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Shadow – The Lyrics
Below are the lyrics to Shadow. The song was partially inspired by Edward Hopper’s ‘Nighthawks’, the above image.
If you ask most people to choose an emotion to describe Nighthawks, they choose loneliness. It’s not immediately obvious why: the people in the painting don’t seem to be especially lonely, they seem to be getting along fine. There’s almost an air of flirtatious bonhomie within the cafe.
My guess is that the feeling of loneliness comes from the perspective: we feel lonely as the observer, catching a fleeting glimpse of warmth and light as we walk down the deserted, dark street. I think it’s an emotion everyone has felt at some point. Even the most balanced and happy person can feel the tug of romantic isolation in turning their collar to the night on the walk home through empty city streets
It’s that feeling that inspires Shadow.
Shadow
The streets are cold
The kind of cold that chills your bones
And spreads your loneliness around
Until you haven’t got a place
To call your own
One by one
You stagger down the alleys
Till you recognise a smile
In the corner of your eye
And then it’s gone
Hello hello
Is that a voice I recognise?
Is that a voice I know?
Or the shadow of a ghost?
Take your turn
To speak in dark cafes
And like a tourniquet it tightens
Round your throat
Until the words begin to burn
You never learn
But I can see it in your eyes
That you have been here once or twice
And swore the last time round
You never would return
But I could be so good to you
If you could be
The things I need the most
Not the shadow of a ghost
I will take a chance on you
I will take my final chance on you
I will waste my final chance on you
I will waste my precious time on you
WG
‘Shadow’ Launch at the Good Ship, May 23rd
On 23rd May, we will be taking to the stage at the Good Ship in Kilburn to celebrate the first release from our recent bout of recording. It’s only a tiny wee song, but is intended to intrigue and give a hint as to what is to come.
The track is called ‘Shadow’ and it deals, in typically cheery Feldspar fashion, with urban isolation and the difficulty people today have in making genuine connections with other people. I’ll do a post with the lyrics a bit closer to launch night. Basically, it’s our modern day answer to Simon and Garfunkel’s Bleeker Street, a beautiful song with one of my all-time favourite lines: “Smiling faces try to understand / I watched a shadow touch a shadow’s hand / On Bleeker Street.”
It’s all about shadows.
The track’s just been given an excellent write-up by Entertainment Focus which you can read here.
So yes, a quiet, sinister, intriguing song is our first step on the road to global domination. The bigger, heavier songs where we rail, reel, and rant against the world and all its injustices will be following soon afterwards!
We’ll be joined at the Good Ship by two excellent acts – Eden Ley, a brilliant songwriter who’s just been supporting the hotly-tipped folk ragamuffins Dry the River.
And, The October Game, a great live act who have a sound somewhere between The Cure and Massive Attack. Nice.
Doors at 7.30, tickets £6. Bargain.
Really looking forward to seeing you on May 23rd. Thanks for your continued support.
Will
The best of times, the worst of times
Two extremely contrasting gigs this week for Feldspar which highlighted the heady blend of immense frustration and unadulterated joy that surrounds trying to make it as a new band.
On Sunday, we were in Hitchin. No, we’d never heard of it either. I’m not even sure people from Hitchin have heard of it. One day, I hope someone is interested enough to ask, ‘What’s the worst gig you ever played?’ The answer to that question – The Ivory in Hitchin on Sunday 22nd April 2012 under an enormous glitterball to a room full of no people – is the only thing we got out of the night. Sometimes that’s just the way it goes: it’s difficult to stay motivated as a band having put all the effort in to get to a venue and find it empty. But, we kept our chins up and wrote it off as an expensive rehearsal.
In the sweetest of contrasts, last night at the Bull and Gate was an absolutely brilliant night. It’s such a good venue and the sound is probably the best we’ve played in London. It was fantastic to see so many people down there – old fans, new fans, friends and strangers – that it entirely renewed our faith in live music. I woke up this morning, not only with a pounding headache, but also the enthusiasm for writing new songs, doing more gigs, and generally being excited about playing music. Thanks to everyone for coming along and saving me the money I would have spent on professional help.
Will
Gig: The Good Ship, Kilburn
Thanks to all who came down to see Feldspar at the Good Ship last night. A great venue with a rather unique “sunken” stage which works well – and great sound too. Our friend Louis Starnowski was there with a camera on hand, here are a few initial photos of the show from him.
We are currently mixing the album tracks, and will have an initial EP soon which we are excited about. We also have videos planned, and more photographs, and all sorts – you’d better keep up to date, which you can do by following us on Facebook, Twitter and subscribe to this wordpress blog too.
You can see the venue’s website here. Thanks to the promoter Tom and the great soundguy (photo of his arm and mixing desk below!)
Recording days 3 and 4: Bass and Piano.
Jan 14th / 15th
More photos from the recording sessions at Diversion for our new album The Flat and Paper Sky, including Ben on piano and Wurlitzer and Tom on double / electric bass.
WILL: The Flat and Paper Sky
Will has taken a break from staring into the distance and scribbling fragments of songs on the back of receipts to talk a little about the album that we are currently recording.
How long is the album going to take to make?
