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Photo: Blackwater Lightship

Rising indie outfit Blackwater Lightship have just unveiled their debut EP, Last Night I Saw The Leaves Fall — a collection that blends raw honesty with layered instrumentation and emotional depth. Across five tracks, the band explore themes of relationships, recovery, spirituality, and the healing power of nature, all while capturing the grit and vulnerability of their live sound. We caught up with Tom and Leon to dive into the stories, struggles, and inspirations behind the record, and to hear how this release marks both a milestone and an exciting new beginning for the band.

Your debut EP, Last Night I Saw The Leaves Fall, sounds like it was a deeply personal process. What moments in your own lives inspired the lyrics, and how did you decide what to share versus what to keep private?

TOM – When you put music out there, you’re making yourself more vulnerable. And whilst there is a beauty in that, you do have to put up guards too. The EP covers broad themes like relationships, addiction and recovery, spirituality, isolation and loss, but also the healing power of nature. We use lots of symbolism where you are able to explore things without the gritty details at times, but can still get across that raw personal element.

LEON – Over & Out is my most personal of the bunch, and that was written about a very dark time in my life when I was going through a very traumatic experience. It’s essentially about not giving up, even when you’re going through some of the absolute worst things life (and people) can throw at you. It’s about somehow riding the storm and knowing there will be an ‘after’, i.e. it won’t always be this bad. Things will get better.

It’s one of the few songs I’ve actually written the words for before the music, and most of that was shaped over ten years ago when I was on a songwriting course that my friend Sam Genders was running. He helped me find a way to turn those experiences into a song that almost mirrors the journey I was on. Getting that uplifting change right in the middle of the song was something I’d not really achieved before. It turns the song around. I’ve a lot of respect for Sam as a songwriter and musician and just as a genuinely lovely human being. He was able to get that out of me by sharing his insights and his own personal techniques, and ten years later, here’s the song!

You describe pouring yourselves into these tracks both emotionally and technically. Can you walk us through one specific song where that balance was the hardest to achieve?

TOM – When recording “The Places Where We Go”, we decided to do this without the use of a click track. There are a lot of technical elements to the song. But quickly the team realised that this track would work best if we let it flow naturally, like we would in a live setting. So we could best capture that raw emotion and power whilst still keeping the synchronicity of it all. 

LEON – Yeah, that was a good call. It just had to be done more raw than the other tracks. On that note, we saved the overdubbed screams as the very last vocal to be recorded so that I could really pull something from deep within. Right before the take, Tom asked me to think of something that makes me really angry, to get that pure emotion out. I’m not really ever an angry person, but I put myself in a place in the past and just let it out. I nearly lost my voice screaming, which is why I made sure we did it last! 

For the guitar on this track, I use a Submarine pickup. Normally, that’s on when we play live with the regular pick-ups, too, but for this, I overdubbed it separately so we could get a really gritty, gnarly sound and isolate just the Submarine. The guitar is also in a strange tuning I made up so that the 1st, 2nd and 3rd strings are always ringing out (in the correct key) as I’m playing the open bar chord shapes. I also let loose a whole load of guitar feedback, which we recorded through my little 20W Orange Crush combo amp.

We had closed back headphones on to protect our ears and turned them up really loud and let rip! This was tracked once the main bed of the song was complete, and Matt & Lucy were able to layer the best parts into the track. All these elements, along with those massive drums of Toms, really convey that sense of foreboding, I think!

Layering guitars, percussion, and backing vocals is central to the EP’s sound. How did you approach arranging those layers so that the production still felt “honest and powerful” rather than overworked?

TOM – We achieved that by keeping in the aspects that make it all very “human”. Little things like keeping in the sound of drumsticks being placed down at the end of a song or a beat slightly dragging remind you that you aren’t listening to machines.

LEON – Also, with the guitars, we wanted lots of layers, but also didn’t want to add too many things that we couldn’t achieve live. So a lot of the guitar parts were double-tracked. We did all the Rickenbacker 360 parts into a vintage 1980s Vox AC30, which was in a separate isolation booth. This meant that all the original guitar parts that were played and locked into the drums could be kept. I then doubled more Rickenbacker / AC30 parts for every song before moving on to his Fender Telecaster and using a very nice Fender Twin Reverb amp.

We were mindful not to overcomplicate the extra parts, adding punctuation here and there and slightly different arpeggios or stabs, but something that still sounded like our live sound as a whole. For some of the songs, we added a couple of acoustics too, doing a similar thing. Some extra guitar melodies were added, but only ones I knew I could replicate live by using my loop pedal to play the chords and then the lead over the top. This way, we felt we wouldn’t freak our live audiences out when they saw us.

Matt & Lucy were very mindful of this for us. Making sure that the recording didn’t stray too far from what we sound like live. The demos we did that I recorded in our own studio almost went too far with adding too many guitars, doing too many different things. So it was a case of reigning it in and, in some instances, simplifying some guitar parts so they worked better on the recording.

