Alex Kapranos on How to Write a Debut Album

You can’t be too soft a self-critic. be cruel Then more cruel. Damn your sensibilities. There’s no use telling yourself you’re a genius when the world will laugh at your efforts. Not worse. When the world is indifferent to your efforts. It’s not kind to yourself if you end up believing everything you do is great, like a spoiled middle-class toddler whose every doodle is taped to the fridge door. Judge your own work the same way you judge others. Then when you find something good, tell yourself. Quietly but firmly and you will believe it. Ah, that might sound a bit harsh, but not when balanced with passion. With an honest and fair recognition when you have done something good. Appreciate when there is something of value when it comes and you will trust yourself. It’s like asking a friend for a movie or book recommendation: if they love everything, you end up losing respect for their judgment, but if they’re picky, if they appreciate something, you’ll listen.

A great debut LP not only needs to be listened to, it needs to be looked at. Not just a cover, but a whole aesthetic. When the eyes see it, the ears better understand what they hear.

A great debut LP not only needs to be listened to, it needs to be looked at. Not just a cover, but a whole aesthetic. When the eyes see it, the ears better understand what they hear. It should come from the same depths of your psyche as the music. The way you dress, how you stand on stage, the color palette you use, the font you use to write your name, how your videos look and of course the cover. It has to look like you and like nothing before. It has to be watched for hours. It must conjure up the universe you create. Think back to the first cover of the Velvet Underground. Peel here. As direct as a perfect pop song, but somber and suggestive. Fully awakened sexuality under the harmless fruit. Or unknown pleasures. Now reduced to supermarket t-shirt design status, it’s easy to forget what a powerful and impactful cover that was with its soundscape. I’m still thinking about the album being in LP format and the best covers are the ones that make you want to sit in front of the stack of records against the wall. The pictures you like to show your friends when they come over for you.

However, before you decide what it looks like, you need to write it. How often should you write? whenever you can Then when you shouldn’t. When I was writing the songs for our debut I could hardly think of anything else. I was a chef and during the prep I was thinking about tunes and lyrics and working things out while my hands chopped the carrots to pay my rent. Oh yeah. Career. you can’t have one If you are an artist of any kind, then this is your calling. Your life. Everything else is just a job. Hours of your life you trade to get the money for the crap necessary to keep you alive to make your art. It feels like I’m suggesting you indulge in a dangerous compulsion, and I think I’m doing it. The more you obsess over it, the bigger it gets.

You could try to do it all by yourself, but you’ll probably do something better if you work together. Even a great author making a masterful debut like Songs Of Leonard Cohen benefits from it. Think how great those backing vocals sound, how the technique captures what he couldn’t have. Collaboration is powerful. A group of individuals can come together to create a debut like The Stone Roses that none of them could have done alone. This symbiosis of personalities is intoxicating, uplifting, invigorating. To allow that to happen, you must be generous and trusting, strong enough to be vulnerable, smart enough to share. That feeling of being in a room when it all comes together is glorious, shared only by those who are there, creepy in an exclusivity that drives you to want to share it with the world.

When the dynamics of a group are right, it is a joy to be together, and it should be a joy. The whole process I mean. I don’t share the idea that creating great art is an agonizing process to go through. Why not enjoy? Sure, you can exorcise some demons, but you don’t have to make it difficult or suffer unnecessarily. However, enjoying it doesn’t mean you don’t need discipline. The hours have to be in, but if you look forward to it, it doesn’t feel like a chore. Oh, and that’s the secret to overcoming writer’s block: to write even when you think there’s nothing. Write the trash because the good stuff will follow. You don’t get the whiskey until you throw away the heats.

In order. You have a great collection of songs. Great songs. This isn’t a great debut yet. You have to put it together. It should flow as one piece of work. Think of those skits on College Dropout—may not be much on their own, but they’re the fat between those giant cogs. It’s also the last chance to use those honed critical skills and ditch those unnecessary songs. Yes, you may have spent hours, no days…now weeks, getting those four minutes together, but in your heart you know it’s not as good as the rest, or just doesn’t belong with the rest. For the 25th anniversary re-release, leave it with all the demos and other crap your old label throws at it to squeeze the last few drops of blood out of your sponge.

Ah. After all that, it got me excited again. I feel like I want to make another one myself. Fourth time lucky?

*Before FF I did debut albums with The Karelia and Amphetameanies.”