There seriously hasn't been a dry seat in the church of shoegaze since London-based foursome Cheatahs emerged, with breathy singing aplenty and a talent for doing that thing that makes songs memorable…y'know, "melodies". Anyway, they've now been signed to Wichita, and their debut EP release on the label, SANS, is as expected crammed full of scuzzy guitars, hazy vocals and a ton of catchy hooks.We're streaming it exclusively on Noisey and, 'cos they are as adorable as shit, they've given us a quick rundown of what went into creating each track:James on "The Swan"This as a bit of a strange one for me as I wrote the music for the verse in my head in bed one morning, which is not normally how I write - usually I just sit with my guitar, amp and loop pedal and just play until something strikes me as being interesting enough to persevere with. The chorus and the outro came pretty quickly after that. The lyrics, as always, only come once I've got a melody I like. In this case they're deliberately allegorical and so, as personal as they are to me, I like the idea of people being able to apply their own meaning to them.James on "SANS"The music for this came in the usual way, in that it started to form after a good few hours of playing one day - I think the chorus came first. The best analogy is that it's like very slowly chipping away at a block of stone, until an interesting shape starts to form. when you're playing for that long, it can be a little bit trance-like after a while, and ideas can start to push themselves to the surface. Having said that, a lot of the time you can spend a whole day trying to write and nothing comes at all, and you feel headbutting the wall, haha.Nathan on "Fountain Park"This song I wrote about a year ago and had a demo of it with me on tour. About 80 percent of it stayed the same, we ended up changing the verse melody at the last minute and tweaked the breakdown the day before we handed it to the label. It's about moving away from home.Nathan on "Flake"This song is one of the first songs I wrote for Cheatahs. Think I came home drunk one night and picked up my guitar, wrote and recorded it really quickly. Then when we started playing as a band we fleshed out the ending and James added a solo which is one of my favorites of all time. It's about making mistakes.Thanks guys! SANS is available to buy now via Wichita Records.
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