For False Advertising, the road to releasing their second album has been long and winding. The Mancunian group began putting together ideas for a possible EP in early 2020, just months after releasing their debut album, ‘Brainfreeze’. Yet, those plans came to a halt due to COVID. Fast-forward six years, and ‘The Sorry Window’ has finally seen the light of day.
From the early isolated home demos by lead songwriter Jen Hingley, the album was gradually pieced together, with ideas exchanged among members and producer Luke Pickering (Fontaines D.C., Sam Ryder, Arlo Parks). Alongside bassist Josh Sellers, multi-instrumentalist Hingley serve up a record that shows signs of sonic expansion for the Manchester duo. From the gritty fuzz of ‘Don’t Ask Me’ to the hook-laden bursts of ‘Acid Rain’ and the title track’s sharp indie delivery, False Advertising delivers a dynamic record with musical and lyrical depth.
Littered with favourable moments, Hingley’s writing is honest and introspective, touching upon themes of anxiety and the push and pull between ambition and self-doubt. When paired with their brand of versatile alt-rock, ‘The Sorry Window’ becomes an addictive record. Ahead of its release last Friday (May 1st), Jen was kind enough to write a breakdown of the album, track-by-track.
1. Narrow
‘Narrow’ is about people’s worlds shrinking, and what happens when you shut yourself off from other perspectives. It came out of the COVID period, where I saw a few people I know gradually disappear into internet rabbit holes.
It was one of the first songs written for the album, at a time when everything felt quite uncertain. COVID had effectively stopped the momentum of our last album (‘Brainfreeze’), so I ended up spending a lot of that period working on music on my own and learning how to record things properly in several different rehearsal spaces in Manchester. This is how I started building the album remotely with our long-suffering producer Luke Pickering, who is based in The Church Studios in London. That sense of questioning everything sits throughout the track and the album generally, I think.
2. Acid Rain
The music for this came from a dream where I was watching Fall Out Boy play live in a sort of Myspace-era Warped Tour setting, and this was the song they were playing. I woke up, recorded a voice note of the chorus, and built everything up from that. It’s about anxiety, feeling like it’s invading your space – something that’s not just there, but actively eroding everything you do and think about.
We did make a video for it, although the original idea was quite a bit more elaborate. The plan was that we’d arrive at a big premiere of the music video with a film canister, only to drop it into a puddle of mud, oil, and all this strange, colourful “acidic” stuff. Then we’d have to show the video to everyone in that destroyed state.
What we ended up with is a more stripped-back version of that idea, where the footage gets colourfully degraded. It wasn’t quite the full concept, but I thought it ended up looking pretty cool!
3. Don’t Ask Me
‘Don’t Ask Me’ is about boundaries – realising you don’t want to carry someone else’s expectations or emotional weight anymore, and trying to take back control. Oddly kind of represented by us making a music video portraying us setting a lobster free from a tank in a supermarket!
It was also a turning point for me musically, where I started leaning more into synths and programmed elements. A lot of that started as a necessity during COVID, when I couldn’t really play things loudly, so many songs started by constructing them with Logic instruments rather than what we’ve done previously, which was more about writing on actual instruments together in a room. That approach ended up shaping quite a lot of the album.
4. Falling Apart Forever
‘Falling Apart Forever’ is about the feeling of liking someone so much that you start worrying you’ll scare them off. The verses talk about that paranoia, but then it’s being super over the top in the chorus, so the thing that I’m worrying about being like is implied as perhaps being legitimate.
It’s one of the oldest tracks on the record. The drums, bass and some of the guitars were recorded years ago (live) during sessions for our previous album, ‘Brainfreeze’, with Chris (Warr – former drummer) on drums. I gradually reworked the guitars and vocals over time. I remember coming up with some of the more adventurous guitar parts in an attempt to look like a slightly better guitar player ahead of our tour with Alpha Male Tea Party in 2021.
