After, Breaking God's Heart and Fidelity Wars I'd already felt like I'd said quite a lot and was definitely of the opinion that we should only continue to make albums if they were going to be consciously different. In a way its the first complete Hefner album written with an audience in mind. Every album up to this point has a large proportion of songs written from before we were signed. All of these songs were written specifically for the album so consequently the album has more of a unifying theme than Fidelity Wars and, yes, I guess I would allow it to be called a concept album.

All the songs are supposed to be about living in the city, or about being in love in the city. I was, and still am, very much in love, both with my girlfriend and London. I wanted to make a brave, confidant album. I also wanted to make an 'up' album.

Most of the music I listen to is uplifting music and I wanted to show we could make music that people could listen to when they were feeling good, we lost a few fans on this one but we actually gained a load more new ones and this record remains our biggest seller by some margin.

If I'm really candid I wanted the album to sound like Dexy's Midnight Runners, or at least some of the records that they were probably listening to back in the seventies, stuff like Chairman of the Board etc. This is most apparent on The Day that Thatcher Dies which sounds like both Elmo Jame by CotB and Geno by Dexy's. I even state my intent of trying to copy Dexy's at the begining of the Good Fruit video so you can't say I'm not upfront.

Miti only recorded half the album this time due to some problem with dates, filling in for him was Simon Askew who was trained by Miti and worked with him at the BBC. It worked out well, their sound and approach matched up an they were more than a little competitive with each other. Listening to the record now I can't tell who did what. The song; 'We Love The City' was the first written for the album and I had it ready at the end of the Fidelity Wars sessions but knew I wanted it to be a title song for an album almost straight away. At the time there were all these fox-hunting people clogging up London with their stupid marches and I also remember Catatonia writing that song about how much they hated London so I felt it was time for a response. Its a good song, maybe a bit too grand and pompous but it does what it says on the tin. All major chords you know.

Painting and Kissing was written during the Fidelity Wars tour and played at a lot of those shows. The title is kind of a 'Belle and Sebastian' joke, the song itself has a little more bite than the title suggests. It's a great song and has always been a live favourite but for me the recorded version doesn't quite hit the button, I think maybe we'd just played it live so many times before taking it into the studio.

I was trying to make a proper album one that didn't have any filler, and has different styles of songs that sat well against each other, a bit like, and I know this sounds lame, a Beatles album. 'Hold Me Closer' was perhaps supposed to be like Beatles song but it actually sounds like Badfinger to me, which is no bad thing in my book. Although a long way off of being my favourite song, it is possibly my favourites sounding Hefner song. We played it as a 5-piece with John's friend Mark Bandola playing piano and you you can hear the sound of the band bouncing down the piano mikes, making it sound all big and boomy.

Don't Go is my favourite Hefner song, or is it Greedy Ugly People, anyways I love it and I'm not sure if I'm going to better it. Like all my favourites its simple and uncluttered it delivers a uncomplicated sentiment in an unusual way. It was written in Malmo when we were on tour with the Violent Femmes, we played it that very night but John misheard where the beat was and played on the off, however to me it sounded great and that became the arrangement of the song. Ant plays some paint tins which were attached to his drum kit. Big argument with Miti over the guitar on this one, he ended up doing two mixes saying, 'Use the one you like if you want but you're wrong.'

Greater London Radio was purpose built for the album once I'd got the concept straight in my head. Greater London Radio is what is now known as BBC London and used to be a great station, well they played hefner anyway. When the changed theit name I thought, well if they're not using it anymore. Everyones firing on all cylinders here, a fantastic brass arrangement by John, great vocals on from Ant, the fade out is really good too. We caught Jack and Antony playing an arrangement of the tune on their folk instruments and recorded them secretly. It's wrong to say that everybody was on board with the 'We Love the City' mainfesto, Jack grew up on a farm and Ant comes from the Isle of Wight. Jack pointed out that it isn't the city or the country thats the problem its the suburbs and promoted the lyric revision in We Love the City from 'We love the city and the suburbs that surround' to 'We love the city NOT the suburbs that surround'

'As soon as you're ready' is the first and only song to credit the whole band as writers. The reason being that the song kind of grew in a rehearsal, and in that situation its so hard to say who did what, so lets say everybody did it! The harmonies at the end are the closest we got to our Beach Boy ambitions, its me, Jack, Ant and Amelia Fletcher. We worked our asses off doing that.

She Can't Sleep No More, tends to split people a bit, look it's supposed to be out of tune!! It took a long time to get the brass section to play that bad on purpose. We only played this live once.

The Cure for Evil is my attempt to do a mini rock opera, like 'Scenes from an Italian Restaurant' by Billy Joel. The Brass part on this one was written by me but all the rest of the brass parts on this album were written by John.

'The Day that Thatcher Dies' is everybody's favourite right? It inspired some of the funniest heckles when playing it live including an un ironic 'Who's Margaret Thatcher? from a sweet girl at the front one night. Now that makes you feel old. I think its a good idea for a song and even though people always mention Costello's 'Tramp the Dirt Down', a pretty original one too. I think you can here the fun we were having here. Thats Jack's children in the photo further up the page and on the record. The were pretty professional all said and done, though I remember Miti getting itchy about them blowing raspberries down expensive microphones.

'Head to your Toes' is another love song. I'm still immensely proud of this album, and have no hesitation in saying that its my best work.