Oh, The Sky!

This song was inspired by a visit to my grandmother, who lives in a retirement home in South Africa. She has a painting in her room of Jesus walking down a tree-lined lane. Once when I was with her, she told me that Jesus sometimes speaks to her from the painting. It is very heavy, thinking about my gran eking out an existence in that room, looking out of the window, just waiting to die. In the song, the Saint has come to fetch her, to take her to the next realm, and tells her: "Everything you’ve had the privilege to hold, lay on the side of the road."

Tie Me To The Ground

This song was born out of a feeling of pressure of having to choose the right course for my life, and in some sense, the concurrent fear that I don’t have any choices at all. When I was younger, I had the sense that I had so much time, more than enough to do all the things I wanted to do, and be all the versions of myself that I could dream up. This song confronts the reality that the every decision I make will form the future, and that although I can always change direction, I can still only go down one path - I cannot take them all.

So Petty, So Pathetic

This song was written in a short, angry burst after an experience on the underground. There was a homeless man sitting across from me, looking pretty worse for wear. The ticket controllers came and checked his, and then proceeded to kick him off the train because the ticket had expired 10 minutes earlier. I generally tend to get upset rather than angry - it doesn’t take much to elicit tears from me. But for some reason this small interaction completely enraged me. And what made me even more angry was my own inability to react quickly enough, to intervene.

Mean Well

This song is about anxiety, about being so overtaken with it that even the smallest every-day tasks seem impossible. It’s a looming sense of doom that overtakes everything, that blurs my vision like a shroud, robbing me of self-confidence and making me pessimistic about everything. When I feel like this it takes a lot even to leave my apartment.

Wake Him

This song is about a couple in bed at night after a fight. The woman lies awake, unable to sleep, fuming, despairing that their relationship is on the brink of falling apart. And the man snores contentedly, blissfully unaware of the conflict raging right beside him. The horn arrangements were done by James Riotto and I think the trombone perfectly captures the drama of the battle.

Placate Her

This song is about looking at myself in the mirror, and the juxtaposition of self-love - the sheer time and energy I spend obsessing about myself - and the self-hatred I feel about the person I see reflected there. I think a lot of woman can identify with this feeling. Perhaps men too, though I would argue to a much lesser extent. It is incredibly frustrating, because I really do believe that my worth is not wrapped up in how I look, but yet I still feel so acutely that it is. I cannot get my beliefs to override an overwhelming need to be beautiful. The person I need to placate is myself, the woman in the mirror who needs me to be more talented, more principled, more interesting, smarter, funnier, more productive, and above all, more beautiful.

If Only Is

The story I tell in this song is about two people trying to flee something, on foot, by boat. They cannot pause too long anywhere for fear of being caught. The thing they are trying to escape is the forward march of time, and of course their attempt is futile. They are trying to elude time, to be free of it’s rule over their lives, but in running from it, and being chased by it, they succumb to exactly that which they are trying to escape.

I Know You Can Hear It

This song just kind of popped out one day, one of those songs where I don’t really know where on earth it came from. It alludes to the story of Salome demanding John The Baptist’s head. I take on the character of a mad king, drunk on power, who is about to execute a prophetess, and his wife doesn’t want him to do it. But he tells her "Why are you crying? We’re all busy dying," and urges her to enjoy their supremacy.

Nothing Melodious

This again, is a song that felt like it arrived unbidden. The words fell out of my mouth, telling me things about myself even I didn’t know. It is about discord in a relationship, a state where two people don’t properly align, where the harmony is missing, where things just don’t quite click. I imagine the bridge to be like the chorus of an opera - a group of people commentating on the events they observe. This chorus embodies my fear of judgement from the outside world.

Then, Not Now

This song is about how I have changed since I moved North almost seven years ago. It juxtaposes the innocence and openness of youth with cynicism (or perhaps, to be more fair, realism.) The former is represented by warmth and light, and the latter by darkness and cold. The warmth of course also represents South Africa, the land of my birth, and the cold represents Germany. The juxtaposition is also between a time of earnest belief and the time post-faith. My favourite part of this song is the machine noise that happens in the bridge. While we were preparing to record a synth bass it just started freaking out completely and we rushed quickly to record it. A delicious, lucky accident.

The Run

I wrote this song while out on a run, hence the title. It was quite late and was already getting dark. I made it into the Templehofer Feld (a park near my house that used to be an airport) just before they closed the gates, and at first I was a bit nervous. It’s a huge, open space, and it was dark and deserted. I decided to go for it, and as I was making the home stretch down the 2km long runway, there was this amazing lightning and the sky was just incredibly beautiful. I was overcome with a feeling of joy and elation and I typed the words of "The Run" into my phone as I jogged. It reminded me how important it is to put yourself in the way of out-of-the-ordinary experiences, regardless how small.