Marking their second new single of the year, Boston Manor has unleashed the intricate, riff-driven “Sliding Doors.” Led by a guitar-heavy arrangement and amplified by frontman Henry Cox’s unmistakable prowess, the track is a reflection of the group’s past, present, and, ultimately, future. Their new single follows the release of “Container” in February.
According to Cox, the track shares its namesake with the 1998 Gwyneth Paltrow-led film Sliding Doors. The movie depicts Paltrow’s lead character, Helen Quilley, in two alternative worlds where the decisions she makes on a single day inform the rest of her life. Boston Manor’s latest single and accompanying video portrays a similar storyline in which the band may never have existed if it weren’t for a single day of events.
“I called it [“Sliding Doors”] because when we were writing it, I started thinking about all of the decisions that I’ve made that have led me to the life I have and how circumstantial a lot of it is” Cox shares. “It got me thinking about how Boston Manor started. I’d had a few conversations with Dan [Cunniff/bass] and Mike [Cunniff/lead guitar] (who I barely knew at the time) about starting a band. But at that time, I was in art school in a different city, and I had a bunch of other stuff going on. I was also starting like two other bands with different people so I figured it was just something that you talk about.”
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He continues, “I’d gone home to visit my parents for the weekend and had taken a bus up to north shore to go and visit a friend. I was on my way home and the bus basically crashed. It wasn’t bad; no one was hurt or anything. But I had to get off. It was super late, and buses basically stop running at that time in parts of Blackpool. I had been texting Mike, and it turned out the bus had crashed at the bottom of his street, so I just went round to his. We basically ended up writing the first song from our demo that night. We played our first show a few weeks later.”
Reflecting on that serendipitous moment, he concludes, “If that car hadn’t pulled out on that bus, we probably never would’ve started Boston Manor and been all the places we’ve been. I wouldn’t have met my wife and half of my friends. I don’t know if I would even be playing music now.”
