THE WILDHEARTS frontman Ginger has issued the following update:

Day 5: Of Love And Insomnia

"There's a strange and quite thrilling atmosphere in the air today.

Maybe it's the lack of sleep?

God knows I didn't sleep for more than a few hours last night.

Reading a dull book before bedtime, good idea. Reading Richard Pryor's autobiography, Prior Convictions? A very bad idea. Relieved to have finished it, truth be known. Motherfucker can't keep up all night no more (meant in Richard Pryor voice).

Maybe it was CJ's delicious salmon soup that made us all realise that we still enjoy each others company, even after all these years.

Maybe it was watching PINK FLOYD's The Making Of Dark Side Of The Moon from the Classic Albums DVD series, in a bid to get myself to sleep in between revisits to Pryor's riveting tome? Another bad idea, unless, of course, the plan was to have WAY too much to think about to be able to sleep.

Whatever the reason I have been dragged into today with the notion that we should be a more successful band. For a lot of reasons.

Being cult underdogs is fun when your loyalty is to Carlsberg Super, amphetamine sulphate and bong hits, as well as 'da cause', naturally, but when you're away from your family making an album in another country you get a sense that this is important. Way more important than keeping it real and sticking out yet another album of pop punk thrash to satisfy deadline pressures.

The collection of songs you are laying down must mean something, to you and to the people that hear them.

And then the people who will hear the band for the very first time based on this collection of songs.

And the new countries you will visit, in which you hope to open markets and make new friends using this set of songs.

And how this music connects with the people to whom the term 'fans' seems somehow inappropriate, people who have followed you through all the times of creative highs and embarrassing lows.

How do you satisfy everyone?

A true artist would say they must first satisfy themselves.

Then I guess I'm not a true artist.

I want YOU to love the new music, but not only that I want you to understand where we are coming from. To hear us speaking with you. To know that all we want is to live the times with you, times that we are lucky to have if we're still alive to experience them, and share the ride with you.

Our end of the bargain is to make music, and yours is to say "Yeah, it doesn't suck. Well done".

But that barely scratches the surface of what is really going on here. What has always been the most important element of our times together.

And we ARE doing this together. This life and these emotions. The ways that we choose to deal with the good and the bad. Sharing throughout.

It's always been this way, only right now it seems more important.

I dunno why.

Maybe I just needed to say this before this recording session turns into endless days of finishing off the songs, making sure guitars are in tune, okaying artwork and listening to the tracks a few hundred more times during mixing and mastering.

Maybe I just need some sleep?

Maybe I just need some coffee?

Or maybe we just don't say "I Love You" to each other enough?

Namaste.

Ginger."