New single – MARIONETTE – Out July 30th!

Hey everyone! It’s been a while and we’ve had a genre-searching, exploratory time and come up with a new single in a new style that we hope you’ll love! We’re really proud of this new track and we hope it will make you dance along.

“We all have secrets that we feel others will judge us on. Marionette is a song about breaking free from societal norms. Norms are so often not created by what is best for everyone but by what has always been considered ‘normal.’

We hope this song will give us all something to reconnect over in these isolating times. 

So cut your ‘puppet strings’ and rock out with us.”

You can find it on Bandcamp: https://featherswoodnstring.bandcamp.com/track/marionette

Or on your favourite streaming service: https://song.link/i/1521684956

Or tune in to The Local – SA at 7pm Adelaide time this evening! https://5triplez.com.au

Give it a stream for us, and come chat and let us know what you think!

From Nowhere: Out now, and 2020

It is with great excitement that we bring you From Nowhere: Our EP for 2019. From Nowhere is available on all your usual streaming services via this link: https://album.link/gb/i/1489814566 as well as on Bandcamp. Alternatively, you can stream it via the embedded Spotify link below and help boost our Spotify plays.

“From Nowhere” is a discussion of our move halfway across the world to Southampton, UK, and in a broader sense, of the experience of not quite belonging. In our first 2019 single “Composite,” we directly approached the issue of belonging (or not belonging) in more than one home. In “Synthetic” we considered a different aspect of being unsure of belonging – Impostor Syndrome, and in our final single release, “Barbed Wire,” we questioned the effects of borders. The two new tracks on the EP are “Grey” and “Scarecrow.” In “Grey” Sarah presents a lyrical discussion of an issue close to her heart; that people are not tick boxes, and many of us exist in grey areas (you can read her post about it here). In “Scarecrow” Lloyd addresses the idea that many of our fears and anxieties are scarecrows – hollow threats.

The release of “From Nowhere” was celebrated with close friends and family at a release party in South Australia on December 30th, before we returned to the UK to begin our New Year. Thank you to all those who came along, listened, shared and took part in filling our maps and message tree with your notes. If you’re reading this and you weren’t a part of the celebration, but would like to add your notes virtually to the maps or the tree, leave us a comment!

We’ve also built a playlist of indie and alternative rock songs released in 2019 by unsigned artists, to celebrate the release of From Nowhere and of some other great songs that indie bands have produced this year. You can listen below or at this link.

The new decade holds new directions for Feathers, Wood ‘N’ String, as we take a break of sorts in 2020 to clarify and adjust our genre and produce some acoustic renditions of songs we’ve written since our beginnings in 2016. Over the past couple of years our musical tastes have diverged quite significantly, with Lloyd leaning towards heavier metal and Sarah discovering “pixie” (if someone knows the proper definition of this genre, which Spotify declared to be Sarah’s top category, do enlighten us). For Sarah there are limitations to how heavy Feathers, Wood ‘N’ String should sound, both from a vocal ability perspective and from the point of view of accessibility to a wider audience. So before we leap off the deep end into serious alternative metal, we’re going to take some time to reset. You may see Lloyd producing some heavier stuff of his own in 2020 to satisfy that need for metal riffs – we’ll be sure to keep you updated on that. We may produce a single at some stage, or we may focus entirely on the acoustic recordings; we haven’t completely decided at this stage, but you can expect a quieter year from us recording-wise, and a bit less presence on social media as Sarah devotes some extra time to her second short story collection and novel. The end of 2020 should see us producing an acoustic EP or album on which we re-imagine many of our previous tracks: Let us know if you have a favourite that you would like to hear the acoustic version of!

In the meantime, please help us continue to celebrate From Nowhere in the coming months by sharing the music with others and telling us which tracks you’ve enjoyed and why! We’d love to hear how the concepts behind From Nowhere interact with your lives and bring these tracks to as many new listeners as possible.

Wishing you all a very special 2020!

Cheers –

Sarah and Lloyd.