Same with the bass lines. We love melodic bass, and there’s plenty in there, but we also simplified some parts, going for a grunge-like plodding on certain songs. A lot of credit goes to Matt & Lucy Board for their amazing mixing and arrangement skills, too. We were very much on the same page when it came to the overall sound and layering. So much so, there were barely any amendments to the final mixes because we’d had so many conversations as we were recording. Listening back to the first mixes was like listening to all our favourite bands and production techniques, but this was us!

You mention having a sound in your head that took real dedication to reach. What was the turning point in the studio where you knew you’d finally nailed it?

TOM – Not sure we ever felt like we’d nailed it because making music is an ever-evolving process, and that ideal constantly changes. But we were happy with the combination of things being intensely melodic whilst also maintaining that slightly ragged and heavy edge. 

LEON – It was different for me because I felt like there were multiple moments for me. Especially when it came to guitar tones and getting all the parts down. There were many mini victories along the way and a few dreams realised for me. Just the fact that I could concentrate on my parts and not have to worry about engineering/producing and being on the same wavelength with Lucy & Matt meant I had a lot less to worry about and more space in my head to concentrate on achieving those tones. They had some really nice gear in the studio, and the attention to detail was above and beyond.

We were pushed, in a good way, to really get things to the best they could be. I think one of the main things for both of us from the get-go was deciding to use a click track to get the original beds down. We rehearsed for ages, playing with the tempo of the click, which we worked out from the demos I’d recorded, but also getting the right-sounding click so that it ended up being something you could actually vibe with and was not an annoyance. We started as we meant to go on.

We wanted this to be as professional as possible, and doing this right at the start and spending that time, just rehearsing in the live room and getting our headphone mixes right, getting used to the space and just playing together before we hit record. We actually spent about half of the first day doing this, but it set us up for the rest of the week because everything was locked in, and it made tracking everything else a breeze.

I get Tom’s point, too, because we were cramming a hell of a lot into getting five songs recorded in just four days, so it was quite a whirlwind, too. We probably should have booked an extra day, but at the same time, having that limitation meant we didn’t waste any time, and we worked hard and kept going. The very last thing that I overdubbed was what I refer to as the ‘Johnny Greenwood / Bends style’ guitar parts on The Standing Man, which, if I hadn’t got done, I would’ve been disappointed. When we tracked them at the last possible minute on the final day, I think that’s when I thought we’d nailed it! 

As a debut EP, you said it represents a “cross section” of your various styles. What connects the songs together as one body of work despite those differences in style?

TOM – A shared love of certain artists like R.E.M., Wilco, Nirvana, Radiohead and PJ Harvey really helped us with crafting our sound, and the influences of those artists shine through at times. Providing those points where our styles meld together. 

LEON – I also think that the methodical way we recorded helped with the overall sound being cohesive. The fact that we did all the drums and main guitar parts in the room together with the same set-up for every song meant that we could keep the pace up, but also helped shape the overall sound. So we didn’t work on one song at a time. We were working on all five, all the time! We started with the drums and main guitar and recorded all five songs over the first two days.

We then moved on to recording the bass for all five songs so they all had a solid bed. Next, I tracked all the Rickenbacker guitar parts for every song. We made sure to get this tone recorded on all five tracks before swapping out the Vox AC30 for the Fender Twin Reverb and then doing all the Telecaster parts. I used Matt’s SG and beautifully set up a Fender Jaguar for some of the ‘lead’ parts and atmospheric textures on City Lights and Over & Out, respectively.

One of the secret weapons, though, was the Green Rhino overdrive pedal (again, Matt’s own pedal), which was pretty much on everything. Once I heard that, I couldn’t play without it, so much so that I ended up getting one in the end! The other pedal I used extensively throughout was my UA Woodrow 55. I think this way of recording meant that all the sounds gelled together, track by track and became the sound of the EP. Also, all of the songs, although quite different, have all come from real places. They all have honesty and vulnerability in them.

Creating an EP is as much about endurance as creativity. What was the biggest challenge during the recording process, and what did you learn about yourselves as artists in overcoming it?

TOM – Recording to click tracks was a challenge for us, simply because it’s not something we are used to doing, often focusing on live demos done in one take. But working with them was an invaluable learning process in the importance of accuracy, timekeeping and general attention to detail.

LEON – Even though I’ve done a lot of my own recording over the years and have recorded in other studios, I’ve never had the pleasure of doing four consecutive days in the studio. I was surprised by how tired I was by the end of each day and definitely by the end of the week. I’m used to long days in my job as a camera operator, working on shoots, but this still took me a little by surprise.

I think it catches up on you because you’re not only expending physical energy but also creative energy, and the levels of concentration are so high. You’re literally pouring your heart and soul into it because it’s a labour of love, but yeah, I agree with Tom, it was persevering with the click track right at the start that was probably our biggest challenge, but then also a massive feeling of satisfaction! 

I should also mention how hard Tom worked to do all his drums on the first two days. That takes a massive amount of stamina and a certain level of fitness! He also suffered from a bad tooth on the third day, so it was just as well all the drums were done!

