Friday 25 May 2012

Charcoal - Speechless (undated)








This one is a real curiosity. One day, while Kirsty was off on a NZ tour with Alastair Galbraith and Roy Montgomery, I plugged my guitar straight into her cassette 4-track recorder and pretty much wrote a song per day for the next 2 weeks.

These songs, informed by nostalgia, longing and unutterable sadness, have been festering away in my subconscious for years. Sometimes I can’t even believe that I wrote them. ‘Amongst The Soil’, for example, still kills me with its wistful melody and wonky beats, while the title track is a completely unguarded love song, which is really universal.

The influence of NZ artists like Galbraith, Robert Scott, Peter Jefferies and Australia’s own Chris Smith is pretty obvious on these songs. I hope they don’t come across as too derivative though. This is the only album I’ve ever created on which I played every single note. For this reason alone, Speechless occupies a special place in my heart.

1.   Charcoal
2.   Speechless #1
3.   I'll Set Fire
4.   Speechless #2
5.   On The Moon
6.   Speechless #3
7.   Ghosts
8.   Safe
9.   Turncoat
10. Thousandfold
11. Shortwave
12. Speechless #4
13. Amongst The Soil

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