Songs
click the song title
to get the background story
01 deluge
02 when
moods collide
03 renee
04 catfish
05 make your own fun
06 drop the pebbles
07 nathan
08 the love is in the detail
09 boots
10 your furrowed brow
11 blackberries
12 you are the key
DELUGE
In Nelson Mandela's
Freedom Speech, he speaks of our deepest fear being not that we are inadequate,
but that we are 'powerful beyond measure'. He goes on to say that our
playing small doesn't serve the world. For many years I felt stuck in
a place of frustration - wanting to realise my potential, but overwhelmed
by the ghosts of my past - ('...who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented,
fabulous?' - Mandela, same speech). This song addresses that need in all
of us to make a fresh start, re-invent ourselves, release our inner power.
The artist constantly worries that his/her creativity will dry up; the
DELUGE is the spirit or Muse or divine inspiration or external energy
that we tap into and allows us to be free to achieve our potential and
be ourself. I grew up in Cambridge (UK), but my years on the UK South
Coast have introduced me to the sea - by it, in it, on it. The whistle
that opens the song represents the spirit released, a bird soaring high
above the waters. The tumbling ocean feel is the waves that almost submerge
our being and the striving to be released, the same waves that can also
carry us to safety and new places.
WHEN MOODS COLLIDE
One of my favourites,
with its deceptively laid-back feel, this deals with the contradictory
elements of sensuality and passion in sexual experience - the collision
of moods that can be violent or tender, or a great rollercoaster of the
two, and everything in between. There's an odd fascination about people
we know whose relationship seems to thrive on confrontation and volcanic
energy, while others appear publicly to be so easy-going you can't help
wondering if there's any emotional fire behind the scenes at all! My hunch
is that all great relationships contain some spark of passion somewhere
(whether of the mind or heart), and despite the rollercoaster, there is
a calmness and sometimes even a bereft feeling that can remain. So it's
about the whirlwind of all love relationships - we can all identify. And
I'm not saying any more than that!
RENEE
I used to be
a youth worker, and did a lot of counselling and hanging out with kids
who were just discovering what's on offer in the world. (I remember my
first night at my new youth club: Within the first half hour, the colour
of my car had been entirely obliterated with human spit! Needless to say,
I quit! But actually I went back later, to profuse apologies - bit of
a first day test. We all got on fine after that!) This song is one of
the earliest I wrote for the album. It started life as a country ballad
- "Josephine, Josephine, where are you now...", and was some
of my observations of some of the girls I'd met who really don't see trouble
brewing, and get themselves into all kinds of situations they really never
intended but don't have the strength, or perhaps the voice, to resist.
We were at the studio, recording this, and Keith, my co-producer turned
to someone and said: "Hmmm... I wonder who THIS one's about!".
So, I guess it's about me too, though perhaps not quite as sad as the
backs of cars bit! I was also fascinated at how you could rhyme 'have
you' with 'fragile' if you sing it right (which I didn't quite on the
album version!). So, once I was compiling the shortlist of songs, I rewrote
the opening line with a more arresting urgency - a kind of looking back
on what I've learned, and longing to save someone else from the same little-girl-lost
crap I'd fought my own way out of with no-one to help me.
It's also about reputation, and how our lives can change beyond recognition if we surround ourselves with the good guys and not the bastards who live for themselves at everyone else's expense.
CATFISH
Well, you gotta
have a song that's a bit of fun, haven't you? This started as a skipping
rhyme, after I'd written some deep and meaningful pile of self-referential
rubbish that was never going to make my shortlist! It's my way of switching
my mind out of too-serious-mode; this time I ended up with a cheeky, sensual...nursery
rhyme - (bit odd in itself, that, come to think of it). It's the kind
of song we have a ball with on stage - so much drama and silliness, but
some great improvisation, musically speaking, too (and, yes, we CAN do
it just like the record if you want!). There are no great hidden depths
to this one - it's just a pretty primal and universal bounce, but with
a twist of sophistication brought in by the density of instrumentation
and that fab horns section (influenced by Stevie Wonder and Prince while
I wasn't looking, no doubt!). I love it.
MAKE YOUR OWN FUN
I hadn't really
noticed this title had a dodgy connotation till someone mentioned it!
I love those lazy June days, lying under a tree, watching the clouds making
rabbits and giants between great bursts of sunshine. The song came out
of childhood reminiscences of days like that when you entertain yourself
with your imagination, and the childish innocence of spinning in an open
field, or happening upon little gems of nature you turn into a whole surreal
adventure, dark and delightful, like Alice down the rabbit hole.
DROP THE PEBBLES
We had a lot
of near the mark jokes in studio about dropping the Pebbles - my band
took a bit of persuading that this song would ever make the album! Every
so often you'd hear someone singing the opening line: 'drop the pebbles..'
and it was fairly obvious that's what they all thought I should do! I
ended up stropping off and having a little...moment, but then they gave
it their best shot - probably cos they felt a bit bad! Everything that
could go wrong during production went wrong with it, from deciding to
do this one to a click, (which the guys always hate doing), to Paul having
to borrow someone else's soprano, as his was on holiday at the menders.
