Wednesday, 29 January 2014
Tuesday, 21 January 2014
Videos, news, happenings
Welcome to 2014!
It's been announced that Missoula will be the next single from City Forgiveness. Judging by the press I've read it sounds like a download only affair i.e. no b-side. Presumably to tie in with the upcoming UK Tour.
Tiny interview here: http://blog.billetto.co.uk/2014/01/16/the-wave-pictures-interview/
It seems the upcoming tour/LP with Stanley Brinks is getting just as much media action as the double album, with a couple videos turning up, both as unlikely to win MTV awards (if the "M" still stood for music) as each other. Fun though, and proof you need to buy the excellent Orange Juice single which is out this week on Fika and NOT on the upcoming LP. Okay, it's only January 21st but come on - tune of the year already!
It's been announced that Missoula will be the next single from City Forgiveness. Judging by the press I've read it sounds like a download only affair i.e. no b-side. Presumably to tie in with the upcoming UK Tour.
Tiny interview here: http://blog.billetto.co.uk/2014/01/16/the-wave-pictures-interview/
Billetto had the chance to talk to David from The Wave Pictures before their show at the Deaf Institute in Manchester, and found this would be the right time to let them open up a bit more about their US experience right before the recordings of their double album City Forgiveness.
This 20-track double LP is the result of a six-week tour in the US, during which David Tattersall wrote frenziedly. It all started with a tiny van, and a full agenda: “It was the only option we had. We toured as Allo Darlin’s support band. We had a lot of gigs booked, and there was no money. You don’t get paid to tour America – you have to pay. It costs a small fortune, so we drove together in a tiny van.”
Despite being a necessary measure, driving all around the country enabled the band to make the most of their time abroad, getting inspired by the surrounding as Dave points out that he wrote the lyrics while they drove around in America, but they made the album in London: “I remember the Golden Gate Bridge – we couldn’t see it because there was so much fog. It was completely submerged in fog. Gradually, the fog lifted and the bridge became visible. It was beautiful. A huge red bridge. I wanted to put a lot of these images into the lyrics. I always like it when the lyrics paint a picture.”
City Forgiveness cannot be labelled as an Americana record as such, however, the theme of exploration of the unknown, and travelling wanderlust are reiterated in the record: “I like to get out and about myself, and play for people who don’t know us so well.” When it comes to the fondest memory of the trip, the choice cannot be anything but New York: “I have a lot of friends there. I love it. I think New York was the highlight of the trip for me. I love the pizza!”
It seems the upcoming tour/LP with Stanley Brinks is getting just as much media action as the double album, with a couple videos turning up, both as unlikely to win MTV awards (if the "M" still stood for music) as each other. Fun though, and proof you need to buy the excellent Orange Juice single which is out this week on Fika and NOT on the upcoming LP. Okay, it's only January 21st but come on - tune of the year already!
Wednesday, 13 November 2013
More New Records!
Fika Recordings have announced not only the expected 2014 Stanley Brinks & The Wave Pictures album (called Gin) but a non-LP 7 inch (called Orange Juice).
http://shop.fikarecordings.com/album/orange-juice
http://shop.fikarecordings.com/album/gin
2014 shaping up nicely.
And here's a really good article on some of the WP's favourite songs:
http://warmer-climes.blogspot.ro/2013/10/warmer-mixtapes-900-by-jonny-helm-jonny.html
http://shop.fikarecordings.com/album/orange-juice
2014 shaping up nicely.
And here's a really good article on some of the WP's favourite songs:
http://warmer-climes.blogspot.ro/2013/10/warmer-mixtapes-900-by-jonny-helm-jonny.html
WARMER MIXTAPES #900 | by Jonny Helm [Jonny 'Huddersfield' Helm], David Tattersall (The Lobster Boat Band) and Franic Rozycki (The Lobster Boat Band) of The Wave Pictures
SIDE A | by Jonny Helm
1. Neil Young | Only Love Can Break Your Heart
The whole After The Gold Rush album makes me happy, it's associated with good memories from when I was very young. The Sound is so warm, Neil Young sounds so sad. Try to be sure right from the start.
2. Van Morrison | And It Stoned Me
Moondance is one of my All Time favorites, this song opens it perfectly. The band sounds so good! The story is really nice, two friends on a little Fishing trip, it's nothing to do with drugs! What stones him is the Sun coming up after some Rain, jumping in a river and even a glass of Water after singing too much on the way home. Lovely.
3. The Velvet Underground | Pale Blue Eyes
A beautiful song, featuring a wonderful understated Guitar Solo and a very gentle Vocal from Lou Reed. It's a lesson in what makes a good Record, good, Honest, Intelligent Lyrics, wonderful Guitar Playing, a Tambourine on the third Beat.
4. The Modern Lovers | Someone I Care About
Jonathan Richman's songs have a World view that seems a little under represented in Rock and Pop Music. This isn't exactly a Love song, it's about wanting someone who you actually like and knowing that means sometimes you have nothing at all. And it totally rocks!
5. Son House | Grinnin' In Your Face
A piece of good advice from someone a bit older and wiser. There are only two things going on here, a Vocal and hand claps, but it manages to sound full and sort of magnificent. I first heard it on a Compilation Tape given to me by a friend and loved it straight away.
6. Tennessee Ernie Ford | Sixteen Tons
Is this Country Music? I really like it, I thought I'd never like Country Music, but then I heard Hank Williams and Buck Owens and this weird hit about a working man's life which manages to sound profound and stupid at the same time. Brushes on the Snare, finger clicks, a great Bass line and a wonderful Vocal Performance.
7. Violent Femmes | Blister In The Sun
There's something joyous about this track, again it's the Simplicity of the Instrumentation and the Emotion of the Vocal. Gordon Gano's voice sounds so real and the whole thing is Spirited and exciting sounding.
8. Jeffrey Lewis | Seattle
An example of brilliant Song Writing. Great Finger Picking and Lyrics that spoke to me when I first heard this album as an Art student in Cardiff. And I'm feeling like I wanna do whatever I feel inside... Put it all on paper and I'll hope that people buy it... And my only minor worry is how to pay the rent... But that won't even matter when I lose my apartment... It's got a weary humour and wit to it.
9. (Smog) | Truth Serum
This is a story about taking Truth Serum with friends, and realising there isn't a lot of Truth in us anyway. The Backing is all chiming Guitar and subtle Drumming. I like that the Chorus is a question and answer session.
10. Sam Cooke | I'll Come Running Back To You
I think this is Sam's first Secular track after years of singing Gospel songs. It's pretty good for a first try at a Love song, isn't it?
SIDE B | by Franic Rozycki
1. The Prisonaires | Just Walkin' In The Rain
Sung by a group of genuine convicts in the 1950's, the beauty of this song is obvious, but it also led me to listen to more recordings by Sam Philips of Sun Records, which in turn led me to listening to more Blues, Folk, Country, Bluegrass and Rock And Roll Music. Basically mostly 50's (with a little 40's and 60's) Music, which is now what I like to listen to most of all.
