Unwrapped: We Were Promised Jetpacks / Human Error

"We wrote Human Error very early on in the album process. It was one of the first few songs written for In The Pit Of The Stomach.

When we go to practice, playing the same songs over and over again can sometimes be a bit tedious so we try and keep things interesting by improvising and this is how we wrote Human Error.

We didn’t have our own practice room at the time, so we were practicing in a little place called Banana Row in Edinburgh and our manager Jamie was sitting at our practice having a little band meeting of sorts. After we sat and had a wee chat he disappeared through to the reception area to send a few emails and give us time to do a bit of writing. We told him we’d have a new song written for him when he got back.

We Were Promised Jetpacks - Human Error/ Ink Slowly Dries (FatCat AA Single 7fat83) by Fat Cat Records

It was essentially written in about 20 minutes while he was out sending emails, give or take a few tweaks here and there later on at the studio. Adam started playing a guitar line and I joined in… it’s really not exciting in any way how we write songs I’m afraid. But sometimes when we write this way we are instantly happy with what we have and this was the case with Human Error. At the time, we noted that it was by far the shortest song we had ever written, so it’s name for a long time was ‘Wee Guy.’

When Jamie came back he was very pleased and excited about Wee Guy. Happy ending."