The song "Rawgabbit" was born out of limitations. Armchair Committee is a three-piece. Every member has to pull their weight, and more, in order for us to put on a good live performance. There's no comfortable pad of keyboards or backing tracks to hide behind. If you drop a drumstick, play a wrong note, or hit an effects pedal at the wrong time, it'll be glaringly obvious. We also record live whenever possible - meaning that if one of you messes up, the Engineer is pressing stop and you're starting again. These limitations create an urgency that can't be replicated.

'Rawgabbit' was written and recorded over the course of a few days in the Summer of 2015. There was a definite timeframe limitation - we wanted to release it by the end of the year to tie together with an album release in 2016. Having already recorded, mixed, and mastered the album, we were aiming to write and record a song that was limited to four minutes, but somehow managed to represent the 48 minutes we'd just recorded.

I play bass and sing backing vocals in Armchair Committee. Tom (Hackwell, Guitar/Vocals) is, by his own admission, more of a lead-player than rhythm. This lack of sonic-congestion allows me room to experiment more than bassists might usually. In the case of 'Rawgabbit' I had quite a specific idea for what I thought the intro should be, and unsurprisingly, it involved my instrument. To fill out the sound in our band, I usually choose to play around with effect pedals and make weird noises that a bass guitar shouldn't, but the best choice that I made during the writing of 'Rawgabbit' was to leave the room and go for a piss.

As I was returning to our live room, I heard Tom begin playing what would later be the intro guitar riff the track. Hearing the drums come in to compliment the guitar - I knew that was it. I knew whatever I was doing before was not as immediate and memorable as the sounds being made in that moment. Despite having such an firm vision for the track at that point, I knew that the limitation of two instruments - guitar and drums, without me contributing at all, was an improvement.


The word "Rawgabbit" was chosen as a working title at first. An archaic Scottish term, the closest we have found to a recognised definition is 'a person who speaks with total self-assurance on a subject or area of which they know absolutely nothing.' Chosen as seemingly unrelated quirky term, it quickly became a phrase that we have used many times to describe the humility required in songwriting. Sometimes everyone can talk with a definite vision of what they think should happen, but quite often it becomes apparent that they do indeed know absolutely nothing.