From Nowhere EP: Coming December 30th

We’re excited to announce that From Nowhere has been sent off to Distrokid this afternoon and will be coming to your ears with two new tracks, Grey and Scarecrow, as well as this year’s three singles, on December 30th! We’re really looking forward to sharing the last two tracks with you after keeping them to ourselves for the last month or so.

We’ll be in Adelaide over Christmas as usual, but due to a combination of busy-ness and wanting to spend the time in a more relaxed way with our families, we haven’t booked a release gig this year. We’ll be looking out for some open mics to visit and any gigs by our favourite Adelaide bands to go and see! We’re also planning a low key release day party with tea, snacks, acoustic tunes and chats with our nearest and dearest and our keenest supporters. If you’re super enthusiastic and would like to visit us and chat about the EP over tea and cake, you can email us at featherswoodnstring@gmail.com to request an invitation, and we’ll be in touch. Since release day is also our last full day in Adelaide, this will be a bit of a see ya later gathering too.

For those who support us from afar, a huge thank you, and we hope you’ll join us in listening to the EP on repeat on release day and sharing about it! Sarah will be putting something up on her own blog about the song “Grey” which is very close to her heart, so keep an eye out for that. We’ll also be videoing some of our acoustic tunes and chats on the day so you’ll be able to catch up online later on.

We can’t wait to share this with you and hear your thoughts! In the meantime, please follow us on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2KdInLx to make sure the new EP comes up on your release radar! You can also follow us on YouTube to make sure you don’t miss out on those videos we’ll be putting up: http://bit.ly/2MiVavN. You’ll be able to pre-order/pre-save From Nowhere from December 7th onward via this link: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/featherswoodnstring/from-nowhere

Thanks again and catch you soon!

Love Sarah and Lloyd.

New song BARBED WIRE coming September 30th!

Friends, we are delighted to share with you Lloyd’s first track singing lead in a year or two, Barbed Wire. Barbed Wire is about borders, and in fact was originally called Borders, but we decided Barbed Wire was a more interesting title and a good image. Barbed Wire questions the idea that borders keep us safe from some mysterious external threat, and suggests that they might instead keep us trapped inside, and inwardly focused, when we could do much more by reaching out. We’ve had some interesting discussions on this topic, and you’re welcome to send in thoughts after hearing the song too. One question that came up is whether there’s a difference between a border and a boundary; we think there definitely is, but please tell us what you think!

Barbed Wire can be pre-saved at the following link for those whose timezones have not already passed midnight! http://bit.ly/2kwS7pY

You can hear it at: https://song.link/i/1478717634 OR https://featherswoodnstring.bandcamp.com/track/barbed-wire

If it’s the 30th for you already, then head over to your favourite streaming service and have a listen. We’d love to hear what you think and we’d really appreciate you sharing it with others.

In the meantime we’re working on two more tracks for the From Nowhere EP – Grey and Scarecrow. We’re really excited to share these with you towards the end of the year. We’ll be playing some acoustic tunes at the d.@rt Centre’s Big Draw event on October 19th from 3.30pm, and we’ll be doing a sneaky preview of Grey, so if you’re local, come on down and join in an afternoon of creativity and support Mind charity for mental health.

We’ll be back with an update on the EP later on in the year!

Cheers – Sarah and Lloyd.

New single SYNTHETIC released July 30th

Hi friends! We’ve been busy making new music, and today we’re releasing our heaviest song yet and probably ever! This was hard to make and we’re really proud that it’s finished and out in the world. Here’s a few words about it from us:

“Synthetic is about the experience of Impostor Syndrome – something I think we’ve all been through in one part of our lives or another.” – Sarah Fletcher, lead singer and lyricist

Feathers, Wood ‘N’ String release their new single Synthetic on July 30th, 2019. This is their second single of the year and is part of a series of songs about being “from nowhere” – the title of their upcoming 2019 EP. This track is their furthest venture yet into alternative metal, with Sarah having had an intensive learning curve in rock belting, and Lloyd working on some screams, which ironically led to a good dose of Impostor Syndrome during the writing and recording.

