I noticed in about 2019 that I grind my teeth almost constantly. It’s one of those things that I didn’t notice until someone happened to mention that stress leads to you clenching your teeth and suddenly it was all I could think about, and the worrying made me spiral even more and it became a big circle of anxiety and toothache. So I’ve basically attempted to write a song that captures that feeling of a big endless worry that just feeds into itself.

There’s a lot of abrupt weird sax lines and nagging percussion, it’s supposed to make you feel a bit out of sorts. We jammed this one through as a band with the loop pedal a lot when I was first writing it which was really useful for me and that’s where the big intense sax layers at the end came from - I always wanted to write a big sax ending like that, basically wanted to do a Fables of Faubus Charles Mingus ending at some point which I did manage in my own way.

The verse lyrics are basically a list of things that I felt like I should be doing or not doing, and the chorus is this more self assured part of me, the part that sometimes even tells other people what they should do if they’re feeling bad which obviously doesn’t really help at the time (like just go outside, just go meet some people, get a hobby).

Personally (and I know other people my age do this a lot too) I put so much pressure on myself to do what I ‘should’ be doing all the time that I can forget what I actually like to do. I’ve read a lot about a condition
called OCPD recently, which is a personality disorder which is somewhat related to OCD but most people that suffer from it just feel like they’re really productive and successful. I definitely tend towards the
obsessive side of things, especially since I became a full-time self-employed musician and had to be really frugal and self-motivated. I think it made me tap into this somewhat dangerous part of myself that can drive me and everyone around me absolutely crazy trying to save money or time or just generally do things in the most effective and efficient way possible. So often it just takes all the joy out of things and this ridiculous perfectionism that I suffer from can often make things so much worse. I’m trying really hard to stop those tendencies because they can paralyse you and make you feel as though there’s no point in even trying to do something if it isn’t totally perfect, which is a real creative block (ironically).

These days I’m really trying to live by the quote ‘don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good’. (Although I did just spend 20 minutes trying to check if that’s the most accurate translation from the original Latin, so I’m definitely not cured...).