Drink Up Buttercup's Debut Spawned in 'Low-Class Bar'

Writing the songs that would make up 'Born and Thrown on a Hook,' the forthcoming debut album from freewheeling Philly four-piece Drink Up Buttercup, frontman James Harvey stopped just short of throwing in the kitchen sink. He did, however, make creative use of his kitchen table.

"90 percent of the tracks on the album, I had home demo recordings of with just me playing what I had around, which was my guitar and a couple little percussion instruments and a big metal kitchen table in my apartment," Harvey tells Spinner of the band's origins.

This was back in 2008, before Harvey enlisted multi-instrumentalists Farzad Houshiarnejad, Ben Money and Mike Cammarata. In those early days, writing songs was a nightly ritual, a way for Harvey to chronicle -- and in some cases transcend -- the monotony of his day-to-day life.

"It's really pretty much whatever popped into my head after having a couple of beers after work and winding down," Harvey says. "I'm a weird guy. A lot of the songs are just about me or different fairly-tale characters of myself, such as 'Mr. Pie Eyes,' which is just the story of my life when I was going through the period writing these songs."

Clocking in at just over two-and-a-half minutes, 'Mr. Pie Eyes' offers a good summation of the sounds found on 'Born and Thrown on a Hook,' due out March 23. The tune scoots along on an 'Abbey Road'-era Beatles chord progression, its howling harmonies swirling atop the jovial lurch of guitars, keyboards and drums.

"I was living in Doylestown, Pa., which is an upper-middle-class kind of yuppie town where people want to be as close to the top of the chain of mediocrity as possible," Harvey says, recalling the inspiration behind the song. "I'd go down to the old crappy bar at the corner with all the guys working blue-collar jobs all day and socialize with them."

Hence the tune's central refrain -- a moment of pathos on an album that, with its spirited digressions into circus music, psych-pop and even brawny '60s garage, generally skews far more chipper.

"I'd be at the 'low-class bar in the high-class town,'" Harvey says, repeating the line.