Last monday was the last Amy Blue show for a the foreseeable future. In short, we don’t know when we’ll be playing again or what the gameplan will be. We’ve only played two shows this year so far, and it’s March already, so in that respect we’ve been quite lazy. There was a third lined up for the end of March, but we cancelled that out of respect to the ever-growing Lex, who is now six months pregnant. She’s been struggling lately it seems; this is not a comment on her ability at all. In fact, I’m stunned she’s had the energy and commitment to blast through two shows and all the practices we’ve had in that shitty rehearsal room in Kingston since her announcement. Pregnancy brings with it lots of joyous bonus features that you don’t expect: sickness, shakiness, tiredness, and of course the inability to wear a nice pair of trousers when you hit the second trimester. So it’s entirely fair to allow Lex time to rest now and prepare for the wee child to arrive.

What about the rest of us, then?

Over the past five years, which is how long the band has been together, Simon and I have written hundreds of songs. Not all of them good, admittedly, but still… we are workhorses. Though in the past year, getting up to speed with Lex (who only joined in Febuary 2007) has required a lot of time to get used to, but it’s had a fantastic knock on effect that the basic ideas I’ve come up with now have more punch and vibrancy. That’s how we have a forty-five minute album in the can… pretty much.

The problem now is we started recording in October of last year, and we’re still without basslines. It’s the final piece of the puzzle, and right now the record only seems to make partial sense to my ears. We took six months to record the first EP several years ago. This should have been quicker, now we know what we’re doing. Right now we need vocal overdubs, some more guitar twiddly bits and all the bass on there. And it wouldn’t be an Amy Blue record without lots of weird glitchy shit that Simon is an expert at. After the final mix, we have to master it (which this time will be very straightforward) and then we need to work out how to get this thing out there.

It’s rubbish being your own worst critic.