2. Roy Orbison | It's Over
I knew and liked Pretty Woman from an early age, then later on discovered and enjoyed the recordings Roy Orbison made on Sun Records. Then I found my Dads' 7" copy of It's Over and was blown away. In most cases I find Strings on records unlistenable, but Roy is so good that despite how overblown this recording is, nothing can distract from or deny the Emotion of his performance.
3. The Shadows | All Day
I like a lot of Twangy Guitar Groups/Players including Duane Eddy and Link Wray, but The Shadows are my favourite, perhaps because they seem to have a bit more Variation that those other guys. Which is demonstrated on this slightly Italian/Greek(?) sounding track. The Shadows always look like they are having fun playing and I can imagine them having a nice time enjoying playing this relaxing tune. Rather than sticking to just one style they have mastered many different ones - they also do Rock And Roll (Dynamite, with Cliff Richard), Twangy Guitar with Minor Chords (Apache) as well as many others! This is another song that I first heard on a 7" belonging to my father.
4. Bill Monroe | I Saw The Light
I find it difficult to not feel uplifted by a great deal of Religious Music. That is true of many Bluegrass songs, in this case sung by Bill Monroe. The combination of Group Singing, wonderful Playing and good time feeling that Bill is experiencing makes it impossible for me to not also feel happy with him.
5. Percy Sledge | Warm And Tender Love
The tendency of Soul singers to sing with feeling all of the time appears obviously fake to me, and despite trying, I found it impossible to find a Soul singer that I could believe in. That was until I heard Percy Sledge, whose wonderful voice seems so much more heartfelt and genuine than any other Soul man. Hearing him sing Warm And Tender Love for the first time was an exciting moment, discovering that he had songs that were as good as and better than When A Man Loves A Woman.
6. Bob Dylan | The Man In Me
The Man In Me, from Dylan's New Morning album, is a joyous Love song. Hearing this song on the Soundtrack to The Big Lebowski made me realise that Bob Dylan was making great Music in the seventies, despite everything that I had read suggesting that this was a low period in his career. I had listened to but never loved some of his highly thought of sixties albums such as Highway 61 Revisited and Bringing It All Back Home. Although they were clearly good and fun as well as being smart, I found I preferred the slightly more conventional but no less great, beautiful and fun songs that start to appear on Nashville Skyline and then New Morning. Once you start listening to Dylan in the seventies then there are so many more great albums to discover such as Self Portrait, Planet Waves, Street Legal, and into the 80's, Shot Of Love. And once I started to love these albums, then the sixties ones grew on me as well!
7. Neil Young | Cortez The Killer
Neil Young is one of my All Time Favourite Guitarists. Probably Top Three. Maybe even Number One, depending on how I am feeling. It must have been said before, but his Guitar Playing proves that less is more - less notes and far more feeling. Cortez The Killer is a perfect example of this, stretched over seven or so minutes. Neil creates so much good feeling not only from his songs, but also through his Music. Whether he is playing Electric or Acoustic Guitar or Piano, he is a great player.
8. The Rolling Stones | Monkey Man
Before Dave (Tattersall of The Wave Pictures) put this song on a compilation, all I knew by The Stones was the best of album Hot Rocks, and had been led to believe that this was all I needed to hear by them. After listening to Monkey Man I immediately realised that this was false, so I started buying as many Stones albums as possible. Let It Bleed, which this song is taken from, is 100% killer, as are Beggars Banquet, Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main Street. As if this weren't enough great albums then there are many more from before and after this period of their career that are also totally awesome. Monkey Man demonstrates what a great Studio band The Stones are. They are brilliant at Arranging their Music so that a complex Studio Recording sounds like a seamless Live take. The Stones reputation for drugs, women, overblown stage shows and crap recent albums has maybe overshadowed the fact that they produced many brilliant albums which contain songs which are as good as the hits, such as Sympathy For The Devil, Honky Tonk Woman, Satisfaction, etc. The Stones are one of my favourite bands.
9. Faces | Ooh La La
Although the Faces are famous for their raucous Rock And Roll, they also have a bunch of lovely Ballads which are mostly co-writes or wholly written by Ronnie Lane. Ooh La La is one such song, co-written with Ronnie Wood, and has the writer affectionately recalling a story told by his Grandad that he did not take seriously at the time. The song is both Upbeat and laid back at the same time, with great Ronnie Wood Acoustic Guitars, who produced his best Guitar Playing on record while he was with the Faces. I love that the Faces have the ballads of Ronnie Lane to go with their louder Rock And Roll Music.
10. Antony Santos | Que Mas Me Pides
Despite all of his songs being sung in Spanish (which I can't speak), Anthony Santos still gets onto my list because of the amount of fun I have had listening to and singing along with him whilst on tour with The Wave Pictures. I could have chosen any of the songs on his En Vivo: Vuelve Amor album, and picked this one randomly. Whatever he is singing then it sounds Mournful, Heartbreaking, Joyous and Up-Lifting.
SIDE C | by David Tattersall
1. Stanley Brinks | This Will Be All
Stanley Brinks has written hundreds of beautiful songs. This one (from the album Digs) is particularly beautiful. He tells you a little something about himself. He tells you a little short story about a Train ride, a cocktail, a cigarette, a girl. This song reminds me of Raymond Chandler.
2. Lou Reed | Halloween Parade
I'm a huge Lou Reed fan. For me, his best work is at the start and at the end of his career. The Velvet Underground stuff is totally wonderful, but I also really love his work on a trilogy of (relatively) recent albums: 'New York, Set The Twilight Reeling and Ecstasy. This song (from New York) paints a strong picture of a particular time and place. It is suffused with longing for absent friends. It is full of Humour. It is also in part about enjoying the act of Rhyming: the Rhymes just roll out beautifully. His voice is beautiful. I love the Sound, I love the Guitars, I love the Doo-Wop Chords. As Lou says in the sleeve notes - you can't beat two guitars, bass, drums. Not with a great singer like Lou Reed anyway.
3. Bob Dylan | Went To See The Gypsy
This is a strange, Mysterious little story song. I love the details: the Sun rising over a little Minnesota town, the Hotel lobby, the dancing girl. It has so many great lines in it. It is a strange song. The Rhythm seem unsure at times. At one point the drummer even stops playing for a moment. But the Playing and the Sound has a lovely feeling, a sweet energy, and a pleasing kind of Wholeness with this strange little story that Bob is telling. You wonder what it all meant to him. I don't know what the Dylan nerds say: there is probably a long analysis of this somewhere on the Internet. But I love it just as it is, with no extra information. It's a lovely thing. Some great Electric Guitar playing on this one too; I think the guitarist is called Ron Cornelius, but I'm not sure.
