'Good Days/Bad Days' / Quality Used Cars [Album Breakdown]
Francis Tait shares a track-by-track breakdown of Quality Used Cars’ debut solo album Good Days/Bad Days, released through Spoilsport Records earlier this year.
Francis Tait has spent the better part of the past decade as a regular face on the Melbourne live circuit, his different projects finding him striking up any combination of soul, jazz, blues, disco, psychedelia and surf rock over the years. In Good Days/Bad Days, featuring countless notable Naarm musicians, Francis dodges every aspect of his music history instead leaning in towards the songwriting prowess he’d been shaping in the background over the last years.
Characterised by an idiosyncratic, warbling vocal and a penchant for sticky hooks that refuse to overextend themselves, Good Days/Bad Days puts full focus on Francis’ charismatic storytelling, over a backdrop that blends sunny Australiana with alt-country tenderness and scrappy garage-pop smarts. It’s imaginative and incisive, yet completely modest - a collection of songs that feel as unassuming as they are instantly and joyously loveable.
Verve had the chance to receive a track by track rundown about each song and the album and the stories behind them from Francis himself, read below.
This Will All Be Over Soon
Just a little song to start off the album about how fleeting everything is. I’ve always liked intros on albums, but it doesn’t really make as much sense with Spotify and everything now does it? Also thought it was funny starting the Quality Used Cars discography with a song called This Will All Be Over Soon.
To Wendy Love Steve
For a very brief amount of time I liked the idea of playing records at bars on Friday and Saturday nights under the name Brisbane Bears DJs with my friends James and Séamus. I was looking for pop hits in a box of $3 7” singles in Daylesford and found a copy of How Deep Is Your Love by the Bee Gees in there with the words “To Wendy Love Steve” written on the label. So so sweet. I told people about it for the next few weeks and made up stories in my head about who they were. Eventually I wrote down my favourite version and turned it into this song. My favourite bit about playing it live is when my friend Dan goes “da-ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-ba-da” from the crowd over the guitar bit in the verse.
It’s Gonna Rain (Down On Me)
I wrote this after getting dropped from the Brunswick reserves for being late too many times, then went out, got drunk and had a fight with one of my friend’s housemates, then when I got picked to play footy the next week vomited in the car on the way to the game. It was probably the worst game of football I’ve ever played but the captain said he appreciated me getting there on time.
Ripoff Merchant
In 2017 my Dad decided to close the record store he’d run since I was nine years old and I wanted to do something nice for the shop, considering all the music that I’d fallen in love with through high school had come from there. I used to take a CD or record as payment for a couple of hours work. There were some amazing, weird and wonderful people who would roll into that shop regularly who I got to know pretty well and I wanted this to be an ode to them. I haven’t seen many of them since, so I’m really glad I have this song to capture that time of my life. I played it for the first time at the farewell gig we put on at the shop and it was a very special moment for me.
Photo by Lewis Robert
Spiral Of Lies
This feels like a stupid story to tell after telling the Ripoff Merchant one, but I had this dream once where Kevin Rudd murdered Julia Gillard at my uni while I was there and then asked me to help him make a speedy get away to the country. You know when you wake up from a dream and you still feel the way you felt in the dream? This song is how I felt after that dream. Also inspired by Lynchy telling me that he’d been telling his parents he’d been sleeping over at my place, when he was actually spending a lot of time with a new lover. I could see the guilt eating away at him.
It’s A Cruel, Cruel World
I’d had a particularly bad week when I wrote this song, but had also just seen that NAB ad where they green screen in kids to be AFL players. This was the one with Dyson Heppell and Moana Hope. It felt so hopeful and lovely and I couldn’t let myself finish the song on a sad note. There’s plenty of other sad moments on the record. How bloody good does Han sound on this one too! Almost a shot in the foot for me.
The Wheels Are In Motion
Not much to this one story-wise. I tried to capture that feeling of being out and the weight and momentum that social anxiety can have. Very hard to sing live. Benny Two-Snakes plays the guitar part which takes the pressure off. Eventually I reckon Han, Ryan or I will have a crack at that little woodblock bit under the words but we’ll see.
(Living Out Of) The Rutheim Inn
The closest actual place to Rutheim in a town in south-west Germany called Rietheim-Weilheim, which is pretty close I guess. I have looked it up and they have a few inns, but none called the Rietheim Inn. Closest thing is called the Apartment Hotel in Rietheim. Probably good because I talk quite a bit of shit about the Rutheim Inn. The two top landmarks in Rietheim are both old churches. This song is actually one big dirty pun, which only some people have gotten, which is maybe good for the sake of the song. It’s actually supposed to be a song about feeling a bit shit and the lengths you will often go to to conceal that from people.
Daydreamin’
I was talking to my partner the other night about why it’s so hard to write happy songs. I think the happiest songs I write are the ones without words. When a moment is really perfect, it doesn’t really need words explaining it. I guess that's kinda the vibe with this one.
It’s Just Trouble Out There
I tried really hard not to write a quarantine song, because most of the ones I've heard haven't been very good, but I was very low on inspiration last year so folded to this idea. Han and Issy came over in-between lockdowns for a cup of tea and to write a backing vocal part. They floored me with what they came up with. We recorded each of the parts in lockdown too and conceptually it all felt quite appropriate. Everyone killed it and I’m very lucky to have such beautiful eggs putting their time into these songs with me, especially through 2020. Yikes. Hopefully some happier songs for them on album two.
Words by Francis Tait, edited by Winter McQuinn
Photos by James Whiting and Lewis Robert
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