Last year was a big one for Skydaddy – the moniker of musician and bandleader Rachid Fakhre. Rising from the ashes of previous endeavours, Skydaddy was launched as a conduit for rediscovery, and a more personal approach to song-writing. ‘That Morning’, and ‘His Masterpiece’, both released last year, use grand instrumentation and timeless song-writing tropes behind heartfelt lyrics, capturing the sense of adventure and renewed spirit of a new musical direction.
In the lead-up to debut EP Pilot, set to be released next month, Skydaddy’s newest single ‘Tear Gas’ sees a change of pace. ‘Tear Gas’ retreats from the full-band chamber pop of previous singles, opting instead for tender arrangements of acoustic guitar and strings to form a spot-lit ballad. To help arrange the beautifully considered duet, Fakhre has enlisted the talents of Black Country, New Road’s Tyler Hyde, whose contributions mark her first solo release as Tyler Cryde. Conversational vocals between the pair explore the particulars of disharmony in a previous relationship, as Hyde and Fakhre lilt between wry and sincere snapshots of romantic tedium. Originally released under a previous outfit of Fakhre’s, the song received a rework by Hyde, giving rise to the iteration of the track now to be heard.
Having been on a journey from its inception to this release, Wax were keen to learn more about how the track arrived as it appears today. Skydaddy and Tyler Cryde spoke to Wax about a writing process split between London and Lebanon; the difficulties of doomed adolescent relationships; and the joys of a quality writing partner.
‘Tear Gas’ itself has been around and performed in variations for a while. Could you explain the track’s origins, and how it came to be a duet?
Rachid: Well, it starts with a tear gas canister I found on the ground in France. I took it home and recorded a beat with the canister filled with dry rice, and when I put lyrics to it, it became a kind of sordid take on ‘Let’s Get It On’ by Marvin Gaye. It’s about a couple who have lost the flame in their relationship. There’s a lack of communication, and the only language they know how to speak is the language of love and physicality. The chorus is kind of saying, ‘well, it doesn’t matter that our relationship isn’t going well, let’s just have sex and it’ll be fine’. That then got released on a compilation as a Spang Sisters song.
I was then hosting a radio show in which I asked artists to submit covers of songs they liked by lesser-known artists. Tyler was one of those who did, and she submitted a cover of ‘Tear Gas’ but totally changed the time signature and the feel. I loved it so much that we started performing it together at my shows, and then after adding some orchestration with help from the band, it came to be what it is today.
What drew you to the song initially that made you want to reinterpret it?
Tyler: I wanted to do an ode to Spang Sisters, because Rachid was hosting the show. ‘Tear Gas’ was the song that sounded like it had the most space in it, and therefore had more potential for me to manipulate it into something further from what it was – something that I felt I could put my stamp on.
How did the song change once you picked it up?
Tyler: Well, it was four-four before and now its three-four, and the plucking pattern became very much that of a classic Leonard Cohen song.
Rachid: ‘One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong’.
Tyler: Yes, that was probably the strongest influence, but anything from that album really. It’s definitely more painful than it was previously. When I perform, I unfortunately perform in quite a painful way sometimes, through laziness most of the time. I think in Rachid’s initial version of it there’s something either hopeful or humorous to it, whereas I don’t hear any of that in my interpretation of it.
The lyrical themes seem to show the ebb and flow of confidence in relationships, with mention of an ‘eggshell soul’, juxtaposed with a ‘carnal desire’. Were these two opposing themes in mind as you were writing the song?
Rachid: Yeah, you know, we’ve all been in that sort of relationship where you get to a point where you’ve lost the ability to communicate in a mature and open way. But then sometimes that doesn’t translate physically, because physicality is a pretty mono-directional language. There aren’t too many twists and turns. The song was written at a time where my relationship was not doing very well. She was in fact in the room as I was writing it, but there was such an invisible barricade in our relationship that she didn’t even realise what I was singing about.
Tyler: Were you just writing the lyrics? Or were you doing everything?
Rachid: Doing everything – even recording the vocals. To me, the lyrics represent a boring, flameless relationship – snapshots of being three years into a slightly toxic, early 20s relationship and the little things that symbolise that.
So rather than a conversation between the two of you, you both alternate on lines entirely done by Rachid?
Rachid: Yeah, it might sound like a dialogue, but it is from one perspective, singing to another person. I like that it can interpreted it in a different way. Now that there are two voices, maybe you could see it as a conversation.
