Studio Notes & Comments: Just to highlight the musical diversity exhibited by this band, "...Smile" is a catchy little number that is probably best described as being in the "retro-pop" mould. When Jimmy first presented the bare bones of the song to me, I wasn't entirely convinced (not exactly the sort of music that I normally like to listen to!), but as it evolved during the recording session, my enthusiasm grew considerably. The lyrics fit very well with the style of the number (a sort of "if you sleep with me, it won't half cheer me up" theme!) and it also has an infectious pop hook-line to it. It was musically interesting to do for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was one of the first times that I was presented with a new song and had to come up with a bass part "on the fly" (I'm now very used to this scenario!) and I was really quite pleased with the result. To try and get a more "retro" feel for the song, we abandoned our usual technique of recording the guitars direct from the Digitech preamp/effects unit into the four-track and actually miked the Marshall amp instead. The resulting guitar sound was much worse than we usually achieve and therefore suited the song much better! I even played the very short and simple guitar solo on the Les Paul, again to keep with the retro atmosphere. The whole thing works extremely well and is certainly our most "poppy" sing to date........it reminds me quite a lot of the Buzzcocks.
