Kicking-off the new year with a choice collaboration, the new single sees the San Francisco songwriter teaming-up with XTC legend Colin Moulding, who provides the track with its wandering bassline and production nous.
Hallmarked with the humour, wit and ambition you might expect from a meeting of Mickelson and Moulding’s minds, “Only Grey Matter Boiling In My Head” offers a comical take on those moments of completely losing your cool…. As Mickelson explains:
““Only Grey Matter Boiling In My Head” is a humorous song dealing with anger management issues. This theme of self depreciation shows up in my lyrics from time to time. I am also extremely honoured that Colin Moulding played bass. We had several chats about the song and he also offered some great production ideas.”
Introduced to Colin by his son Lee (who performs in Mickelson’s live band), the chance encounter seemed to chime serendipitously with a new song Mickelson had been writing that bore the arch lyrical quips and off-kilter arrangements not so dissimilar to XTC’s vintage output. Reaching out to Colin with the bare bones of the track, he consequently added his own distinctive stylistics. Speaking about the how collaboration came to be Mickelson adds:
“I’d just written “Only Grey Matter Boiling In My Head” and thought it would be a good fit as there are some unusual twists and turns in the song and to my mind, reminded me of XTC. We recorded the basic tracks and Lee sent it to Colin. I quickly received his bass track and was pretty blown away by it.”
Gifting the track with its notably tilting basslines, the additional grandiose piano lines and accomplished drum rolls are courtesy of Mickelson’s UK-based live band, Jon Buckett and Lee Moulding respectively. Standing as the first piece of recorded music they have laid-down with their frontman, the drums and piano were recorded at Earthworm Recording Studio in Swindon, whilst Mickelson performed, produced, arranged, and mixed the rest from his Bay Area studio.
-Official bio
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