Changing Tymes

As rock'n'roll dreams go, Davey Lane is living a pretty good one. He plays guitar in what he still calls his “favourite band of all time”, You Am I. Gets called on to play sideman to the likes of Barnesy, and with The Pictures had an outlet for his own work.

“It's my life, and it's my hobby – and that's got to be a good place to be.”

But after The Pictures  “just sort of ground to a halt”, Lane had to consider what came next. “I worked out there was no expectation of what a record with my own name on it should sound like,” he says.

Right now, he's often a one man band. “I can demo just about everything at home,” he explains. “Can do most of the guitar, bass and keyboard stuff, but I'm the usual 'guitar player as frustrated drummer' – a few Ringo drum fills, and then ask Brett [Wolfenden – one-time Pictures drummer, and now in Davey's solo band] to be clever with it.

“It's a real freedom. I can make a record that sound 'passable' - and not have to watch a red light telling you you're spending $700 a day just playing around.” And releasing under his own Field Recordings label, “There's no expectation, no one breathing down your neck saying, 'We need the songs by Thursday'.” His own assessment: “Mostly it's just me dicking about in my boffin cave.”

The first result of said “dicking about” under Lane's own name is The Good Borne Of Bad Tymes, the first of a number of EPs covering a range of styles. “It started out being a full album,” the guitarist explains. “But it seemed to have two really different sides to it – the guitar-poppy one people might expect, and the other which leant more on keyboards and vocal effects.

“I love records that go different places, that can take a bit of a left turn through it. But this just seemed a little stilted, a little too disjointed – it couldn't decide if it wanted to be Tubeway Army or The La's,” he jokes. “So I just decided to split it in two, and each is a little more cohesive.”

Like many a good songwriter, the EP's title goes with a lot of accepted wisdom about the art and craft of it – that the best songs come from heartbreaks and troubles. “That's always, yeah!” Lane heartily agrees. “I've rarely written a good song when everything's fuckin' rosy – maybe you're just too busy enjoying yourself?”