4. The Fishermen Three | Time To Think About The Morning Once Again
A sweet and beautifully written Ballad, full of Hope and Promise, about turning a corner in your life and making a few changes. From the album of the same name, which is full of beautiful songs. This song is rich in Imagery, but also plows a straight and steady course to your heart. It manages to be both unpretentious and Poetic: not an easy task. So intelligent. It's a song to go back to again and again throughout your life.
5. Van Morrison | Astral Weeks
It's hard to imagine a song with better Poetry in the Lyrics, or with more Soul and Feeling in the Music. The band on this album are extraordinary. This track opens the album, and it is full of Wonder and Joy. I love to put this record on. I could listen to it every day.
6. Dire Straits | Sultans Of Swing
People seem to think that Dire Straits are a guilty pleasure. They are quite wrong. Brothers In Arms is total rubbish from start to finish, no argument here. And Mark Knophler has done remarkably little of Value in his long Solo career: he is a balding cheese-monger with two Keyboard players in his band (even more insane than having two drummers in my opinion). But Dire Straits' Self-Titled Debut Album is Dark, grown-up, Live-sounding, simple and Singular. It conforms to Lou Reed's law (it is mainly two Guitars, Bass and Drums) and the Sound is superb. This is the best song on the album, and the best thing that anyone involved ever did. I have heard this song literally thousands of times and I never find it boring. I never tire of it. Why is that? The amazing arranged Guitar Solos? The Minor Chords? The Lyric is certainly very strong: it's another detailed story, this time about a Pub band. He captures what is sad and what is beautiful about the life of the Pub musician. He sees how glorious they are. It's got a lot of heart to it. It's just totally killer, this song, in every single way. It's got Mystery, it's got Depth, it Grooves. Listen to what the drummer, Pick Withers, does on this one. Superb Musicianship.
7. Neil Young | Down By The River
One of the Greatest Electric Guitar Records Ever Made. You put this on, and you are in the room with them. And what a performance they are giving you! Those steady, groovy, simple-as-can-be Drums. The stabbing Rhythm Guitar. And Neil, coming out of the Right Speaker, playing some of the best Guitar you ever heard.
8. Silver Jews | Ballad Of Reverend War Character
I have no idea how many times I have listened to this song. Possibly thousands of times. It has sublime Lyrics. So many good lines! I love David Berman's World-weary Vocal. The band play beautifully. I find this recording incredibly moving. It feels like all Life is contained within it. It feels like this Singer knows everything there is to know. It feels sad and strong and sweet and good.
9. Paul Simon | Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard
Paul Simon spends so much time trying to find Novel and Complex Chord Sequences and yet this is indisputably his greatest song: a little three Chord ditty more like a Buddy Holly Chord Sequence. This song makes me so happy. Simplicity and sweetness. A strange and rich and impenetrable story. God only knows what is going on here in the story: it's a Mystery! I always loved this kind of Lyric... There's a story there, but what is it exactly? Simon's lovely, lovely voice is clearly enjoying the sounds of the words as they come out of his mouth. I have loved this song ever since I was a child. It's also on the Soundtrack to one of my favourite movies: The Royal Tenenbaums. It soundtracks a particular joyous montage sequence in which Gene Hackman indulges in a bit of Shoplifting amongst other things.
10. Allen Ginsberg | Vomit Express
This is the greatest, happiest, most Exuberant Rock And Roll there is going. The Chord Sequence is a lot like La Bamba. Bob Dylan is on Rhythm Guitar. There are some crazy cool talented people hanging out and making Music. The air is full of smoke. Everyone is very happy. Allen Ginsberg is going down to Puerto Rico, and he wants to tell you all about it, even if it takes all night. This song has so many verses. It could go on forever and ever. The Poetry just pours out of him, verse after verse after verse, and the musicians keep on gathering and regathering steam, launching again and again into that Chorus, finding Real Energy. Magic.
1. Neil Young | Only Love Can Break Your Heart
The whole After The Gold Rush album makes me happy, it's associated with good memories from when I was very young. The Sound is so warm, Neil Young sounds so sad. Try to be sure right from the start.
2. Van Morrison | And It Stoned Me
Moondance is one of my All Time favorites, this song opens it perfectly. The band sounds so good! The story is really nice, two friends on a little Fishing trip, it's nothing to do with drugs! What stones him is the Sun coming up after some Rain, jumping in a river and even a glass of Water after singing too much on the way home. Lovely.
3. The Velvet Underground | Pale Blue Eyes
A beautiful song, featuring a wonderful understated Guitar Solo and a very gentle Vocal from Lou Reed. It's a lesson in what makes a good Record, good, Honest, Intelligent Lyrics, wonderful Guitar Playing, a Tambourine on the third Beat.
4. The Modern Lovers | Someone I Care About
Jonathan Richman's songs have a World view that seems a little under represented in Rock and Pop Music. This isn't exactly a Love song, it's about wanting someone who you actually like and knowing that means sometimes you have nothing at all. And it totally rocks!
5. Son House | Grinnin' In Your Face
A piece of good advice from someone a bit older and wiser. There are only two things going on here, a Vocal and hand claps, but it manages to sound full and sort of magnificent. I first heard it on a Compilation Tape given to me by a friend and loved it straight away.
6. Tennessee Ernie Ford | Sixteen Tons
Is this Country Music? I really like it, I thought I'd never like Country Music, but then I heard Hank Williams and Buck Owens and this weird hit about a working man's life which manages to sound profound and stupid at the same time. Brushes on the Snare, finger clicks, a great Bass line and a wonderful Vocal Performance.
7. Violent Femmes | Blister In The Sun
There's something joyous about this track, again it's the Simplicity of the Instrumentation and the Emotion of the Vocal. Gordon Gano's voice sounds so real and the whole thing is Spirited and exciting sounding.
8. Jeffrey Lewis | Seattle
An example of brilliant Song Writing. Great Finger Picking and Lyrics that spoke to me when I first heard this album as an Art student in Cardiff. And I'm feeling like I wanna do whatever I feel inside... Put it all on paper and I'll hope that people buy it... And my only minor worry is how to pay the rent... But that won't even matter when I lose my apartment... It's got a weary humour and wit to it.
9. (Smog) | Truth Serum
This is a story about taking Truth Serum with friends, and realising there isn't a lot of Truth in us anyway. The Backing is all chiming Guitar and subtle Drumming. I like that the Chorus is a question and answer session.
10. Sam Cooke | I'll Come Running Back To You
I think this is Sam's first Secular track after years of singing Gospel songs. It's pretty good for a first try at a Love song, isn't it?