“From Nowhere” is a discussion of Lloyd and Sarah’s move halfway across the world to Southampton, UK, and in a broader sense, of the experience of not quite belonging. In their first 2019 single “Composite,” they directly approached the issue of belonging (or not belonging) in more than one home. In “Synthetic” they consider a different aspect of being between spaces of belonging – that which we encounter when we aren’t sure if we’re good enough to be part of the work or task in which we are involved. 

What inspired the musical aspects of Synthetic?

Lloyd says: “I’d been listening to a lot of metal and studying breakdowns. I wouldn’t say that Synthetic has a breakdown, but the rhythmic, heavy nature of the riff is influenced by the stylistic features of songs I enjoy in the metal genre. I wanted us to experiment with vocal textures and attempt a sound that could really be called alternative metal. We both did some work with Melissa Cross’s ‘The Zen of Screaming’ DVDs and started regularly doing her warm up, not so much to be able to be screamers (although I wouldn’t mind developing this skill eventually) but to be able to use vocal fry more and change the tone of our voices between sections. Synthetic also demonstrates two of the goals I had for this year’s music – to use both our voices in all the songs, and to experiment more with synth sounds. I’m not sure how much more stuff this heavy we’ll produce – it’s been quite challenging to do especially for Sarah, but it’s also been great to experiment with this sound. It was actually a musical challenge in itself finding and working in Sarah’s belting range – we had to tune down to drop C sharp to put this song more comfortably in a place where she could get more power, which meant putting a new set of strings on Bluey that would allow that kind of detuning.”

What does ‘Synthetic’ refer to as a title and what inspired the lyrics?

Sarah says: “Synthetic had a few titles before we settled on this one. It started out as ‘Impostor,’ which we decided was a bit boring, so we went searching for a word that would describe that feeling of all your competence being an act – of being a secret fake. For a little while it was going to be ‘artifice,’ but that was a terrible word to sing, and we decided we wanted the title to be in the song. Then for a while it was ‘Mistaken,’ and finally ‘Synthetic’ came up in the lyrics as we were developing them, and it stuck the best. I think ‘Artifice’ can be associated with ‘clever’ pretenses or disguises, whereas ‘Synthetic’ is a bit of a dirty word – it makes me think of plastic. Beyond describing being artificial or fake, it suggests being a robot or something machine-like and not quite human, which is what we can start to feel like when we experience burnout and stress. So it conveys something about the internal experiences that can result from Impostor Syndrome as well as the external impression side of it. 

When we were planning the tracks for ‘From Nowhere,’ we talked about the different grey areas that we encounter in life, where we aren’t sure whether we fit or not. Impostor Syndrome is one of those. When you aren’t sure if you fit in your workplace, or whether you’re good enough for a team or a title you work with, there’s that same uncertainty about belonging. Should you be there, or should you be doing something else? This grey area is what Synthetic is about. Ultimately the message of hope in this song is to remind us that we aren’t really synthetic at all. We’re all human, organic, and everyone experiences this, so the very best thing we can do about it is be honest, and help each other.”

Where can we hear the song and join in the discussion?

Synthetic is out on all major platforms on July 30th! Find it on your preferred streaming service via the Songlink: https://song.link/gb/i/1471561141 Or read the lyrics on Bandcamp: https://featherswoodnstring.bandcamp.com/track/synthetic

Feathers, Wood ‘N’ String will be chatting on social media with you in the lead up and on the day about how Impostor Syndrome has affected your life, and if you’ve overcome it, how you did so. If you’d like to join our From Nowhere ‘team,’ feel free to come and share about your experiences – Sarah and Lloyd would love to hear from you. If you haven’t heard the a Capella vocal video we made of the end of the song, check that out below – we think you’ll like it.

 

We hope you enjoy this adventure into the metal world, but if this degree of heaviness isn’t your thing, don’t worry – we have lots more alt rock coming for you this year, so stay tuned! Thank you for joining us on our musical adventure!

 

Composite is out and there’s a video

We hope you’ve heard the song by now, but we thought you’d like to see the video we made to go with it. There are masquerade masks and we stand on furniture. Curious yet? Watch below.

