Track Listing Version 1:
Feels Like The Rain, Twofold Bay, How Can I Tell You, 5 Things (I Want To Do Today), Caviar, Colder, Dress Of Many Colours, Think About Tomorrow, In The Garden, The Frankston Line, Story Eyes, Tonight, Under Winter, The Many And The Few, The Way Of The White Clouds, Count To Ten.
Track Listing Version 2:
The Way Of The White Clouds, Tonight, The Frankston Line, In The Garden, Think About Tomorrow, Feels Like The Rain, How Can I Tell You, 5 Things (I Want To Do Today), Caviar, Colder, Dress Of Many Colours, The Many And The Few, Twofold Bay, Under Winter, Story Eyes, Count To Ten.
Recorded April - October 2004. And the most amazing thing here is that, with the exception of Twofold Bay, the lads were never together during any of the recording...all individually adding their bits to each song over the six months. Thus an interesting creative exercise and a productive use of those hibernating winter months.
So how does an album project evolve when money and fame are sadly not factors? Well...Al had for some months expressed interest in recording a version of The Way Of The White Clouds (Mark's paean to Tibet where he visited long ago). Beach Trains On Fridays (Al's other band with Neil at the time) had even rehearsed it with a view to playing it live. So successfully re-recorded by the remaining Hoikers...it capturing the Tibetan vibe far better than the Guano Hoik! original...that thoughts naturally turned to other songs. The result? 16 songs, a new musical direction and The Tides as a new name.
Neil wrote new material, Al contributed some new, some older whilst Mark wrote four new songs and put forward five older songs, four of which (excluding White Clouds) originated from around 2001 but were still his most recent compositions. The Twofold Bay recording originated from 2001 with Al adding djembe and other percussion to give it a fresh feel.
So the debut album has been completed, possibly the first album with alternate track listings. The reason for this? Well that's another story...