1. The Prisonaires | Just Walkin' In The Rain
Sung by a group of genuine convicts in the 1950's, the beauty of this song is obvious, but it also led me to listen to more recordings by Sam Philips of Sun Records, which in turn led me to listening to more Blues, Folk, Country, Bluegrass and Rock And Roll Music. Basically mostly 50's (with a little 40's and 60's) Music, which is now what I like to listen to most of all.
2. Roy Orbison | It's Over
I knew and liked Pretty Woman from an early age, then later on discovered and enjoyed the recordings Roy Orbison made on Sun Records. Then I found my Dads' 7" copy of It's Over and was blown away. In most cases I find Strings on records unlistenable, but Roy is so good that despite how overblown this recording is, nothing can distract from or deny the Emotion of his performance.
3. The Shadows | All Day
I like a lot of Twangy Guitar Groups/Players including Duane Eddy and Link Wray, but The Shadows are my favourite, perhaps because they seem to have a bit more Variation that those other guys. Which is demonstrated on this slightly Italian/Greek(?) sounding track. The Shadows always look like they are having fun playing and I can imagine them having a nice time enjoying playing this relaxing tune. Rather than sticking to just one style they have mastered many different ones - they also do Rock And Roll (Dynamite, with Cliff Richard), Twangy Guitar with Minor Chords (Apache) as well as many others! This is another song that I first heard on a 7" belonging to my father.
4. Bill Monroe | I Saw The Light
I find it difficult to not feel uplifted by a great deal of Religious Music. That is true of many Bluegrass songs, in this case sung by Bill Monroe. The combination of Group Singing, wonderful Playing and good time feeling that Bill is experiencing makes it impossible for me to not also feel happy with him.
5. Percy Sledge | Warm And Tender Love
The tendency of Soul singers to sing with feeling all of the time appears obviously fake to me, and despite trying, I found it impossible to find a Soul singer that I could believe in. That was until I heard Percy Sledge, whose wonderful voice seems so much more heartfelt and genuine than any other Soul man. Hearing him sing Warm And Tender Love for the first time was an exciting moment, discovering that he had songs that were as good as and better than When A Man Loves A Woman.
6. Bob Dylan | The Man In MeThe Man In Me, from Dylan's New Morning album, is a joyous Love song. Hearing this song on the Soundtrack to The Big Lebowski made me realise that Bob Dylan was making great Music in the seventies, despite everything that I had read suggesting that this was a low period in his career. I had listened to but never loved some of his highly thought of sixties albums such as Highway 61 Revisited and Bringing It All Back Home. Although they were clearly good and fun as well as being smart, I found I preferred the slightly more conventional but no less great, beautiful and fun songs that start to appear on Nashville Skyline and then New Morning. Once you start listening to Dylan in the seventies then there are so many more great albums to discover such as Self Portrait, Planet Waves, Street Legal, and into the 80's, Shot Of Love. And once I started to love these albums, then the sixties ones grew on me as well!
7. Neil Young | Cortez The Killer
Neil Young is one of my All Time Favourite Guitarists. Probably Top Three. Maybe even Number One, depending on how I am feeling. It must have been said before, but his Guitar Playing proves that less is more - less notes and far more feeling. Cortez The Killer is a perfect example of this, stretched over seven or so minutes. Neil creates so much good feeling not only from his songs, but also through his Music. Whether he is playing Electric or Acoustic Guitar or Piano, he is a great player.
8. The Rolling Stones | Monkey Man
Before Dave (Tattersall of The Wave Pictures) put this song on a compilation, all I knew by The Stones was the best of album Hot Rocks, and had been led to believe that this was all I needed to hear by them. After listening to Monkey Man I immediately realised that this was false, so I started buying as many Stones albums as possible. Let It Bleed, which this song is taken from, is 100% killer, as are Beggars Banquet, Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main Street. As if this weren't enough great albums then there are many more from before and after this period of their career that are also totally awesome. Monkey Man demonstrates what a great Studio band The Stones are. They are brilliant at Arranging their Music so that a complex Studio Recording sounds like a seamless Live take. The Stones reputation for drugs, women, overblown stage shows and crap recent albums has maybe overshadowed the fact that they produced many brilliant albums which contain songs which are as good as the hits, such as Sympathy For The Devil, Honky Tonk Woman, Satisfaction, etc. The Stones are one of my favourite bands.
9. Faces | Ooh La La
Although the Faces are famous for their raucous Rock And Roll, they also have a bunch of lovely Ballads which are mostly co-writes or wholly written by Ronnie Lane. Ooh La La is one such song, co-written with Ronnie Wood, and has the writer affectionately recalling a story told by his Grandad that he did not take seriously at the time. The song is both Upbeat and laid back at the same time, with great Ronnie Wood Acoustic Guitars, who produced his best Guitar Playing on record while he was with the Faces. I love that the Faces have the ballads of Ronnie Lane to go with their louder Rock And Roll Music.
10. Antony Santos | Que Mas Me Pides
Despite all of his songs being sung in Spanish (which I can't speak), Anthony Santos still gets onto my list because of the amount of fun I have had listening to and singing along with him whilst on tour with The Wave Pictures. I could have chosen any of the songs on his En Vivo: Vuelve Amor album, and picked this one randomly. Whatever he is singing then it sounds Mournful, Heartbreaking, Joyous and Up-Lifting.
1. Stanley Brinks | This Will Be All
Stanley Brinks has written hundreds of beautiful songs. This one (from the album Digs) is particularly beautiful. He tells you a little something about himself. He tells you a little short story about a Train ride, a cocktail, a cigarette, a girl. This song reminds me of Raymond Chandler.
2. Lou Reed | Halloween Parade
I'm a huge Lou Reed fan. For me, his best work is at the start and at the end of his career. The Velvet Underground stuff is totally wonderful, but I also really love his work on a trilogy of (relatively) recent albums: 'New York, Set The Twilight Reeling and Ecstasy. This song (from New York) paints a strong picture of a particular time and place. It is suffused with longing for absent friends. It is full of Humour. It is also in part about enjoying the act of Rhyming: the Rhymes just roll out beautifully. His voice is beautiful. I love the Sound, I love the Guitars, I love the Doo-Wop Chords. As Lou says in the sleeve notes - you can't beat two guitars, bass, drums. Not with a great singer like Lou Reed anyway.
3. Bob Dylan | Went To See The Gypsy
This is a strange, Mysterious little story song. I love the details: the Sun rising over a little Minnesota town, the Hotel lobby, the dancing girl. It has so many great lines in it. It is a strange song. The Rhythm seem unsure at times. At one point the drummer even stops playing for a moment. But the Playing and the Sound has a lovely feeling, a sweet energy, and a pleasing kind of Wholeness with this strange little story that Bob is telling. You wonder what it all meant to him. I don't know what the Dylan nerds say: there is probably a long analysis of this somewhere on the Internet. But I love it just as it is, with no extra information. It's a lovely thing. Some great Electric Guitar playing on this one too; I think the guitarist is called Ron Cornelius, but I'm not sure.
