, a woodblock player, a tambourine player, and me screaming away at the front, face all screwed up. 2 weeks later, I packed what I could of my belongings into a suitcase and moved Four Blokes headquarters to London - to my tiny student dorm, as I set out on a music undergrad at BIMM university.

September was fascinating for Four Blokes, who had swapped Sholing for Islington. A lightning trip back to Southampton to record our first foray into industrial noise with Xylazine Addiction - Reagon failed to show and overdubbed his part a day later. This should've come as a warning... 2 days later Oscar and Reagon both dropped out of a support slot in Portsmouth, minutes after the gig had been announced as agreed and less than a week before we were due to perform. As we were contractually obligated to play, me and Tiago decided to go ahead as a duo - Two Blokes, if you will. 

Things got even worse on the day - my nan died that afternoon, and then 10 minutes before stage time Tiago started violently throwing up in the venue toilets. Despite Kafkaesque obstacles being thrown in the way of the gig, in increasingly absurd levels of unfortunateness, the crowd really enjoyed it! With just One Bloke and his keyboard, the setlist was vastly changed. Una Vida, Con Ella and Thistle got live debuts, although these KORG instrumentals were very different from the recorded versions. The set ended with a man being picked out of the crowd to play ambient keyboard while I read my short story The Bleeding Heart Dove, about an alcoholic poet from the North East and his sad, lonely death. Rapturous applause! After everything that went wrong going wrong it was amazing how well received that performance was by those in attendance and I am forever grateful for their patience, understanding, and willingness to engage with something very weird.

The rest of the year would be spent hard at work on the album - plenty of recording sessions, teaching myself to produce on Logic, constant tinkering with the mixes of the tracks... 

October saw recording sessions for Not Worth Hearing take place, as well as a tambourine overdub for Murder of Crows and vocal overdubs for Farewell Yugoslavia and I've Settled on Molly - the latter of which we dropped as the first single from the second album on HALLOWEEN! 🎃 👻 Spooky... I had a spooky Halloween due to too much ketamine. We also whacked Muscovado on there as the B-side; there were no guitar bass or drums on either track. In November recording sessions continued - Galactically Enclined was taped across a few sessions, Una Vida, Con Ella finally got a vocal, and I started working on Back on The Drink. This was a jazz instrumental to end the album.

The year ended with a diverse series of sessions - Upright Piano was added to Back on The Drink in London and, later in December, Trumpet was added in Nottingham to finish the song. Work on Thistle began with Mahesh taping his Sitar part in Sri Lanka - I then went to Southall to rent a Tabla off of Uncle Ji, and finished the song in my uni studios. This means, as of today, the album is 99% finished - the final session is to be at Tiago's house before the end of the year, just adding a guitar to one song and a vocal to another. Then I'll fly to Romania with my wife to celebrate...

Well! Where do we find ourselves as a band today? Four Blokes hasn't performed live in four months, although there is a new lineup ready to begin rehearsals in London - very soon you'll meet Ari, JJ, and Egor. This year we released our debut LP, as well as the first single from the follow-up. We hit the studio 20 times, leaving the punkish fare of yesteryear well and truly in the past - armed with trumpets, trombones, pianos, and amen break generators, we created a wholly new work. This work will, of course, reach you all on January 25th, 2026 - a mere 6 months after our first album. We cannot wait to share it with you. Until then, all the best wishes for St Stephen's Day, the "Christmas Gooch", and have a reet loon up on New Year's Eve. I'm having a tough time of it but things will get easier.

All my love and all the warmth in my heart
Harry