Song-by-Song: ‘Rats In Paradise’ by Emily Breeze

Rats In Paradise by Emily Breeze: equal parts lipstick-smudged bravado and existential shrug

Teenage memories, failed romances and kitchen-sink glamour collide in this fizzing collection of songs full of pathos, humour and glitter

Bristol’s Emily Breeze returns with Rats In Paradise, a louche, glitter-smeared odyssey through pleasure-seeking, self-sabotage and the glamour of going down in style. Known for her barbed lyricism and high-drama delivery, Breeze stitches together synth-pop, sleaze-rock and kitchen-sink confessionals into something that feels like prom night in purgatory.
Produced by Stew Jackson and performed by a band as sharp as her tongue, the record dances on the edge of absurdity and sincerity – equal parts lipstick-smudged bravado and existential shrug.

In this exclusive breakdown, Breeze guides us through each song with her signature cocktail of wit, bathos, and backstage gossip.

Read more from Emily Breeze

ROMANCE IS DEAD

The idea for this song was formed after listening to my students who every year express disdain and even disgust for the love song. As is their right, but I LOVE love songs. I am firmly in the Nick Cave camp which projects onto the love song a holy status as the universal medium for reaching out to God. Except I don’t believe in God, I believe in romance as the grand distraction from mortality.

If the love song is going out of style, then so am I. Happily sailing downstream on a sea of irrelevance singing Moon River and I Only Have Eyes For You on an eternal loop. The brief for the band and studio was John Hughes’ 80s college movie magic. It’s prom night and the rebel has won the cheerleader, confetti is falling as enemies and friends are united on the dance floor, even the mean teacher and the guidance counsellor are flirting.

FUN

The main riff for this song, the “der ner der ner, ner ner ner ner” ascending bit was something Rob [Norbury – lead guitar] spontaneously came up with when we were working on a different idea. I liked it, it has a sort of caveman stomp and it formed the spine of the song to which I added some totally bratty, obnoxious lyrics which are secretly very sad. It’s about misspent youth and putting pleasure before business. I put in a bubblegum grunge chorus chord section, which I still think is a bit cheesy, but it is also hooky and it seemed churlish to throw away a good idea in the name of cool. So I didn’t.

Emily Breeze: “When I have truly, properly given up I will do all of my songs in Muppet voices and then, ironically, become enormously successful.” Photo: Ania Shrimpton

DATING A MODEL

The lyric is a lacerating but light-hearted take on midlife crisis age gap dating. There was too much humour in the subject for me to resist. The model in question sails through the song whilst her older lover finds himself at a house party talking to coked up gap year communists at four in the morning.

If I could only make one type of music for the rest of my life, it would be this type of early ‘60s swooning balladry dripping with reverb and romance. Rob wrote the luxurious chords and the band arrangement and Stew Jackson’s production is stellar. Many people have commented on the beautiful string arrangement on this song but it is not strings, it is our keys player Helen Stanley’s immense talent that is doing more for the song than a string quartet ever could. Check out her band Sounds Of Ursa.

FOREVER MONEY

The lyrics are drawn from the ghosts of my 20s. It was a romantic and desperate time when life felt like a Tom Waits song. I had wanted to shoehorn the tragic optimism of, “This time next year, we’ll be millionaires,” from Only Fools And Horses into a song for some time. I wrote this as an acoustic folk tune but it wanted something juicier and more ridiculous. Stew our producer did the arrangement parts on this one. I enjoyed watching him dart between instruments in the studio. The bassline has a 70s Grange Hill quality to it and he added sci-fi synths and glacial backing vocals to the chorus which dial the heartbreak up to 11.

1997

This came from a three-note bass loop I made up with a stream of nostalgia porn lyrics about being a teenager in the 90s. “Yeah, we were raging against the machine. We did it with our pocket money in a haze of hormones and Lynx Africa”. I wasn’t sure about it until Rob put the “gada bam bam” guitar hook on it. It’s almost a rap in places and I love splitting out the syllables at speed whilst secretly imagining that I am Dylan doing Subterranean Homesick Blues. Rhythm section Andy Sutor [drums] and George Caveney [bass] nailed the Krautrock/hip hop weirdness. Check out Andy’s other band Peach.

