Jenny Broke The Window Unpack New EP 'Feels Good' In Track-By-Track

Sydney quartet Jenny Broke The Window are releasing their new EP Feels Good this Friday and, to make sure you know what you're hearing going into it, have put together a track-by-track about each song on the release.

We've also got a stream of the EP so you can give it a whirl ahead of its release day. Are we cool, or what?

Here's frontman Sam Lathlean's thoughts on the album.

Track one: Skinny Dip

This song came about from picking up my acoustic guitar after about 6 months or so of not playing it. I really liked the chord progression and the upbeat nature of it so I looped it over a drum beat. Somehow a really old melody I had popped into my head and fit nicely — “Said I want yah…”

That first recording of the acoustic guitar is what ended up on the final version.

I guess the central theme to the song is being a teenager and having that feeling of your whole life is ahead of you and at that point in time you have a very small amount of responsibilities, if any.

Track two: Bleachers 

This was perhaps the quickest song on the EP to come together. A big chunk of it developed while we were rehearsing which is rare for us to develop a song that way. I think at the time I was listening to a lot of Smith Westerns, which inspired the opening synth line paired with rocky guitars. Second came the chorus line, “You keep me up at night”. I had a line from an old demo that I had been trying to fit into a new song — which is where the line “She don’t know that I seen her, in the ball court bleachers” came from.

Track three: Black Skeleton

This was the first song written and recorded on the EP. Yet again, this one was a coming together of two or three other demos/ideas to make the one song. I was recording a nice chord progression on piano and wanted to try a new ‘reverse’ plug in — and that’s where the basis of the song started. I think one day I was watching TV and saw a bunch of black skeletons running around, and I thought that was weird so I wrote it down. Then developed the idea of the black skeleton being someone’s dark side or the ‘devil inside’ so to speak. It’s the sense of fun you get from doing something bad. When we play this song at our shows, the ending “I don’t know why but it’s fun” is where we all feel exhausted and may collapse of a heart attack.

Track four: Airport Love

I really wanted to write a song that started really thin and just basically built up as one big crescendo. It’s something we’d never done before and figured it would sit nicely among some of our other songs. Airport Love was the first song I wrote after getting home from a three-month round the world trip. I think the most played song on that trip was Todd Terje’s version of Johnny And Mary with Brian Ferry — so I think that definitely had some unintentional influence on the track. Airport Love was one of the many phrases I had written in my phone over the duration of my holiday and it jumped out at me once I’d got back.

Track five – Number 1’s

This track was recorded in the same session as Skinny Dip. A lot of this track was recorded at home, guitars, some vocals, percussion. The main arpeggio guitar loop at the start is what came first and the rest kind of fell around that. It’s about a guy trying to convince himself that his ex wasn’t the one for him, at the same time as looking back in hindsight and realising that. I forget where the inspiration came from, maybe it was a dream or in a movie, but the line “She never knew the words to any song” came from a guy and his girlfriend sitting in a car and the guy being so unimpressed at the fact that his girl was getting all the words wrong to the song playing.

Track Six – Smiley Eyes

There’s a weird full circle element to this track in that it was the last one recorded but a part of it was present in the first session. I remember playing the opening guitar line on one of Tony’s acoustic guitars in his studio. He was mixing Black Skeleton and turned around said he really liked what I was playing and I should make it into a full song — so I did. Probably the saddest song I’ve written — I didn’t intend it to be that way but I’d say 90% of the lyrics didn’t change from the first take of recording the demo. One of my favourite parts of the EP would be the final 2-3 minutes of this song.