A big thank you to all you lovely folks who have been connecting with us and talking about home and belonging. We’ve had some absolutely lovely submissions of photos of home and disguises, and we’ll be contacting you all shortly to check which type and design of cards you would like to receive.

We hope you’ll continue talking with us about these themes, as we go on to talk about other ways that we can be in a “grey area” in life.

We’re establishing an email list at the moment as well – if you’re keen to be on it, use our ‘contact us’ box or featherswoodnstring@gmail.com to let us know where we can write to you with news and questions!

Composite out now!

Hey there friends and supporters! We have new music for you today!

You can find it easily using this link: https://song.link/i/1458273061

Or visit our Bandcamp for lyrics at https://bit.ly/2ZLDjDF

Keep an eye out for the video in two weeks’ time, and of course, start sending in your photos for the photo challenge and we’ll send some art cards your way!

Here’s a little bit about the new song, for those who like to see behind the scenes:

“Composite is a song we’re hoping many people will identify with, about the experience of drifting between two homes. Even if you’ve never moved where you live, there can be times when home doesn’t quite feel like home anymore, and for expats, like us, that is quite amplified.” – Sarah Fletcher, lead singer and lyricist.

Feathers, Wood ‘N’ String release their new single Composite on April 30th, 2019. This is their first single of the year and was born while they were still in Adelaide, South Australia, over Christmas 2018. The song shares the driving, heavy alternative rock style of their 2018 EP, whilst exploring a new song structure.

Adelaide born and bred husband-wife duo Sarah and Lloyd Fletcher show the influence of their move halfway across the world to Southampton, UK more than ever in this new track, which directly explores the experience of being expats and having two homes, and at the same time no dominant home.

What inspired the musical aspects of Composite?
Lloyd says: “I was listening to a lot of songs at the time that had slightly different structures, hitting hard with a simplified chorus and following a different arrangement to the usual sort of intro, verse, chorus pattern. We had started to get into a bit too much of a routine with the structure of our songs so we wanted to try something a bit different like that. We also knew that we wanted both of us singing in all of our songs in 2019. Being a duo, it’s something obvious that we haven’t tried much in the past, so I have worked hard on strengthening my voice and learning singing techniques to get the sound we want.

We’d just started to include synth a bit more in the last few tracks on our 2018 EP, and I thought it would be good to bring that out a bit in this song and see what happens if we make it a bit more obvious. Overall, though, I didn’t start work on this song with a plan in mind. It was during the downtime after releasing Reasons to Exist and I was just playing with my guitar and loop pedal as a way to relax. Our trip ‘home’ to Adelaide was drawing to an end so I guess you could say I was in a bit of an ambivalent mood, looking forward to getting back to Southampton friends but sad to be leaving family and friends in Adelaide. The riff just grew out of that session where I was playing to chill out and then Sarah heard it and was inspired straight away.”

What does ‘Composite’ refer to as a title and what inspired the lyrics?
Sarah says: “We had been having a few discussions towards the end of that visit to Adelaide about how both our homes were starting to feel a little bit foreign in one way or another. Some friends we’d drifted apart from a little bit in Adelaide, or things that had changed while we were gone made us feel strange there, and at the same time we’re still not connected to a lot of people or activities in Southampton yet in the same way we used to be to people in Adelaide, so there’s a weird sense of not quite fitting anywhere – not quite being ‘at home’ in either home, as it were. We started to talk about writing a song about this experience, because it’s something we felt a lot of people would have been through at some point in their lives. Even a small move or a change in the environment ‘at home’ could make someone feel like they no longer quite fit in the places they live in.