5. Weak Ties
‘Weak Ties’ is about insecurity and how it can distort your perception of everything – yourself, other people, your relationships… I had this idea that you could be made to feel dizzy or disoriented because of this feeling, like you’re trying to piece things together without being totally sure what’s real.
It was written early on in the album process, but ended up being one of the last songs we finished last year. By that point, things had shifted a bit within the band with Chris leaving, and revisiting it for the album felt like it made more sense for where we were at – both in terms of the overall feel of the record and the version of the band that exists now. Musically, it’s quite influenced by Björk’s ‘Vespertine’, although I’m not sure how obvious that is outside of my own head!
6. The Sorry Window
This one is about regret, and moments where you realise you’ve missed the chance to say something important or make something right.
The idea of a “sorry window” is that there’s a window of time where things can still be fixed, but eventually it closes, and you just have to live with it. I wanted the music to sound like that feeling when some sort of memory flips into being properly nostalgic and negative. It also turns out to be a plot point in Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I was watching a lot at the time, so it also ties in with that!
7. You’ll Never
This captures the feeling of being under pressure to give up something you care about, and the sensible, conventional path trying to kind of seduce you and tempt you away from it before you’re ready.
We’ve always been the kind of band that’s had to do everything around our day jobs (or in my case – being self-employed), which sometimes creates this constant sense that any spare time should be working on music and pushing the band forward. It’s not always realistic, and that tension builds up. The song ended up quite angry because of that – there’s a lot of frustration in it about not wanting to stop, even if it sometimes feels like you’re going to have to.
8. The Cold Open
‘The Cold Open’ was originally written as the introduction to ‘Next Big Thing’, but quite late on I realised it would probably work better if the song started immediately, especially as it was going to be a single. So we split the intro out into its own track.
It’s quite funny in hindsight, because ‘Next Big Thing’ is all about self-sabotage, and leaving that intro in probably would have limited its reach. The intention musically was to build a bit of atmosphere before everything kicks in and you get brought back down to earth, in the style of something like Friend Zone by Thundercat.
9. Next Big Thing
We spent so long making this album that I eventually accepted we weren’t going to be able to build on the momentum of the last one in the way we’d originally planned. That led to a lot of overthinking about how we’d present things when it finally would be released.
The song came out of that – imagining what it would feel like to have to present ourselves as this “hot new band” when that didn’t really reflect the reality of where we were at all. Musically, it leans into that as well – it’s very precise and almost over-polished, like a slightly unrealistic version of ourselves, which felt fitting. I’d been listening a lot to The Armed’s album ‘Ultrapop’ around this time, and to me, that also sounded a bit ‘too good’. It was mostly put together by Josh and me, and in the end, accepting that we probably wouldn’t be “the next big thing” was actually quite freeing really.
10. Leave It Alone
Obsession, and that urge to keep digging for answers even when it’s not actually helping, is what inspired ‘Leave It Alone’. It’s tied to boredom as well, and how that can push you into unhelpful patterns.
The core of it was recorded live at The Church Studios just before everything shut down in 2020, with Chris on drums and Josh on bass, and then we came back to it later and added lots of additional layers over the original live take. I also recorded the violin part myself, which was a bit of a stretch – it’s basically an attempt at something in the world of the ‘There Will Be Blood’ soundtrack. I think the contrast of the violin against the melody that comes in during the second verse is potentially my favourite bit of music on the album.
11. Higher Ground
‘Higher Ground’ felt like the right way to end the album. After the expanse and scale of the end of the previous track, it acts as a bit of a palette cleanser.
Underneath the more straightforward, synth-led sound, it’s about how annoyed I get by true crime-style programs on TV. I generally find the way they package up this really bad, traumatising thing that’s actually happened to someone, with dramatic music, narration and shock cliffhangers to be in really bad taste. I feel like this sort of thing should be treated with a bit more respect rather than being presented as entertainment.
‘The Sorry Window’ by False Advertising is out now.
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