4. The Fishermen Three | Time To Think About The Morning Once Again
A sweet and beautifully written Ballad, full of Hope and Promise, about turning a corner in your life and making a few changes. From the album of the same name, which is full of beautiful songs. This song is rich in Imagery, but also plows a straight and steady course to your heart. It manages to be both unpretentious and Poetic: not an easy task. So intelligent. It's a song to go back to again and again throughout your life.
5. Van Morrison | Astral Weeks
It's hard to imagine a song with better Poetry in the Lyrics, or with more Soul and Feeling in the Music. The band on this album are extraordinary. This track opens the album, and it is full of Wonder and Joy. I love to put this record on. I could listen to it every day.
6. Dire Straits | Sultans Of Swing
People seem to think that Dire Straits are a guilty pleasure. They are quite wrong. Brothers In Arms is total rubbish from start to finish, no argument here. And Mark Knophler has done remarkably little of Value in his long Solo career: he is a balding cheese-monger with two Keyboard players in his band (even more insane than having two drummers in my opinion). But Dire Straits' Self-Titled Debut Album is Dark, grown-up, Live-sounding, simple and Singular. It conforms to Lou Reed's law (it is mainly two Guitars, Bass and Drums) and the Sound is superb. This is the best song on the album, and the best thing that anyone involved ever did. I have heard this song literally thousands of times and I never find it boring. I never tire of it. Why is that? The amazing arranged Guitar Solos? The Minor Chords? The Lyric is certainly very strong: it's another detailed story, this time about a Pub band. He captures what is sad and what is beautiful about the life of the Pub musician. He sees how glorious they are. It's got a lot of heart to it. It's just totally killer, this song, in every single way. It's got Mystery, it's got Depth, it Grooves. Listen to what the drummer, Pick Withers, does on this one. Superb Musicianship.
7. Neil Young | Down By The River
One of the Greatest Electric Guitar Records Ever Made. You put this on, and you are in the room with them. And what a performance they are giving you! Those steady, groovy, simple-as-can-be Drums. The stabbing Rhythm Guitar. And Neil, coming out of the Right Speaker, playing some of the best Guitar you ever heard.
8. Silver Jews | Ballad Of Reverend War Character
I have no idea how many times I have listened to this song. Possibly thousands of times. It has sublime Lyrics. So many good lines! I love David Berman's World-weary Vocal. The band play beautifully. I find this recording incredibly moving. It feels like all Life is contained within it. It feels like this Singer knows everything there is to know. It feels sad and strong and sweet and good.
9. Paul Simon | Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard
Paul Simon spends so much time trying to find Novel and Complex Chord Sequences and yet this is indisputably his greatest song: a little three Chord ditty more like a Buddy Holly Chord Sequence. This song makes me so happy. Simplicity and sweetness. A strange and rich and impenetrable story. God only knows what is going on here in the story: it's a Mystery! I always loved this kind of Lyric... There's a story there, but what is it exactly? Simon's lovely, lovely voice is clearly enjoying the sounds of the words as they come out of his mouth. I have loved this song ever since I was a child. It's also on the Soundtrack to one of my favourite movies: The Royal Tenenbaums. It soundtracks a particular joyous montage sequence in which Gene Hackman indulges in a bit of Shoplifting amongst other things.
10. Allen Ginsberg | Vomit Express
This is the greatest, happiest, most Exuberant Rock And Roll there is going. The Chord Sequence is a lot like La Bamba. Bob Dylan is on Rhythm Guitar. There are some crazy cool talented people hanging out and making Music. The air is full of smoke. Everyone is very happy. Allen Ginsberg is going down to Puerto Rico, and he wants to tell you all about it, even if it takes all night. This song has so many verses. It could go on forever and ever. The Poetry just pours out of him, verse after verse after verse, and the musicians keep on gathering and regathering steam, launching again and again into that Chorus, finding Real Energy. Magic.
Tuesday, 29 October 2013
The Plural Of Vinyl Is Vinyl
Lisbon exists! On 7 inch! I hold in my hands incontrovertible tangible evidence - the 7 inch itself. Happy to report as it's existence was in doubt, at least in my own mind. Cracking b-side too, "One By One (Electric)", is an If You Leave It Alone style gentle number with a lovely horn part and Freschard coo-ing in the background. Which makes me wonder what One By One (Acoustic/Normal) would sound like as the released version really isn't very "electric". Excellent though. Shame there's no download code but I guess that'll keep the 7 inch special. A friend asked me why I was spending £5 on a 7 inch when I already had the lead track, but there you go - fandom!
Speaking of which, if you're waiting for the WP's to get off tour and send out the double-vinyl to you I'm here to tell you it's well worth waiting for. 2LP gatefold, white-vinyl, 2CD's in the package, full lyrics and snazzy pictures, it's really a terrific package. Great pressing too as it plays flat and silent (between songs, I mean).
Despite the band obviously being vinyl fans, I feel like I've complained about waiting for vinyl pressings on a number of releases over the last couple years. Well, not this time around - it's a great time to be a WP's vinyl fan!
Speaking of which, if you're waiting for the WP's to get off tour and send out the double-vinyl to you I'm here to tell you it's well worth waiting for. 2LP gatefold, white-vinyl, 2CD's in the package, full lyrics and snazzy pictures, it's really a terrific package. Great pressing too as it plays flat and silent (between songs, I mean).
Despite the band obviously being vinyl fans, I feel like I've complained about waiting for vinyl pressings on a number of releases over the last couple years. Well, not this time around - it's a great time to be a WP's vinyl fan!
Wednesday, 23 October 2013
Red Cloud Road
Another minimal band effort video released for the second single, bizarrely in the week the first single is released!
A nice piece by Allo Darlin's Elizabeth Morris too to welcome the new record into the world:
As a band, we have been fortunate enough to tour with some
wonderful people, in both strange and beautiful places. I have a
collection of these memories stored for moments when I need them. On the
whole touring, like any kind of travelling, is a joyful experience full
of both the mundane and the magical, then the mundane becomes magical
once you’re home and back in the 9-5. It’s made for sentimental
romantics like us.
Last year we toured twice with the Wave Pictures, one of my favourite bands before I met them, and with familiarity and closeness my admiration for them has only grown. We had 5 weeks in America in Spring, just after our album Europe and their album Long Black Cars had been released, and another 2 weeks in Spain in the Autumn. The first tour they opened for us, the second tour we opened for them, and we’d often end the shows playing together. They have a way of making you feel like you’ve known them since you were children. If I see the boys in Allo Darlin’ as my brothers, I see the Wave Pictures as our cousins. The ones who have a pool that you swam in every afternoon after school, who get a little too drunk at your wedding and end up sliding across the dance floor on their bellies.
