Firestations

A song about new experiences and wide-open horizons written on an aging sea-warped boat guitar, ‘Many White Horses’ is the latest single by eclectic London art-pop ensemble Firestations and the title track from their forthcoming fourth full-length album. Set for release on Lost Map Records on limited-edition 12” vinyl and via digital services on April 25, 2025, Many White Horses is a collection of sea-soaked acoustic songs and instrumentals, interwoven with field recordings and lyrics drawn from the immediate surroundings of a sailing expedition around the west coast of Scotland, all brought together with warm, textured production. It’s in essence a solo album by the band’s singer and songwriter Mike Cranny, who self-produced and played a variety of instruments on the record. Albeit it’s enriched too by contributions from bandmate Laura Copsey on flugelhorn, flute and vocals. Many White Horses follows Firestations’ expansive and explorative 2021 EP trilogy Automatic Tendencies and the 2023 album Thick Terrain, both of which garnered support from BBC 6 Music, including repeat plays from Gideon Coe, Cerys Matthews, Radcliffe & Maconie and in particular Marc Riley, who hailed the track ‘Small Island’ as “a perfect pop song”.

About ‘Many White Horses’, Mike writes:
 
“The first song I wrote on the boat, trying to capture the feeling of sailing, something that was still entirely new to me at the time. We had been reading and appreciating the simple poetry of the Beaufort Wind Scale and using it to describe the state of the water around us at the time, which to someone with no sea legs seemed fairly rough, but was actually quite low down the scale. According to the scale, in these conditions there will be ‘moderate waves of pronounced long form, many white horses, some spray’.”

Firestations are Mike Cranny, Laura Copsey, Martin Thompson (aka Bit Cloudy), Tom Hargreaves and Neil Walsh. Their music spans genres from shoegaze to alt-pop and harmony-driven psychedelia. Their second album and their debut for Lost Map, The Year Dot, released in 2018, was followed by sonic collage album Dream Home in 2020 and the Automatic Tendencies EP project in 2020-21. The latter took the form of three EPs over a six-month period, each including alternative “sunken” versions by the band as well as covers and remixes of the band’s tracks by other artists. Thick Terrain, released in 2023, saw Firestations return to album format with ten tracks ranging from hypnotic sci-fi landscapes to addictive dream-pop jangles, exploring ideas around identity, conflict, progress and sanity.
 
Many White Horses was conceived and largely written at the beginning of August 2024 on a sailing yacht (Sail Britain’s “Merlin”) in the Inner Hebrides. This was the location for a week-long art residency with seven fellow artist-explorers all keen to capture something of the essence of being at sea and viewing the land from the sea. The voyage, through high winds and waves, took in the mysterious Isle of Rum and the coastline around Arisaig, before Mike and Laura continued the journey for a further week; travelling around the Ardnamurchan peninsula, across the Isles of Mull and Ulva to end up off-grid on the remote Isle of Gometra.

While the music, with its focus on quietly hypnotic, hushed acoustic instrumentation, may at first appear something of a departure from the last five-piece band Firestations album Thick Terrain, it remains closely related and recognisable by Mike’s song writing style. It also occupies a similar space to the “sunken versions” – quieter and slower songs (featuring on the Automatic Tendencies EP series in particular) that focus on the more meditative, stripped back side of the band.
 
The title track ‘Many White Horses’ was the first song to be written, making use of an aging sea-warped boat guitar that Mike discovered could only be played in an open tuning, with a capo higher up the fret board. Mike says: “The limitations of this guitar proved to be a gateway to other songs – the chord progressions and melodies had to be simple to avoid tuning nightmares, and where I might have ordinarily decided that a song was too straightforward, on the boat I didn’t have a choice but to persevere with simple song ideas. It turns out that limitations can be liberating”. The first single from the album ‘A Weight Starts To Lift’ was written a bit later and shows Mike exploring the possibilities of the open tuning “maybe the trickiest fingerpicking I’ve ever attempted”.
 
The communal living conditions on the boat and the camaraderie developed through the everyday routine, and in other artist’s processes, made for a fertile environment. Laura, as expedition leader, provided a series of creative prompts, shaped by archipelago poetics. Moments and provocations that filtered into lyrics and rhythms included a collaboration with a square meter of earth, seeking out an audience on a micro scale, and reading laminated sheets of poetry in the sea. Field recordings and found instruments also give the compositions a strong sense of place and carry the listener across rough seas and onto remote islands.
 
Other songs, such as ‘All The Way Back Down Here’, were written after returning home to London and respond to the disorientating change of pace that often comes with being back in a city. These songs are more of a reflection on memory, loss, and the transience of experience.  Mike sings about “holding onto the intention” and asks, “how does it feel to return?”. On album closer ‘Silversands’, there is a sense of peace in the final lyrics “the island will still be here when you’re not around”.

'Many White Horses'* is a collection of sea-soaked acoustic songs and instrumentals, interwoven with field recordings and lyrics drawn from the immediate surroundings of a sailing expedition, all brought together with warm, textured production. It marks Mike Cranny’s first solo endeavour, playing a variety of instruments and self-producing, albeit one enriched by Laura Copsey’s contributions on flugelhorn, flute and vocals.

The album was conceived and largely written at the beginning of August 2024 on a sailing yacht (Sail Britain’s “Merlin”) in the Inner Hebrides. This was the location for a week-long art residency with seven fellow artist-explorers all keen to capture something of the essence of being at sea and viewing the land from the sea. The voyage, through high winds and waves, took in the mysterious Isle of Rum and the coastline around Arisaig, before Mike and Laura continued the journey for a further week; travelling around the Ardnamurchan peninsula, across the Isles of Mull and Ulva to end up off-grid on the remote Isle of Gometra.

While the music, with its focus on quietly hypnotic, hushed acoustic instrumentation, may at first appear something of a departure from the last five-piece band Firestations album ‘Thick Terrain’, it remains closely related and recognisable by Mike’s song writing style. It also occupies a similar space to the ‘Sunken Versions’ – quieter and slower songs (featuring on the ‘Automatic Tendencies’ EP series in particular) that focus on the more meditative, stripped back side of the band.

The title track ‘Many White Horses’ was the first song to be written, making use of an aging sea-warped boat guitar that Mike discovered could only be played in an open tuning, with a capo higher up the fret board. Mike says: “The limitations of this guitar proved to be a gateway to other songs – the chord progressions and melodies had to be simple to avoid tuning nightmares, and where I might have ordinarily decided that a song was too straightforward, on the boat I didn’t have a choice but to persevere with simple song ideas. It turns out that limitations can be liberating”. The first single from the album ‘A Weight Starts To Lift’ was written a bit later and shows Mike exploring the possibilities of the open tuning “maybe the trickiest fingerpicking I’ve ever attempted”.

The communal living conditions on the boat and the camaraderie developed through the everyday routine, and in other artist’s processes, made for a fertile environment. Laura, as expedition leader, provided a series of creative prompts, shaped by archipelago poetics. Moments and provocations that filtered into lyrics and rhythms included a collaboration with a square meter of earth, seeking out an audience on a micro scale, and reading laminated sheets of poetry in the sea. Field recordings and found instruments also give the compositions a strong sense of place and carry the listener across rough seas and onto remote islands.

Other songs, such as ‘All The Way Back Down Here’, were written after returning home to London and respond to the disorientating change of pace that often comes with being back in a city. These songs are more of a reflection on memory, loss, and the transience of experience. Mike sings about “holding onto the intention” and asks, “how does it feel to return?”. On album closer ‘Silversands’ there is a sense of peace in the final lyrics “the island will still be here when you’re not around”.