Smudge

Mock Deer

Single

9 May, 2024

Spotify Tidal YouTube Bandcamp

Tracks

Smudge04:57

Escaping the self proves tricky for Mock Deer in the writing of new release “Smudge’ but perhaps that’s no bad thing.

The song started out as a simple option, the opportunity to have a song written for you as part of a crowdfunding campaign for the release of Mock Deer’s debut album.

A few people took up this course of action and it was a prospect that the artist had assumed would be a speedy and pretty straightforward process. However, it soon became apparent that he wasn’t very good at doing just a ‘basic job’ when it came to songwriting and instead became locked into writing and developing these songs over a much longer period than he’d ever intended. As time went on it became clear that these songs were becoming part of a much larger project that eventually became the majority of upcoming EP ‘Pilgrims’

Although the songs were written with other people in mind, Damiani found it extremely difficult to completely separate himself from the writing, the results being part biographical and part autobiographical for two of the tracks, one of which

This was all also taking place during covid times in the first lockdown, where self-analysis had almost become a hobby! The song touches on themes of mental illness, alcoholism and friendship all wrapped up in the circumstances of the pandemic.

The track has a nineties feel to it, big choruses and a grungy production style, bringing to mind artists like The Manic Street Preachers and Radiohead from that period, but simultaneously wrapped up in Mock Deer’s unmistakable musical DNA.

Credits