Twelve Ways To Count is the brilliant debut album from Brighton's The Miserable Rich, an acoustic band with heavy hearts, bright ideas and big tunes. The Miserable Rich began with James De Malplaquet and Will Calderbank, who – influenced by Colin Blunstone's orchestral pop classic Say You Don't Mind and The Balanescu Quartet's covers of Kraftwerk tunes – decided to form their own chamber orchestra, a bar room chamber quintet, if you will. Mike Siddell, Jim Briffett and Rhys Lovell completed the line-up, and from the start, there was an agenda: 'The rules were simply to replace the guitar hooks with violins and cello parts', says Will. 'We were determined not to just write 'worthy' song-writerly tunes of love gone wrong'. Produced in James's front room, with 'copious cups of tea and lots of cake' to hand, Twelve Ways To Count was recorded over a period of six months, with no external outside producer to interrupt the band's warm chemistry. 'The sounds of Brighton's seagulls and James's squeaky chair, can be heard at different points throughout the album', says Will. The result is variously tender, dark, warm, thoughtful and euphoric, packed with stories about knife throwers and drunks and comely barmaids.