Our new album will be recorded throughout January, mixed and mastered throughout February and March, and will finally be available in September. Because that feels a long way off, we’ll be using this blog to post some ideas about the thinking that’s gone into the album – the lyrics, the music, the recording styles – as well posting some clips of the recording process and some live videos of new songs. If there’s anything particular you’re interested in knowing about, please get in touch and we’ll try and write a blog about it. For now, the first topic will be the album name – The Flat and Paper Sky, and the themes of the album.
Where does the name come from and what is the album about?
‘The Flat and Paper Sky’ comes from an Edith Sitwell poem called “Clowns’ Houses”:
“Beneath the flat and paper sky
The sun, a demon’s eye,
Glowed through the air, that mask of glass;
All wand’ring sounds that pass
Seemed out of tune, as if the light
Were fiddle-strings pulled tight.”
The poem appears in an extended sequence of poems called Facade which was written in the 1920s and set to music by William Walton to general confusion and critical condemnation. Click here for info. Facade is a work of poetry that rejects literal interpretations, instead expressing its beauty, anger, humour, and insight through the abstract juxtaposition of images and the sounds and rhythms of the words themselves.
The themes negotiated in the poem – writing and memory; the influence of the past on the preset; the power of lust; the corruption of society – are all themes that find their way onto our album. The character ‘Erotis‘, the title of one of the tracks on our album, comes from another poem in Facade called ‘I do like to be beside the seaside’:
“Thetis wrote a treatise noting wheat is sliver like the
sea; the lovely cheat is sweet as foam; Erotis
notices that she
Will
Steal
The
Wheat-king’s luggage, like Babel
Before the League of Nations grew”
It doesn’t really matter what this means – just reading the poem aloud is interesting; the way the poem is physically crafted helps a reader negotiate and perform the words.
We want our album to be a bit like this: we don’t want everything to be clear on the first listen, but that people will be intrigued enough to come back for a second, third, fourth listen and keep finding new sounds, new lyrics, and new meanings that excite and entertain them.
Our next post over the weekend will be about the different sounds and genres we’ve been inspired by in writing the album.
Cheers.
Will
Recording Day 1: The Flat and Paper Sky
We are currently recording our new album, “The Flat and Paper Sky“. Working with producer Rob Roberts and studio engineer Simon Gilbert we are recording the 10 track album during the course of January. During this time we want to show photos and share parts of the process with you as it unfolds. Click “follow” if you’d like to be kept in the loop and you will be alerted when we post new blogs here.
DAY 1: Tracking Drums and percussion, played by Jon Ormston.
Nirvana – covered by James Morrison
It’s been a long time since last we blogged (blug?) and many things have happened. London has burned, England have become the number one test team in the world, and we’ve recorded most of our album which will be out in April. The three things are in no way linked and have little to do with this post but I thought I’d better comment on what’s been going on in our absence from the blogosphere.
Anyroad, as most people are probably aware, it’s more or less 20 years since Nirvana’s album Nevermind was released. It was always going to be a problematic anniversary because of the nature of the band – they never thought it was going to be a success, and indeed didn’t want it to be a success in ‘industry’ terms: number of sales, MTV plays, Billboard charts etc. Cue a £75 ‘deluxe’ re-release by EMI begetting a bunch of musos talking about Kurt spinning in his grave.
And then there’s the covers. Oh, the covers. James Morrison covered ‘Lithium’ in his recent BBC Live Lounge performance. Miley Cyrus covered ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ a number of times (evidently) in her current South American tour. As did Take That.
Let’s all have a brief pause to splutter, do goldfish impressions, and put our heads in our hands.
Okay. Now let’s think about WHY it makes us angry. I don’t think it’s what they’re actually doing to the music and has much more to do with the nature of Nirvana as a band and their status in the popular consciousness. ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ is a cracking tune and will get people going at any party or gig. It’s why Nevermind was a massive hit in the first place; and it’s also why Miley and the Take That boys play it at stadium gigs. It’s a stomping, singalong song with an easily mimicable guitar riff and a catchy, repetitive chorus. In other words, it’s a great pop song.
So, after contemplation, I think I can forgive Take That and Miley – they play the song pretty much as it was recorded and it still makes crowds go mental. Sure, they didn’t write it, but they didn’t write any of their other songs either. And Kurt Cobain probably wouldn’t have been happy seeing it, but when was he ever happy?
This isn’t actually a flippant point. Kurt Cobain has been dead for over 15 years. He was depressed and committed suicide, in part due to his anger and frustration at fans and the media misinterpreting or ignoring the political and social views expressed in the songs. To be angry at Miley Cyrus for singing a Nirvana song to a bunch of… well, a bunch of people who’d go to a Miley Cyrus concert, is to claim an ownership of Nirvana’s music which excludes others from being part of it. That would probably piss off KC more than anything else! Though I have no desire to put words in his long-silenced mouth.
Nirvana may not have wanted to be a commercially successful ‘mainstream’ band but they were (or are) precisely because they write songs that people relate to and it makes them feel better to listen to them – no category of people has a monopoly on feeling disaffected and pissed off or in demanding entertainment.
p.s. I forgot to write about the James Morrison cover. It is truly terrible and everyone who was a part of it, from the terrible backing singers, the tambourine player, the idiot at the BBC who commissioned it, and the warbling fuckwit himself, should feel ashamed. I defend his right to play a Nirvana cover, but very much reserve the right to think that said cover is musically hollow, self-serving, and utterly indefensible.
