To Name A Song

I’m going way back to the first song on my second album, a song called Antelope March. I love this song, it was really fun to put together.

I was rehearsing in a rehearsal room in Harold’s Cross, in a room next to a stable where horses were kept. On the drumkit there, I tapped out a simple rhythm which became the foundation of the song. I had a working title of ‘Antelope’ drawn from a lyric:

An antelope walks across the kitchen, silent and noble she knows what I’m thinking.

As I worked on it over a number of months, I changed the working title to Antelope January, Antelope February and then of course Antelope March. I was working with a great producer at the time, Jimmy Eadie, and in his special studio in Bow Lane in Dublin (now sadly a hotel or something similar) I shared Antelope March with him. He commented that it was a strange title. I said nothing and reflected on how it worked well with the atmosphere of the song, suggesting marching Antelopes and fantastical vistas.

I love to stay open to these cosmic whisperings, to surrender control and hear suggestions beyond myself.

Yma, either side

Yma Sumac. A South American singer whose singing was sometimes described as birdlike. She comes from an entirely different tradition to me and I am not quite sure how I learned about her, but I got a sense that she was a determined person and committed to her art and to her vision of singing. I felt mysteriously compelled to write her into a song and this was the last track on the album ‘The Soft Animal’.

At the time our drummer was going through a big change in his life and I felt really sad about it. In fact that specific session had an air of profound melancholy. I remember going back out to the studio on my own after a break and being very upset. But in spite of this or maybe because of this, we ended up making something quite lovely. Enda played a lonely lead guitar, very haunting.

What of this? Sometimes these strong emotions can fuel something powerful. Sometimes they can derail the whole process. I’ve experienced both these things. In this case, I think it helped.

P

Into the Search

Dear Reader, I wanted to share a new song. But it is a song that is far from finished. It’s just a kernel. Since I first recorded this voice memo I’ve changed the lyrics, and it’s moved from a sort of sparse PJ Harvey nylon string demo (which you can hear initially) to a bigger shoegazy atmospheric, Slowdive inspired thing. I didn’t really intend to write in either vein but when I listened back these artists were the most obvious references.

The lyric also has changed from filler lines that I really would never include, to something that struck me as a really cool idea for a song. I read that Ireland’s oldest man died at the age of 107 recently. His name was Joseph Veselsky and he immigrated to Ireland after the second world war. He was an amazing table tennis player, a jeweller and a survivor of the holocaust. His story stuck in my head for a few days after reading it. I’d written a melody on Christmas Day and when this was in the news in early January I began to wind it in to the song.

Songs for me take a little while to write. I have to sit with them for some time. Usually there’s an initial burst and I get curious about combining influences or lyrics. For a time, the melody just circles and circles, over and over until the phrasing fits the music. Sometimes I try to balance an interesting turn of phrase that makes sense with something that doesn’t make obvious sense..at least initially.

So this is an unresolved thing and I’m not sure where it will go. Isn’t that how life is sometimes?