New Zealand indie rockers NO CIGAR have had quite the 2024.
They recently sold out Islington Assembly Hall in London (which holds a hefty 900 patrons), having done the same at The Landsowne Hotel in Sydney just prior to their showcase at BIGSOUND in Brisbane. Their recent European tour also saw sold-out shows in Paris, Amsterdam, and Manchester.With 300k monthly Spotify listeners alongside 20M total streams of their music, the future is sonically bright for NO CIGAR, especially factoring in their newest single, the delightfully shimmery ear worm 'Chantilly'.
Written during time spent in France last year while staying at a Airbnb, and despite the idyllic countryside they found themselves in, the band's drinking habits played a major role with the song's lyrics.
"As a band, the process of songwriting is heavily influenced by the environment we're in for those sessions. We typically travel to a new place, and park up somewhere with the instruments to help escape the distractions of our normal lives, and hone in on the music.
"In 2023, with our European tour beckoning, we took time to park up in a small French town, Chantilly, just an hour north of Paris, where we would lock in for rehearsals and songwriting sessions before the shows. The picturesque beauty of the old town in autumn set the scene for a series of tracks we wrote during that period."
However, with beer bottles piling up and no lyrics compiled, the pressure was mounting. "Having flown halfway around the world to play shows and write new music, there was a very real pressure to produce something worthy of the beautiful town we were in.
"As empty beer bottles progressively began to accumulate on the backdoor of our Airbnb, that pressure slowly began to build. We'd hit a bit of a wall creatively, or so it seemed, until we decided to clear the heads, and venture out into the picturesque autumnal embankments of the river that meandered through the town.
"Upon returning to our instruments, the valve was released, 'Chantilly' being the first of 15 songs that were written that very evening alone. The trip became very productive from that point on."
Here, the band share some travel snaps and words from that adventure.
The song's genesis
Having not yet found the magic in our short stay in Chantilly, we decided to clear the heads and head out for a wander along the river and surrounding areas. Willy rolled a blunt and lit it up, taking in the bucolic surroundings of the quaint town, neighbouring château and embankments of the waterways.Place is a big part of our process, and the inspiration from our environment was transcribed into 'Chantilly' when we returned to our instruments that afternoon. It released a valve of pressure, and the songs flowed freely from that point.
Photos below from the Château de Chantilly and the surrounding grounds, which was a short walk from our Airbnb accommodation including the river embankments. Plenty of inspiration to derive from the idyllic surroundings; an inspiring environment to write music in.
Our manager's guitar solo
During a late night writing session, our manager at the time decided to get involved on the instruments, picking up Willy's guitar to jam along with the band. Though he had no prior musical experience, he proceeded to rip what he thought was a solo Hendrix would've been proud of.At this point in the night, he had certainly contributed to the 400 bottles that lay on the back door, so our producer, CJ, thought it best to mute his track. Josh was soloing at the time, which our manager mistook for his own solo. He sold that solo better than anyone I've seen, with facials to match. It was a fun one to listen back to when CJ unmuted to track on the playback.
The boys in our creation station
Sound management
Living adjoined to our Airbnb host and trying to write music while his young child tried to sleep, our host was very accommodating for us and our needs, and gave a curfew of 10pm for 'loud' music. At that point Ned would change from drumsticks, to the lightning bolt brushes and we'd pad the kick drum with an oven mitt to absorb the noise.This ended up dictating the sound and energy of some of the songs that were to come after 'Chantilly', which was definitely a pre-10pm kind of song. Here you can see a sheet draped over the kick drum to suppress the noise. The oven mitt lay on the other side.
Recycling
There was no obvious bin for recycling where we were staying, so the evidence of our consumption was confronting. Bottles piled up by the backdoor, progressively growing, and evidently playing on Willy's mind, as he sings about in 'Chantilly'. They need to suss some good waste management solutions in France, but hey, we got a great song out of it.
The boys drinking the first bottles that would populate the backdoor step
Hunting
Our host brought back a pig from his hunt in the local woods. We hadn’t expected much when he left us that morning, but returning at dusk with a full animal for Josh to prep was a unique experience.It felt very fitting for the place we were in was adorned with hooves of animals killed in years past, as well as a deers head watching over us as we wrote and recorded the new tunes.