When we were in America, Dave was writing a lot in his notebook during the long drives. He turned those words into songs, and those songs now make up their new double album City Forgiveness, which was released yesterday. Paul plays a lot of guitar and piano on the album, and I am having fun trying to work out which is Paul imitating Dave or the real Dave. I can tell when Paul sounds like Paul though. I think Bill and Mike both contributed to the album too, although I’m not quite sure what ended up on the final version.
It is an ambitious and thrilling and emotional record, and I am proud to have even the tiniest association with it. You can buy the record from Moshi Moshi and you definitely should.
A nice piece by Allo Darlin's Elizabeth Morris too to welcome the new record into the world:
City Forgiveness
Last year we toured twice with the Wave Pictures, one of my favourite bands before I met them, and with familiarity and closeness my admiration for them has only grown. We had 5 weeks in America in Spring, just after our album Europe and their album Long Black Cars had been released, and another 2 weeks in Spain in the Autumn. The first tour they opened for us, the second tour we opened for them, and we’d often end the shows playing together. They have a way of making you feel like you’ve known them since you were children. If I see the boys in Allo Darlin’ as my brothers, I see the Wave Pictures as our cousins. The ones who have a pool that you swam in every afternoon after school, who get a little too drunk at your wedding and end up sliding across the dance floor on their bellies.
When we were in America, Dave was writing a lot in his notebook during the long drives. He turned those words into songs, and those songs now make up their new double album City Forgiveness, which was released yesterday. Paul plays a lot of guitar and piano on the album, and I am having fun trying to work out which is Paul imitating Dave or the real Dave. I can tell when Paul sounds like Paul though. I think Bill and Mike both contributed to the album too, although I’m not quite sure what ended up on the final version.
It is an ambitious and thrilling and emotional record, and I am proud to have even the tiniest association with it. You can buy the record from Moshi Moshi and you definitely should.
Monday, 21 October 2013
City Forgiveness Release Day!
It's October the 21st which means the new WP's record is in stores now. I'm looking forward to hearing it properly but advance word certainly makes it seem like this is their defining artistic statement to date. Go buy it now!
http://thewavepictures.bandcamp.com/album/city-forgiveness
There's mention of a 7 inch of Lisbon too, also out today, but it's not immediately obvious if this actually exists. There's a non-lp bside called One By One on it so let's hope it doesn't become another phantom 45 like Spaghetti (which is still listed as being released on 7inch on their website - and never was).
Meanwhile, a nice track-by-track has been published by This Is Fake DIY - http://www.thisisfakediy.co.uk/articles/features/in-pictures-the-wave-pictures-city-forgiveness/
The Wave Pictures' new double album 'City Forgiveness' is a colossal thing, put together in just one week, so the story goes. But it's a well-travelled beast, its ideas emerging from weeks and weeks on the road with Allo Darlin', where American nothingness collided with strange sightings and all the food a hungry band could possibly eat.
"We visited Hank Williams' house and Billy The Kid's grave, watched the Golden Gate bridge disappear into the clouds, and had our frisbee confiscated by a cop," tells Dave Tattersall. "We played some great shows together, and we became good friends, and we drove and we drove and we drove and we drove."
While endlessly driving around, Dave scribbled all his sightings into a notebook. These would eventually make up the thoughts and themes of 'City Forgiveness. "Anything that popped into my head went in the notebook. When I returned home to London, I had a few hundred crumpled, well-travelled pages at the bottom of my bag," he explains.
What followed was "a very jet-lagged and confused week, immediately after the tour.
"I had emptied out the notebook: it was just like unpacking. We clearly had a double album on our hands; not a concept album about America so much as a testament to the way that travel excites the imagination.
"The title came to me in a dream several weeks after the trip. Nothing useful has ever come to me in a dream before, so I felt that I had better use it. The title reminds me of City Lights: both the beautiful Charlie Chaplin movie and the Los Angeles company who published Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl'. The dream was about the trip: running at midnight in some American city, on what they would call a sidewalk, I pull a vinyl album out of what they would call a trashcan; it is the most beautiful vinyl album I have ever seen and the title is ''City Forgiveness''. I woke up enough to write these 2 words down on a takeaway pizza menu that happened to be by the bed, and fell back to sleep."
Accompanied with pictures from the trip, Dave put together a mammoth guide to the record; an audio-visual feast that connects what he saw on the road to what makes it into his band's latest album, out Monday 21st October on Moshi Moshi Records.
All photos credited to: Will Botting / Allo Darlin'
ALL MY FRIENDS
This has something of a late night New York diner feel to it. Jack Nicholson drinking coffee in ''The Last Detail''. Edward Hopper's ''Nighthawks''. Chandler Bing dumping Janice in the background. In the first week of our travels around America, I found a novel called ''All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers'' in a Salvation Army thrift store in Brooklyn, and carried it with me, unread, for the rest of the trip.
BEFORE THIS DAY
This tells the story of the first day that I can remember; what I take to be my very earliest memories. I am running through the long grass, yet to be cut, behind the house in Wymeswold that my family moved to when I was three years old. I am the same me that I am now, but considerably smaller.
Travel does this to you: it shakes loose these buried memories from home.
CHESTNUT
This is what happens to bands that eat huevos rancheros every day for six weeks.
BETTER TO HAVE LOVED
We played a Tequila festival in Tucson, Arizona. We were on after a kind of rock/mariachi/bachata band with a cowbell player, a drummer and a percussionist. They were very laid back and groovy. The guitar player liked his wah-wah pedal. They played outside, and we danced to their music and drank tequila with a hundred or so other revellers. Then we went inside and played our show to an audience of two people. We were on fire though, as I recall. That band had really excited me. I think of them sometimes. I don't know who they were, but they were great. They could play a great cover version of this song.
MISSOULA
Missoula is in Montana. This is a love song, pure and simple. A love song to motels and beer bellies.
LISBON
This is a song about flying home to see your loved ones after a long trip. It is a song about the first cup of coffee on a day that has already been very long by 9 in the morning. It is a song about almond butter and about cuddles. It is a song about travelling, and the end of travelling. It's a song about carrying a tune in your head, getting home and writing it down.
Singing about ''Little Richard on the radio'' is wishful thinking: if only.
RED CLOUD ROAD (Part 2)
Red Cloud Road is a real road in California. Red Cloud Road is also ''a high energy band in Longmont, Colorado playing covers of your favorite hit songs'', according to their Facebook page. It also sounds like a level on the popular computer game Super Mario Brothers.
This song is a little play, and it's a sequel, too, of course. Part one, featuring the same two characters, will be available soon. In my head, I like to cast Jane Russell and Robert Ryan as the two leads in this little play, but feel free to pick your own. Just don't let Daniel Day Lewis anywhere near it.