Tyler: I hear it more like it’s come from one mind, and you’re hearing certain things said in the other person’s voice. That’s just one way of looking at it.
Rachid: Something like your ‘eggshell soul’ can be a kind of cop out line in an argument to say someone is too sensitive, but then that is something I’d say, so I guess having it in a different voice emphasises that, if that makes any sense.
What do you think the main benefits were of writing together?
Tyler: Honesty, I think. I trust Rachid’s opinion more than most. That’s not to say that I agree with everything he says, but I believe everything he says to be truthful. The writing is therefore not influenced by anyone else’s opinion. If anything, whenever he disagrees and I feel the other way, it just gives me more confidence that I’m doing something that I believe in, which is something that I rarely have confidence in, but I do with him.
Tyler, you’ve been playing solo shows for a while, and ‘Tear Gas’ marks your first release as Tyler Cryde. How pleased are you to have music out under your name, and for this track in particular to be the first?
Tyler: I’m really excited, but I feel very lucky that it’s coming out in this way, because it’s a soft release of me into the world. It’s less daunting, and I have much more confidence because I’m doing it with Rachid. But its Rachid’s song, and I’m not going to take more credit that I need to for it. I’m just the sidekick.
Other singles from Pilot have more of a full-band sound, was it your intention for ‘Tear Gas’ to be a more stripped back moment on the EP?
Rachid: I really loved the demo that Tyler made for the radio show, and I didn’t feel like it needed to be fleshed out anymore. Especially because it has a rubato element to it, adding any bass, drums or rhythm would have confined it to a tempo. I liked the nature of it in that way, but it made me most nervous for this one to come out, because of how naked everything is. Especially the voices.
There’s pretty much no editing or comping or anything like that. It was just three tracks really, the first being Tyler’s guitar played live with the strings, and then we overdubbed the flute. Tyler and I recorded our vocals at the same time together. The take we ended up using is far from a take I would ordinarily be happy with. I’d usually record vocals alone in my room and do maybe 50 takes, but for ‘Tear Gas’ we wanted an intimate, unpolished recording.
The video for the track shows a sensitive relationship between the two protagonists. How did the idea for the prosthetically enhanced couple come about?
Rachid: That was Jasper (Cable-Alexander)’s idea, who directed the video. He makes wonderful music videos and agreed to make one for us. We went through a few ideas – the initial idea for a video was actually going to be for another song from the EP, ‘Lebanon Rising’. It was to be a mariachi band on a rowboat in the middle of a lake in the Alps, which I still want to do. But we chose to make the video for ‘Tear Gas’, and he came up with two humanoid characters talking with one another about their dying relationship. It’s set in a typical London flat, with a couple who love each other, but they’re struggling in their relationship.
The two actors are close friends of mine, and I thought of them because I’d seen them in a play that Flo (who plays the girl) had written called The Man Who Lives Under The Bed, which is actually a comedy. Harrison (who plays the man) plays a monster who she’s in love with, that lives under her bed. That was a comedy, and this was less funny, but I think some humour still shines through in the video. I was really happy with their performances.
You both recently took a trip out to Lebanon. Could we hear more about your time out there, and how it has affected your writing since?
Rachid: I went there a lot as a child with family, so through going with friends I saw the country in a completely different way. I felt a strong connection with it, and as I was finishing off a lot of these songs when we went, it poured into some of the tracks. We were there with Francesca who plays keys in the band; Louie who plays cello; Johnny who plays violin and Blue, who was directing that portion of the music video for ‘That Morning’. We definitely all felt a lot closer to since that trip.
We met a very fantastical man called Ferris, who took us around in his battered taxi. There was a night he drove us to the house of a woman he was in love with.
Tyler: He was in love with her, but he wanted her flowers. She had this bush of flowers that he loved. He would go there every day to pick a flower and would often get caught by her. So we went with him at 3am and watched him pick flowers from her bush. He picked one for all of us, which I still have.
Rachid: But, on the sadder side, we met a lot of disenfranchised young people who just wanted to leave because the economy is so bad. The country hasn’t really recovered since the nuclear blast at the ports in 2020, and we were staying less than a kilometre from the port where a lot of the buildings are still bombed-out. It was a very powerful trip, and Lebanon has definitely played a big part in in the creative process for a lot of the EP.
Words: Dan Webster // Photos: Darren ‘Humothy’ Tsang
‘Tear Gas’ is out now, taken from Skydaddy’s debut EP ‘Pilot’, out February 2nd. Pre-order the EP via Bandcamp.