Emily Breeze: “If the love song is going out of style, then so am I.” Photo: Holly de Looze

YESTERDAY’S PARTIES

The lyrics are from a poem I wrote in my 20s when loads of us feckless music degenerates all lived in a big house which may well have been the cheapest rent in the whole of Bristol. There are certain things that come with very cheap rent and it took some imagination to romanticise the dealers, mice, the fire alarm which would go off randomly for hours and hours, and the hole in the roof which I once saw actual snow falling through. It was a magical place though and worthy of a song. There is a Jene Genet line which he wrote from his prison cell something like, “These are not manacles, they are garlands of flowers,” which spawned the idea of transforming miserable English rain into the tears of martyred saints. This is a strange song which I love for its flaws and the indulgent rock n roll circus outro is us at our most ridiculous.

WE WERE LOVERS

This chords to this started with me trying to rip off 1979 by Smashing Pumpkins and Blur’s newish song The Narcissist. I’m really proud of the verse sections of this song and if I had nailed the chorus this could have been a megahit Rodney! I am trying to get better at chorus’s, not because I think I should follow a trad format, more because I never have so am interested in learning the craft.

I love verses full of detail and atmosphere whereas coming up with an air punchingly anthemic yet also poignant chorus is a challenge. But God loves a trier and I surely am trying. Don’t get me wrong, it wouldn’t be on the album if I didn’t think it was great but songs like emotions and people are difficult to control.

THE BEATNIKS

A love song to the wide-eyed beatific state of the Beat writers Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara, and Jack Kerouac. Of course, they were really just speed-addled ratbags but they started the whole counterculture revolution which my heroes Patti Smith and Lou Reed went on to conquer. This is me really having a go at writing a pop song. It’s short, it has a chorus, it’s about a totally niche subject – oops!

Emily Breeze: “I was unsure where the lyrics should sit so he sent it back to me doing a Kermit impersonation for the topline.” Photo: Holly de Looze

ANATOMY

This is a really old one from when me and Rob were in our shoegaze, Velvet Underground/Jesus and Mary chain era which seems to be a rite of passage for all musicians.

I am playing a C barre chord with some pedal notes for the entire song and yelling blue murder over the top. Rob has half of his guitar strings tuned to C which is what gives it that desperate urgency aided by George Caveney’s LCD disco bassline, Helen’s Eno-esque drones and Andy’s pummelling backbeat. This is much less lyrically dense than my newer songs. “The light that burns across the lake, that’s how I know your still awake,” came from The Great Gatsby where is his gazing across the lake at the green light which illuminates Daisy’s house, and also the green light which used to be a sign that someone was awake and online on social media way back in the heady days of the mid 2000s.

WE WERE LOVERS REDUX

This was a collaboration with my friend Ryan Rodgers, from an excellent band called Mumble Tide. We are both big fans of that sort of “crying in the dry ice,” 80s end-of-the-disco tear-jerker, so we made this alternate version of We Were Lovers. When he sent me a demo I was unsure where the lyrics should sit so he sent it back to me doing a Kermit impersonation for the topline, with a choir of Muppets on the chorus. Obviously, this is much better than my vocal and when I have truly, properly given up I will do all of my songs in Muppet voices and then, ironically, become enormously successful. Check out Mumble Tide.

GRACELAND

I love singing this song. No neurosis or ego to peck at me because I know it’s amazing. It’s one of the greatest songs ever written by one of the greatest American songwriters. It’s about Paul Simon’s divorce from Carrie Fisher who played Princess Leia in Star Wars, so he was understandably upset. I leaned into the implied tragedy and bitterness in my vocal delivery. It was Stew’s idea to do a monolithic fuzzed out version and it is my all-time favourite song to perform live.

Emily Breeze’s new album Rats In Paradise is out now on Sugar Shack Records. You can buy the album and find all of Emily’s upcoming tour dates at linktr.ee/emilybreeze

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