THE WOODS
In Lubbock, Texas, we visited the Buddy Holly museum, ate breakfast burritos and played pool with the locals. In Chico, California, we ate ice cream all day and slept on mattresses that were infested with the cocoons of black widow spiders. We watched Terminator 3 in a Holiday Inn in Alabama. We drove over the state line into Florida to buy beer on a Sunday. We slept like sardines in a can in Philadelphia, in the home of an enormous grey cat. We ate macaroni cheese by the Mississippi river in Minneapolis. We watched Paul Simon read his favourite Phillip Larkin poem in a lecture theatre in New York. We looked in the gift shop of the Seattle space needle, but didn't go to the top because it was too expensive. All the while the notebook was filling up.
WHISKY BAY
Whisky Bay is in Louisiana, where we performed for an audience of three in Baton Rouge, in a bar stuffed full of pool tables called the Spanish Moon. Fats Domino on the van stereo in the morning sunshine the next day, driving with bellies full with exquisite omelettes. This is another love song, and a very happy one too.
THE YELLOW ROSES
Hawaiian shirts, sunshine and freedom, versus bitterness, pettiness and regret.
In San Francisco I bought hawaiian shirts by the pound, the way you would buy mince.
TROPIC
The narrator here is a parent who has outlived his child. I have spent a bit of time with parents who have lost a child. The pain is permanently present.
The line ''There is loneliness and pain, it is written in the earth'' comes from Henry Miller's ''Tropic of Cancer'', hence the title. The two books I took with me on the tour of America were ''Tropic of Cancer'' and ''Poet In New York'' by Lorca. Lorca appears in this song too. I never finished ''Tropic of Cancer'' – it is very good but it is also too long.
THE INATTENTIVE READER
Looking at the moon in Lisbon, walking through the market square in Hamburg, thinking about Buddy Holly again. Chatting in bed at midnight in the basement flat beneath a bar, a Matisse print on the wall, 'Bringing It All Back Home' on the CD player.
If this song was a type of food, it would be a slice of New York pizza. If this song was an item of clothing, it would be a hawaiian shirt.
SHELL
Driving into Georgia, deep in the night, and trying to set an absent friend straight. People tend to think they are doing worse than they are. Like most songs, this is an open letter, a message in a bottle thrown into the sea.
THE ROPES
Hot air balloons in the sky, pool halls on the ground. Paul Newman in ''The Hustler'', baboons in the trees, Black Sabbath on the radio. You look up and see an old friend about to pass you on the street. You were close once but there's nothing to say anymore.
NARROW LANE
Driving up the west coast of America with Wymeswold on my mind.
ATLANTA
I believe that I wrote these words underneath a green umbrella, with a Turkish tea, outside a restaurant called Tallulah's in Atlanta, surrounded by the shimmering rain. But I do not remember.
NEW SKIN
This song reminds me of Chicago, of the waitresses at Schuba's Tavern putting their own money into the jukebox to play 'Somebody I Used To Know' by Gotye over and over and over and over again. When I returned home from the tour I suffered from jet-lag induced insomnia and I partly blame Gotye for this. His Sting-like hit song played ceaselessly in my head. Sleep was impossible. I lost my mind. All I could do was wander around my east London flat like a ghost, and write songs. This song is probably the one on the album that is the most like ''Somebody I Used To Know'', though I sincerely hope that does not sound off-putting. I would also hate to disappoint any Chicago waitresses who might happen upon this text. The two songs are not very similar.
A CRACK IN THE PLANS
Conceived in a rooftop jacuzzi, high above Los Angeles, after watching a four hour documentary on the career of Woody Allen.
I really did look a fox in the face once, in the shadow of a burger stand, on Woodlands Road in Glasgow, when I lived above the Halt Bar there.
GOLDEN SYRUP
The narrator here is an old man. I picture Henry Miller in ''Tropic of Cancer'', as played by Charlie Chaplin.
LIKE SMOKE
Sex and death, black back teeth and looming rainclouds, pretty pink flowers and curious calves, red wine in the plastic cup outside the funeral home, the wood oven and the pizza inside it, rows of chimney stacks, ashes in the wind, the trick-or-treating kids in my block who change their costumes and come back again and again for more sweets, bursting into laughter, John Fahey playing ''When You Wore A Tulip (And I Wore A Big Red Rose)'', emptying out the notebook like an upturned suitcase, grandparents and babies and us somewhere in the middle.
http://thewavepictures.bandcamp.com/album/city-forgiveness
There's mention of a 7 inch of Lisbon too, also out today, but it's not immediately obvious if this actually exists. There's a non-lp bside called One By One on it so let's hope it doesn't become another phantom 45 like Spaghetti (which is still listed as being released on 7inch on their website - and never was).
Meanwhile, a nice track-by-track has been published by This Is Fake DIY - http://www.thisisfakediy.co.uk/articles/features/in-pictures-the-wave-pictures-city-forgiveness/
In Pictures: The Wave Pictures - City Forgiveness
Dave Tattersall puts together a pictorial guide to the American road trip that helped make new album 'City Forgiveness'.
Posted 17th October 2013, 1:38pm in Features
The Wave Pictures' new double album 'City Forgiveness' is a colossal thing, put together in just one week, so the story goes. But it's a well-travelled beast, its ideas emerging from weeks and weeks on the road with Allo Darlin', where American nothingness collided with strange sightings and all the food a hungry band could possibly eat.
"We visited Hank Williams' house and Billy The Kid's grave, watched the Golden Gate bridge disappear into the clouds, and had our frisbee confiscated by a cop," tells Dave Tattersall. "We played some great shows together, and we became good friends, and we drove and we drove and we drove and we drove."
While endlessly driving around, Dave scribbled all his sightings into a notebook. These would eventually make up the thoughts and themes of 'City Forgiveness. "Anything that popped into my head went in the notebook. When I returned home to London, I had a few hundred crumpled, well-travelled pages at the bottom of my bag," he explains.
What followed was "a very jet-lagged and confused week, immediately after the tour.
"I had emptied out the notebook: it was just like unpacking. We clearly had a double album on our hands; not a concept album about America so much as a testament to the way that travel excites the imagination.
"The title came to me in a dream several weeks after the trip. Nothing useful has ever come to me in a dream before, so I felt that I had better use it. The title reminds me of City Lights: both the beautiful Charlie Chaplin movie and the Los Angeles company who published Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl'. The dream was about the trip: running at midnight in some American city, on what they would call a sidewalk, I pull a vinyl album out of what they would call a trashcan; it is the most beautiful vinyl album I have ever seen and the title is ''City Forgiveness''. I woke up enough to write these 2 words down on a takeaway pizza menu that happened to be by the bed, and fell back to sleep."
Accompanied with pictures from the trip, Dave put together a mammoth guide to the record; an audio-visual feast that connects what he saw on the road to what makes it into his band's latest album, out Monday 21st October on Moshi Moshi Records.
