Recorded at Grandma's Place & Roscoe Wilson's The Rancho

"I guess destiny just
didn't get the memo..."

Notes:

The Lights

The Lights has been kicked around for a long time. I think I first recorded (& sorta released) it with Matthew Dickson as the Sweet Janes on our SCRAPS EP, which did what it said on the tin. It’s a song I’ve played live a good number of times, when I still did that thing. It nearly got me in trouble at a show with a former partner for misplacing the blame. I’m still sorry about that. The song is a mix of memories and dreams and emotions. As ever, nothing is true but most of it sort of is. I’ve no cigarette burns but I have, in that metaphorical Hold Steady way, old names I’d perhaps rather forget, scratched into my skin. I have always loved this song. I will always play it. I will always get sad. I remember finding that line for the chorus, “the lights, how they used to fall down upon the roads where we used to walk home” and it hit me and I could sing it pretty alright and so I did and so there we have it. It took around 10 years ‘til I finally handed it over to Roscoe and he gave that song a home. His work on that one is beyond my imaginings and I forever owe him wine.

Jesse & Bobby

You can hear a clock tick because I recorded the guitar and vocal on an app on my phone which, I guess, was fucked up. Or my phone was. Or possibly both. Either way, I recorded a bunch of songs with that damn ticking and, up ‘til way too late, thought it was an actual clock in the kitchen of my Granny’s old flat where I was living (& recording) at the time. It seemed like a nice atmospheric until I realised it was a compromised digital recording tool. The song though was one written pretty quick. I was stealing, possibly borrowing a character portrait from my brother, or at least my interpretation of a character of his. He has many beautiful people in his songs but one stuck with me, and she sneaks into my brain now and then. I won’t name the song of his but it’s a real old one and we used to play it often when we were playing as Low Winter Sun. I loved that girl and she kindly just happened to pull up at the curb here and let me hang out with her for a minute.

In the end it’s a song about losing and being lost and wanting and dreaming. Star crossed lovers, I think is what they call them. White picket fences show up regularly in my songs, and I’ll never know why. I guess I feel they portray the ideal perfectly. Very Lynchian things, white picket fences. A lot of hope up top and a lot of loss, longing and rot going on below. That’s perhaps too dark for what is actually, I think, one of my sweetest, most precise songs.