TWILIGHT OVER ENGLAND

I have always liked to know what people's songs are about, and as I have a tendency (at least, according to the main orotagonist of Bernadette - who wasn't actually called Benadette at all, but that is another story), I "always write in code" I thought that it might be amusing to do a Professor Wildred Mellor on myself, and try to analyse what I said, and whyI said it.

In time I will probably do this for my other albums, but not today.

By the way, I played all the instruments on the album, (guitar, bass, piano, synthesiser, mandolin, banjo, percussion) and programmed all the sequencers. All the voices are mine except for Davey Curtis on Amerikan Synergy and the massed choir of me, Corinna, Oll Lewis, Graham Inglis, and my two nephews david and Ross on the chorus of Wardance. The same lot (minus Corinna) also provide the handclaps on the opening track.

Enjoy.


All because of you

Written after the first weekend that Corinna and I spent together.. and I still feel the same now. The "strange bloke on the telly" was - by the way - the late Ivor Cutler. A great man, and sorely missed. Recorded March 2005, with tweaks added in October this year

Usama's Hymn (The Unknown Terrorist)

Another song written and recorded in the spring of 2005. The second song I wrote about Usama bin Laden.(Funky Fatwa from Lost Weekend being the first. The concept of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier has always fascinated me since my Grandfather (a WW1 veteran, and pilot in the RFC) took me to see it aged 4.

Leap of faith

This song follows on quite nicely from the last, with the imagery taken from the couple who jumped out of the WTC holding hands. I always thought that was the ultimate romantic image, and in this song, writrten and recorded in October this year, I wanted to use it as an illustration of my pesent wonderful relationship with my wife.

Ratop (Instrumental)
Underwater Chicken Music (Skippo)

I have never made any secret of my bipolar disorder, and during my most recent bout I decided to try and write a song every day and reproduce the insane sounds and images I see in my head each time I am ill

An Amerikan Synergy (The King is Dead)

I have always been an Elvis fan, and in 1989 I wrote a song called Elvis died for our sins which appeared on my 1993 album SexGodBaby. With the benefit of hindsight (good old hindsight) I think that my first song, which was basically a musical retelling of Albert Goldman's notorious biography of `The King`, was not altogether a morally sound thing to do. This - albeit embellished with a bucketload of bile vented towards the President US leadersip), is basically my way of setting the record straight.An amazing guest vocal by Davey Curtis.

Time after Time (Picnic beneath the Lake)

There is a heck of a long history to this one. I wrote it first in 1988 at Paul Whitrow's house during the sessions for Nazi with a.... I liked the tune, but the words were awful. I then rewrote the words during the sessions for Outside the Asylum in 1990, retelling an episode from Michael Moorcock's sublime Dancer's at the End of Time (hence the title). I never got around to recording it, and it went back into the pending pile. It almost turned up on SexGodBaby (1993) and The Case (1995). Here it is, with completely new words, set (and written) on the station platform in Stamford, Lincs, in the early summer of 2005. I redid a bit of the piano and the guitar solo last month, though I am happy to say that the sound effect is the very same Virgin train that I am singing about in the song.

I've been bitten by the yellow shark

A Frank Zappa inspired instrumental that was originally written as the theme tune to the film about Mongolia which eventually came out as Lair of the Red Worm in early 2007. I wrote and recorded this in May 2005 while Richard and the Boys were in Mongolia, and then completely forgot about it.

Wardance

I started writing this during the horrible fortnight in February 2006 when I was journeying to Barnstaple twice a day to see my dying father in hospital. The last verse came to me as I sat by his bedside on the long night of 13/14th February waiting for him to die. Why, and how, I am not quite sure. You should all know who Wally Hope is (or was).

Sing me to sleep

Another Corinna inspired love song from the spring of 2005. I remember playing it to Davey Curtis, and he was gobsmacked. "Erm, it's different from your usual stuff" he said in a broad Geordie accent. As the most recent thing of mine he had heard was A39 Revisited from Lost Weekend I had no choice but to agree with him.

The man who killed the moon (Your mother is a slut)
Bernadette

I am happily married, and very much so, but my love life was not always so benign. These two songs are slightly fictionalised accounts of real events in my life that happennned at the end of 2004. I have changed the order of events around slightly, and also added some bits that happened top friends of mine, and a bit of charechterisation nicked from an ITV police drama. Bernadette has been kicking around since November 2004, but I only recorded this definitive version in October this year. It took me this long to work out how to replicate the synthesiser pattern I heard in my head. Maybe one day I will let the demos out for a laugh. The man who killed the Moon was written and recorded in the first few days of January 2006. I particularly like the jazzy coda.

Endgame

Another song from the October 2007 sessions when I was trying to make a daily documentary of the progress of my bout of depression. When he came down to do the Elvis impersonation, davey said that it made To Sail Beyond the Sunset from Hard Sports (which was, until now, the most scourging account I have ever written of suicidal depression) seem like something by Kylie. I tink that was some kind of compliment. I was listening to a lot of latter-day Scott Walker at the time.

Opium Tea

Another song with a long and chequered history. I first wrote the tune that appears on the long coda in Illinois during May 2004, while I was visiting my friend (and ex-sort of girlfriend) Jessica. The main recordings took place in March and April 2005, and I have tinkered with it ever since. The words were mostly written then as well, although I didn't record the vocal or the guitar solo until November this year.

When I wrote the majority of the words I was in the throes of my first drug-free six months, and every pore of my body ached. I threw myself into recording something more complex than I had ever attempted before as some kind of therapy.

An early instrumental version was played at the commital of my father's body at Barnstaple crematorium, following his funeral in early Match 2006.

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