The title Composite came to us because composites are something Lloyd looks at in his research – basically materials that are made up of more than one thing. So we feel that we are composite people – made up of more than one set of roots. Sometimes this can make us more interesting, and other times it makes us feel that we don’t wholly belong in either place. I feel this way about a lot of categories in life besides where ‘home’ is – there’s often a sense of ‘you are one of us or one of them and you can’t be both.’ I often get confronted with these lists where not only is there no appropriate tick box for me, but I’m only allowed to choose one, and I belong to multiple. In so many parts of our lives, people want us to be tick boxes. To be just one thing or another. We’re not that. We’re composite. Sometimes people treat you like you aren’t allowed to be composite, and equate that with belonging to no one, having no ‘team’ or being nothing because you aren’t wholly one thing. In the song I say ‘I am no one’s,’ and I guess you could interpret that both positively and negatively. But everyone is composite, they just try so hard to fit the categories put in from of them, because society often makes us feel we have to fit just one of those. All of us belong to more than one ‘team.’ We want people to talk to us about their experiences of trying to find ‘home’ and what that is, and in what ways they are composite too. We want to be on more than one team together. We think we are all composite when it comes down to it.”

Where can we hear the song and join in the discussion?
Composite will be out on all major platforms on April 30th, which is the anniversary of Lloyd and Sarah’s first date 15 years ago, when their adventure together began. Visit Feathers, Wood ‘N’ String’s social media pages for the Songlink, or save on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/track/3RVB1emA1TMm9z4T4ddFy4?si=cEeeVFj9Tii5AQMtvjWVDg. Feathers, Wood ‘N’ String will be chatting on social media with you in the lead up and on the day about what ‘home’ means to you, and about belonging. If you’d like to join our composite ‘team,’ feel free to come and share about your experiences of being composite – Sarah and Lloyd would love to hear from you.

Are you ready to hear Composite?

Do you remember how you sent us wonderful paper boats pictures for the Paper Boats music video release? Have you noticed us wearing masks in the Composite video? Do you own, or can you make, some kind of disguise for yourself? Or do you have a picture of a place or thing that makes you feel at home?

We’re going to run another little challenge. This one is for the weeks surrounding Composite’s release. Here’s how to join in:

1) Take a photo of a) yourself in a disguise or mask or b) a place or thing that makes you feel “at home.”

2) On or in the two weeks after the 30th, post this picture online (can be anywhere as long as you tag us). On Facebook, you can use the “so-and-so is listening to/watching etc…” post drop down to say you are listening to our song. Elsewhere, write “I’m listening to Composite by FWnS” as the first line of your post. Then tell us about your picture. You might like to include something about what home is to you, or about how YOU too are composite.

Be sure to include the Songlink so that your friends can listen too – you can get that here, in the Facebook event or from any of our pages. You can join the Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/670464133383702/permalink/676544912775624/

3) We will probably comment and try to talk to you about your photo – It’s extra nice if you can reply but don’t feel pressured.

4) Actually listen to the song, sit back, relax, and Sarah will get her art thinking cap on and make you some cards! If you have a special request, feel free to get in touch – it might just be possible.

The challenge will end on the 15th May once the music video for Composite is out, so make sure your photos are online before then.

In the meantime, if you use Spotify, you can pre-save Composite at http://bit.ly/2FMGL7Q to make sure it’s in your library on release day! The song will be available from 6am your local time in all time zones on April 30th. That means our Australian friends will have access to it before we do! So get ready to listen and start letting us know what you think.

Talk to you all soon!

Sarah and Lloyd.

New song coming April 30th!

So we decided that there’s no time like the anniversary of our first date, and our lovely sister Charmaine’s birthday, to release our first single for 2019! If you use Spotify, click here to pre-save the song: http://bit.ly/2FMGL7Q

Composite is a song about having two homes – the expat experience, and how it changes you, and how there is both a struggle for belonging and a sense of freedom involved. We’re trying to get some discussion going around what “home” is to you and whether the places you’ve been have shaped you. You can join in anywhere on our social media if you have thoughts, or you can comment here. Below are some of the ideas people have raised about what home is to them.

We’d love to hear your thoughts.

We’re also working on a music video for the song, which will be released a couple of weeks after the track comes out. It’ being filmed entirely inside our tiny flat, and involves masquerade masks. Intrigued? Watch this space.

We can’t wait to share our new creation with you!
Happy listening,

Sarah and Lloyd