All photos credited to: Will Botting / Allo Darlin'
ALL MY FRIENDS
This has something of a late night New York diner feel to it. Jack Nicholson drinking coffee in ''The Last Detail''. Edward Hopper's ''Nighthawks''. Chandler Bing dumping Janice in the background. In the first week of our travels around America, I found a novel called ''All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers'' in a Salvation Army thrift store in Brooklyn, and carried it with me, unread, for the rest of the trip.
BEFORE THIS DAY
This tells the story of the first day that I can remember; what I take to be my very earliest memories. I am running through the long grass, yet to be cut, behind the house in Wymeswold that my family moved to when I was three years old. I am the same me that I am now, but considerably smaller.
Travel does this to you: it shakes loose these buried memories from home.
CHESTNUT
This is what happens to bands that eat huevos rancheros every day for six weeks.
BETTER TO HAVE LOVED
We played a Tequila festival in Tucson, Arizona. We were on after a kind of rock/mariachi/bachata band with a cowbell player, a drummer and a percussionist. They were very laid back and groovy. The guitar player liked his wah-wah pedal. They played outside, and we danced to their music and drank tequila with a hundred or so other revellers. Then we went inside and played our show to an audience of two people. We were on fire though, as I recall. That band had really excited me. I think of them sometimes. I don't know who they were, but they were great. They could play a great cover version of this song.
MISSOULA
Missoula is in Montana. This is a love song, pure and simple. A love song to motels and beer bellies.
LISBON
This is a song about flying home to see your loved ones after a long trip. It is a song about the first cup of coffee on a day that has already been very long by 9 in the morning. It is a song about almond butter and about cuddles. It is a song about travelling, and the end of travelling. It's a song about carrying a tune in your head, getting home and writing it down.
Singing about ''Little Richard on the radio'' is wishful thinking: if only.
RED CLOUD ROAD (Part 2)
Red Cloud Road is a real road in California. Red Cloud Road is also ''a high energy band in Longmont, Colorado playing covers of your favorite hit songs'', according to their Facebook page. It also sounds like a level on the popular computer game Super Mario Brothers.
This song is a little play, and it's a sequel, too, of course. Part one, featuring the same two characters, will be available soon. In my head, I like to cast Jane Russell and Robert Ryan as the two leads in this little play, but feel free to pick your own. Just don't let Daniel Day Lewis anywhere near it.
THE WOODS
In Lubbock, Texas, we visited the Buddy Holly museum, ate breakfast burritos and played pool with the locals. In Chico, California, we ate ice cream all day and slept on mattresses that were infested with the cocoons of black widow spiders. We watched Terminator 3 in a Holiday Inn in Alabama. We drove over the state line into Florida to buy beer on a Sunday. We slept like sardines in a can in Philadelphia, in the home of an enormous grey cat. We ate macaroni cheese by the Mississippi river in Minneapolis. We watched Paul Simon read his favourite Phillip Larkin poem in a lecture theatre in New York. We looked in the gift shop of the Seattle space needle, but didn't go to the top because it was too expensive. All the while the notebook was filling up.
WHISKY BAY
Whisky Bay is in Louisiana, where we performed for an audience of three in Baton Rouge, in a bar stuffed full of pool tables called the Spanish Moon. Fats Domino on the van stereo in the morning sunshine the next day, driving with bellies full with exquisite omelettes. This is another love song, and a very happy one too.
THE YELLOW ROSES
Hawaiian shirts, sunshine and freedom, versus bitterness, pettiness and regret.
In San Francisco I bought hawaiian shirts by the pound, the way you would buy mince.
TROPIC
The narrator here is a parent who has outlived his child. I have spent a bit of time with parents who have lost a child. The pain is permanently present.
The line ''There is loneliness and pain, it is written in the earth'' comes from Henry Miller's ''Tropic of Cancer'', hence the title. The two books I took with me on the tour of America were ''Tropic of Cancer'' and ''Poet In New York'' by Lorca. Lorca appears in this song too. I never finished ''Tropic of Cancer'' – it is very good but it is also too long.
THE INATTENTIVE READER
Looking at the moon in Lisbon, walking through the market square in Hamburg, thinking about Buddy Holly again. Chatting in bed at midnight in the basement flat beneath a bar, a Matisse print on the wall, 'Bringing It All Back Home' on the CD player.
If this song was a type of food, it would be a slice of New York pizza. If this song was an item of clothing, it would be a hawaiian shirt.
SHELL
Driving into Georgia, deep in the night, and trying to set an absent friend straight. People tend to think they are doing worse than they are. Like most songs, this is an open letter, a message in a bottle thrown into the sea.
THE ROPES
Hot air balloons in the sky, pool halls on the ground. Paul Newman in ''The Hustler'', baboons in the trees, Black Sabbath on the radio. You look up and see an old friend about to pass you on the street. You were close once but there's nothing to say anymore.
NARROW LANE
Driving up the west coast of America with Wymeswold on my mind.
ATLANTA
I believe that I wrote these words underneath a green umbrella, with a Turkish tea, outside a restaurant called Tallulah's in Atlanta, surrounded by the shimmering rain. But I do not remember.
NEW SKIN
This song reminds me of Chicago, of the waitresses at Schuba's Tavern putting their own money into the jukebox to play 'Somebody I Used To Know' by Gotye over and over and over and over again. When I returned home from the tour I suffered from jet-lag induced insomnia and I partly blame Gotye for this. His Sting-like hit song played ceaselessly in my head. Sleep was impossible. I lost my mind. All I could do was wander around my east London flat like a ghost, and write songs. This song is probably the one on the album that is the most like ''Somebody I Used To Know'', though I sincerely hope that does not sound off-putting. I would also hate to disappoint any Chicago waitresses who might happen upon this text. The two songs are not very similar.
A CRACK IN THE PLANS
Conceived in a rooftop jacuzzi, high above Los Angeles, after watching a four hour documentary on the career of Woody Allen.
I really did look a fox in the face once, in the shadow of a burger stand, on Woodlands Road in Glasgow, when I lived above the Halt Bar there.
GOLDEN SYRUP
The narrator here is an old man. I picture Henry Miller in ''Tropic of Cancer'', as played by Charlie Chaplin.
LIKE SMOKE
Sex and death, black back teeth and looming rainclouds, pretty pink flowers and curious calves, red wine in the plastic cup outside the funeral home, the wood oven and the pizza inside it, rows of chimney stacks, ashes in the wind, the trick-or-treating kids in my block who change their costumes and come back again and again for more sweets, bursting into laughter, John Fahey playing ''When You Wore A Tulip (And I Wore A Big Red Rose)'', emptying out the notebook like an upturned suitcase, grandparents and babies and us somewhere in the middle.
Thursday, 3 October 2013
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