Features Track By Track: Virals - Strange Fruit EP

In 2012, from the wilting branches of Lovvers stemmed Virals, the new project of Shaun Hencher. It wasn’t so much a middle finger to the past, more a fruitful extension of Hencher’s project of old. You can see his songwriting translating between the two bands, with one of the songs appearing on his new EP originally being intended for Lovvers’ fans consumption. 
 

DIY’s been handed an exclusive stream of the ‘Strange Fruit’ EP, which is a notable, more progressive step up from the tempting early signs that spilled out from Hencher’s initial tracks. Shaun’s given us a track-by-track guide to the whole EP, giving us a timely insight into how the whole thing came into being. 
 

Strange Fruit

This song has been kicking about for a few years now and it’s the second attempt at a recorded version. It sounds a little darker than the original but mainly because it’s a lot heavier, lots of chorus pedals. I think I’d been watching Nevermind ‘Classic Albums’ with Butch Vig, which deals mainly with the production techniques he used on that record. We decided to take that sort of approach when recording this version. We’re fairly limited with the amount of gear we have, but it was a fun process. Lyrically it’s dealing with having lots of song ideas and not being able to sleep because of them; whilst always viewing or comparing these ideas to the opposite sex.
 

Heartbreaker

This was inspired by watching the Creation Records documentary! I love watching music documentaries and find the good ones really inspiring. It was written very quickly while sat at the computer and was initially disliked by my friend who I record with. But I persisted and we are now stoked on the results. Classic rock vibes!
 

Summer Girls

This is a super old song that I’ve recorded numerous times over the past couple of years. I finally settled on a version I liked. It’s actually so old that it started life as a Lovvers song and we even played it a few times towards the end of the band. When I wrote the lyrics/music it was when there were lots of 3 piece girl bands kicking about that I didn’t think were that great and yet the people I talked to seemed to always be raving how good they were. It was written to be ironic but now 3 years later it’s just a tune that’s fun to play. Included within the lyrics is an Elvis Costello LP reference which at the time was getting some serious airplay in my living room.
 

Lola

‘Lola’ is a new song that we’ve never played live and was written during the recording process. It started as an idea from my friend whose recorded all the Virals records so far and it was finished up together in his studio. He played me a recorded verse and I really liked how it sounded - a real Evan Dando vibe when he was good - so it was just a case of coming up with some more parts and some lyrics. It was very much a collaboration and fun to do.
 

Stream the EP in full below: