FFO: Scott Hepple – Letting Go

Retro rock ‘n’ roller Scott Hepple (Previously of Moon Rover, Star Cult and Scott Free), drops his new single Letting Go.  Recorded with a full band and Dunc Lloyd from Maximo Park, this debut offering is rich in Laurel Canyon loveliness and San Francisco psych but with an air of Detroit garage rock discordance, which offers a slightly unsettling edge to the soulful vocal and warm analogue tones.

Here, Scott sums up Letting Go using three tracks…

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young – Carry On

This is the kind of song that wakes me up with a slap to the face and tells me to do something with my day. I love the huge harmonies, the thrashed acoustic guitar and the warm heavy bass particularly. It crashes into 1970 with a much more mature, but dubious, outlook on the world compared to the hippy movement of the 60s that the band were part of. The writer realises that the world is a darker place than they thought, but they push ahead because it’s the only choice they have. I was hugely inspired by the Laurel Canyon scene when writing ‘Letting Go’, and I wanted to take the energy and the urgency CSNY produced here and realise it in my own way. The main theme of ‘Letting Go’ is reincarnation and about how everything has a beginning and an end, and this song’s lyrical content partly inspired that too.

Elyse Weinberg – Houses

Elyse is the most underrated and unappreciated artist from that same Laurel Canyon scene in my opinion. This song is her most well known, and probably the best from her album ‘Elyse’. It’s a beautiful Folk-Rock gem and has an incredibly catchy vocal line. The things that I took inspiration from most in the song were the vocal performance and how it was recorded live in the studio. The emotion in her strained voice is incredible and you can feel every word she is saying, which I think is a very hard thing to achieve as an artist and something she achieves in every song I’ve heard from her. It was the norm to record ‘live in the studio’ in 1969, however I take particular inspiration from how this song was done because everything feels ragged, like it could fall apart at any minute, it keeps you constantly interested and on the edge of your seat, while being a fairly laid back song!

Elliott Smith – Coast to Coast

This is my favourite Elliott Smith song, I’ve been inspired by him for years when I’ve been writing, and also with production stuff. It was Elliott’s music that got me into recording DIY, particularly analogue. ‘Letting Go’ was recorded on an 8-track reel to reel, with pretty much every instrument pushed into the red to achieve warmth and saturation on every instrument. ‘Coast to Coast’ also shares these traits, and partly inspired me to try this method out myself with full band recordings.