I’ll start by saying, this is less of a production breakdown of the EP and more of an insight into my personal relationship with each song and where they sit with me as of now (November 2025) as we release this 5-track love shack into the small world.

I want to list some of the powerhouses that have played a part in how I play and how I wrote these particular drum parts: 

George Hurley

Fletcher Shears

Steve Shelley

Tom Coll

Charlie Forbes

Jon Brookes

Scott Mangino

El Melling

George Garratt

Michael Kitching

(Mooney & Starkey too, of course)

• Intro

This short instrumental jam started life as exactly that. April 2023 : me, Ben and Rory got into a room and this is the first thing we play to make sure our levels are right. I think we were showing off a little bit to one another, trying to prove that we’d “sonically expanded” since we’d last seen each other or something like that. It sounds nothing like anything else we play and to me, it’s a nice warm roll into a lashing of heavy material. Almost like a ref testing a bogged footy pitch to see if it’s fit to play ball. I love to play it because it’s the only time I get a half-time groove (my own doing I suppose). It opened our first ever gig and it still opens our set sometimes to this day.

• Barber 

Or “A Barbours Tools” as it was once called, began life as a totally different song in a project we had many moons ago ‘Sporting Ties’. This was a slow, sludgy, unfinished ditty by Rory that often sat in the middle of our sets, right before we randomly burst into an awful, noisy, stupidly fast thrashing (we wanted to be Sonic Youth, I think). We gave it it’s name because at the time, Rory’s bass tone was so buzzy and shit (sorry Rory), we would joke that it sounded like an electric razor when he played the opening bass line. 

Jump forward to the humble beginnings of House Proud, we decide to recycle the main bass line and speed it the fuck up! I chased Rory’s bass line with a drum beat I 100% stole from ‘A Lucid Dream’ by Fontaines D.C..

My snare drum rim playing is totally Steve Shelley too, so maybe we’re still trying to be Sonic Youth after all. Ben In these early days would MC his lyrics on the spot instead of writing them prior. After playing Barber (what felt like) 10,000 times in our first 4 months, Ben had managed to whittle down all of his best one liners and pieces of imagery to create a set of lyrics that still to this day feel like some of our strongest and most catchy. 

By the time James joined the band, this song was already a staple in our set and was by far our tightest. He got himself into the band by recording an iPhone video audition of himself playing along to Barber in his living room. The skill of a man to get a song that we think is finished, and effortlessly add his finesse to it, giving it layers we didn’t know it needed.

It’s no coincidence that Barber is one of the only early days songs that still makes it into our sets now. I love this song for everything it’s worth.

• Choices

Aaaahh the title track! 

This song to me feels distinctly like last Spring when the lads (not me) were heavily on a Talking Heads vibe and everything we did had an element of fizz and colour to it. I felt like a slinky toy on the drums for a time.

James had solidified himself in the band by this point as someone who could not only help Ben out with his riffs, but a sexy little bugger who could write some of the most musical, distinct melodies going. “Jackpot!” I thought to myself anytime we played together.

All of my drum work on this song comes straight from Ben’s ability to hit his guitar like a kick and snare. He’s always been rhythmic with his guitar playing. On songs like Choices, I hardly have any work to do. I just follow the strumming pattern of the boss up front.

(I promise I’ll stop kissing their arses very shortly.)

We wrote Choices quite collectively, I think, and it was written during a period where we were starting to gig loads. We worked like mad to iron out creases and get our new batch of songs sounding like something we’d want to hear on Radio 6. Whenever there’s ever a rough gig and we aren’t feeling it, as soon as we hit Choices, I can feel an energy change on stage and in the reaction from the crowd.

“Secret Weapon”, I call it.

• That Wasn’t The Plan

We were always going to start writing sincere material, the way Ben intakes Interpol and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs like some sort of addict.

I could be totally wrong but in my head cannon this is a Ben song, with a very distinct James flavour to give it its final form (you’ll know it when you hear it). I get to lock in with Mr. Maclean for a solid 3-minutes and 23-seconds (one of our longer pieces) which is always a treat. Every time I play it live I just get to chill out and dish a smile. It’s dead simple to play and I get to watch them three throw their arses about. Pretty good gig if you ask me.

Sadly, I don’t remember a lot about the writing of this song and I don’t have a huge emotional connection to it the same way the lads do. I don’t know why. Regardless, I’m pleased that it made it to the EP, because it feels to me like a nice organic change of pace.

• What do You See?

I see an absolute sweat-fest of a drummer playing this song every week!

A late addition to the roster and a relatively new member of the family. Given our collective love of heavy, driven Punk stuff, I can’t believe it took us this long to write something this bare bones and to the point. I think we’ve been working so hard to exercise our genre-bendy muscles and test our boundaries musically since the start, that we never actually made room for something Hardcore in the set. It’s a no brainer really. I get to rip off some Minor Threat and Ben gets to fuck up his vocal cords. Win-win situation.

I swear we wrote it by accident in like 2 minutes. What a result! I absolutely love to play it and feel like it adds so much to our live sound. When we decided we wanted one last song to finish the EP off, there wasn’t much competition for me.

Please find enjoyment in this EP.