We spent the third night chasing around Sheffield trying to find a late-night Pharmacy to get him an emergency filling kit! Also, for me, because I was doing all the other instrumentation, there was never really a moment for switching off because I was doing something every minute of every day, I was playing all the other parts and singing, but I absolutely loved it.

I think I learned just how much I absolutely love doing this because I could just keep going and going and didn’t think anything about it until Matt & Lucy both commented on how hard working we both were. Apparently, not everyone is like this! Haha.

The title Last Night I Saw The Leaves Fall evokes imagery of change, endings, or transition. How does that metaphor tie into the themes across the five tracks?

TOM – The title speaks to a sense of wonder. Wonder at the impermanence of things. That overarching feeling helps tie the threads of five quite different tracks together. 

LEON – I think that if the title were a line in any one of the songs, it would fit. It wouldn’t be out of place. It was Tom who coined the title originally for another song we’d recorded as a one-off happening in our own studio. A twenty-minute, ‘Yo La Tengo’ like improvised noise jam (which is on our Soundcloud).

When Tom titled that track, I just loved it. It was so up my street, so when we thought about using it for the EP title, it was a no-brainer. We also like the fact that the song of the same name isn’t on the EP but is a staple live track of ours that is different every time we perform it. It constantly changes. So it’s fitting that the EP is called this. 

Honest songwriting often resonates most with listeners. Was there a moment when you worried about being “too” honest in your lyrics, and how did you push through that vulnerability?

TOM – We think people value a sense of authenticity and genuine connection. And if we managed to get that across in our songwriting, then our work is done, really. You can definitely be honest with your songwriting without worrying about vulnerability if you try to be skilful in how you put your ideas across. 

LEON – I also like the fact that Tom & I both have really personal lyrics in there. I don’t think personally I was worried about anything being too honest. Writing poetry and songs is one of the most cathartic things we can do as humans, and music is a vessel for sharing that universally.

If that connection from that raw place can still be felt through our songs and resonates, then it can have a positive impact on the listener. It’s like acknowledging it’s ok not to be ok. If you put that out there, you can help other people to feel less alone, less isolated and to know that yeah, we all feel like that sometimes, I’m not an outsider, we’re human, and that’s ok.

Now that the EP is complete, how do you feel when you listen back — does it feel like closure on a chapter, or the beginning of a new phase for Blackwater Lightship?

TOM – It feels like a new phase for the band. Making the EP was a really big step for us in a way we hadn’t worked before, and it opens up lots of possibilities. We’re bringing in a new member into the fold, too, Dan Oram on bass, who brings all his own talent and experience. So it really does feel like an adventure for us all.

LEON – It’s definitely the start of something. For me, it feels like I’m finally getting to do what I’ve always wanted to do, and it’s opening up uncharted waters for us. Having this EP out in the world is massive for me. It finally makes it real. It’s not a fantasy anymore, it’s a dream that has started to be fulfilled. It just goes to show what you can make happen if you’re passionate about something, believe in yourself and don’t listen to the naysayers.

Be authentic, be true to yourself and make your own art in your own way. I can’t stop listening to it. I almost can’t believe it’s us. It’s been so well produced, it’s an absolute pleasure listening to it, and I couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve achieved. It really is a milestone and only the beginning. We have so much material, and we can’t wait to record again.

Looking ahead, what do you hope listeners take away from this EP, and how do you see this release shaping the direction of your future music?

TOM – We’d hope that people would connect to the emotion and get different things from each track, maybe even feel a bit inspired! 
We’ve got loads more unreleased stuff to work on. The EP was a wonderful point to start from, but we’re excited about what’s to come!

LEON – Here, here. I hope people just genuinely enjoy it. There are some catchy little melodies in there. I’ve had several friends tell me stories of how they’ll be humming a tune only to realise it’s a Blackwater Lightship track, which was really nice to hear. We’ve had some great feedback so far, and I’m fascinated by what people are hearing in there and by some of the comparisons and references people have made. Some are really surprising and very complimentary!

My main hope, though, is that it opens doors for us. That it introduces us to the world, it’s our calling card. We’re not going away anytime soon! At Green Man and End of the Road Festival, I made some CDRs of the EP and we hid them around the site, as well as getting copies into the hands of Sharon Van Etten, Matt Berninger (who even gave us a shout out to the crowd!), Cassandra Jenkins, The Golden Dregs and Black Country New Road, to name a few.

I hope it’s listened to and people make it their own, after all, that’s what music is for. It doesn’t belong to us now; it belongs to everyone, and that’s a perfect way to let you know that it will be available on ALL major streaming platforms very shortly, if not already by the time you read this!

https://bsky.app/profile/blacwaterlightship.bsky.social
https://m.facebook.com/p/Blackwater-Lightship
https://blackwaterlightship.bandcamp.com/album/last-night-i-saw-the-leaves-fall
https://www.instagram.com/blackwaterlightship

FVMusicBlog October 2025

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