But we persevered, I re-recorded the vocal twice, changed some lyric,
added some pretty bits, got Keith James to sing additional vocals with
me (my happy alternative to James Taylor at no notice!), and eventually
something emerged that started to work, so it got the thumbs up at the
eleventh hour. Well nearly midnight, actually.
NATHAN
It has been said that this is the best vocal on the album
- certainly it's a different style (that's been said, too), but the gist
is it makes me sound older (and conceivably wiser, or conceivably past
it, but if you listen carefully, you'll see that was part of the point).
But it's a piece of song-writing I'm particularly proud of. Rick and I
were on our way home from vacation in Italy, and driving back from the
airport, the sky was just the most awesome changing twilight array of
texture and colour. So I grabbed a rizla packet then a napkin and started
writing down descriptive words, as we were moving way too fast to get
any decent shots with the camera. It then took over a year before I could
work out how to turn them into a song. I got this Tom Waitsy surreal chorus
thing, but couldn't get any further. I knew I wanted some kind of references
to the old and the new, how we deal with age and moving aside for newer
ideas, but I was trying too hard to make it narrative. Then I got that
it had to be written in the present tense - how it feels right now - just
like the transience of the sky that evening. And then Rick played me a
couple of alternative piano chords that I loved, which forced me to have
to reduce the number of syllables to make the lyric fit. Best thing I
could have done! I learned that sometimes it's best if you can say what
you mean in the fewest words possible. Then leave it alone.
THE LOVE IS IN THE DETAIL
This one's the counterpart to When Moods Collide - like
the other way of looking at the same relationship, the way the episode
could have ended instead. I like to review an idea from different angles.
The unusual timing accentuates the contrasts in the lyric - racey then
tender and reflective. Then racey again - like riding bareback through
the forest in a Lord of the Rings-style chase. I love that Arthurian legend
thing - so much romance and elegance fused with primal energies and the
mystical and spiritual. We had a few debates about how long to make the
fade, as everyone wanted it to run on - the energy was fantastic in the
studio - but we figured it'd get boring in the end, cos you had to be
there, really, so we eked it out as long as we thought we could get away
with. Hey, but everything has its time.
BOOTS
Ha, well, this is a pretty dismal theme, but it turned
into quite a bouncy one in the end. Rick did some fab harp playing on
the original demo that was way slower than the album version. But the
song seemed a bit dirgey, and when we decided to speed it up and raise
the key for the final version (which meant having to get a new harmonica
and wear the reeds in before Rick could record) he wasn't exactly impressed.
So I bought him this great birthday present - a harmonica. Coincidentally...in
the right key for my song! Then it was a race to wear in the reeds. But
when he was finally ready, it didn't sound the same at all. So, I decided
I wanted to try fiddle instead. We even spent ages trying to cut and paste
some flute Paul had recorded for a completely different song! It was almost
a masterpiece. But actually, ...it wasn't! By this time Rick was starting
to be very peed off with me indeed ...Words were said. Then I listened
back to the solo on the new harmonica he'd done for me two months before.
OK, so it sounded great. We are now on speaking terms.
YOUR FURROWED BROW
I'm not saying too much about this one, but it's a great moment
when you understand that there are endless fathoms to the one you're with
that will enrich your life forever, if you're willing to stay the journey.
That's all.
BLACKBERRIES
My mother's sister Miriam was 60 when she died of cancer four
years ago.The very last time I saw her was a casual family gathering in her
autumn garden, the September before the Christmas that she died. She gave
the kids cartons to fill with blackberries they'd picked from the hedgerow,
for me to take home. We all knew this was probably the last time we would
ever see each other, and I told her I would make an apple and blackberry pie
- something so simple, short-lived, inadequate, to represent a sometimes intense,
sometimes estranged relationship we'd shared on and off for over 30 years.
And, of course, when I discovered the decaying blackberries some time later,
decomposing in some dark corner of the fridge, I was hit with the poignancy
of how, for all sorts of perfectly valid reasons (usually something to do
with being too busy), we make casual promises that we don't follow through,
and how we battle with the guilt that follows, trying to reinvent the story
in our minds so that the ending is different, how we live with regrets, how
such small details can symbolise a mountain of feelings and experiences. I
never made the pie. And I probably knew it when I said I would.
YOU ARE THE KEY
If I died tomorrow, this is the epitaph I would leave for the
world. It's the last track on the album because that's where it has to go!
KEY is what I believe and feel and have learned about human experience and
perspective- that everything we live through is valuable, and makes us who
we are; that there is nothing insurmountable if we alter our perspective and
make it work for us; that we each find our strength in something great and
profound that is the key to our faith in the world, in ourself. To smile at
the world is to be complete and at peace. But that's just the beginning...
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