Green Gardens: 'Thistlesifting is kind of hard to say, in a nice way'
By singer and guitarist Chris Aitchison’s own admission, Thistlesifting, the title of Leeds indie band Green Gardens’ second album, is a bit of a mouthful. “It’s the last song on the album and it was a big vent about a lot of family stuff and things that were going on at the time whilst dealing with a lot of grief,” he tells The Yorkshire Post in a video call with bandmates Jacob Cracknell and Jacob Bearman.
“I was trying to think of a name for it, and I just had this image of thistles because a lot of my dad’s side of the family is from Scotland and I felt quite connected to that.
“The thistle can be quite a beautiful thing but it can also be quite painful if you step on it – that nicely reflected a lot of the grieving stuff that I was dealing with at the time. I was trying to find a nice word for sorting through stuff and sifting glued on the end.
“I found out later there’s a tongue twister that involves it in some way. Thistlesifting is kind of hard to say, in a nice way, which is maybe playing into the sonic imagery in a way… It just seemed to nicely encapsulate the whole album. It rounded a lot of things together from a lot of writing standpoints for both of us.”
Bassist, singer and fellow songwriter Cracknell recalls with a chuckle: “We had a little chat with the guys at BBC Introducing and they weren’t happy with us about having to say that on the radio.”
Two years on from their first album, This Is Not Your Fault, the band were conscious not to repeat themselves. “So I think we were almost being quite contrarian with how we approached this new record,” Cracknell says. “Everything that was big and spacious on the first record we tried to make close and compressed here.”
“It was a big process change as well,” adds Aitchison. “Recording-wise we really wanted to take our time. With the first album, we put pressure on ourselves, it was very live, we did it in five days, signed off on it, that’s what it was. This one was the other end of the spectrum. Our friend Joel (Johnston), who we recorded with, let us be in his studio for a month or two and it was a lot of sitting and listening, trying stuff, a lot of experimenting and not really knowing where things were going to end up. It was a very different experience and a lot more exhausting, but it ended up in a really good place. It was just with that amount of time you leave yourself open for a lot more questions.”
Cracknell believes that the DIY scene in Leeds, from which Green Gardens emerged five years ago, is “getting better all the time in quality” despite the struggles that the city’s independent music venues continue to face. “The Brudenell is at the top of its game, but places like Boom have been forced out and had to find new homes, and The Old Red Bus Station had to shut down. In spite of that, we’ve found in any genre no matter how extreme, there’s a really special handful of acts and niches all over the place in Leeds. In my experience, I think it’s one of the strongest cities in the country (for music). A few years ago post-punk was happening and there were loads of bands, but we don’t land in that place at all. It’s just getting your head down and remembering you do what you do, and leave it at that.”
Thistlesifting is out now. Green gardens play at The Hallamshire Hotel, Sheffield on November 25 and The Crescent, York on November 26. https://greengardensmusic.bandcamp.com/