This is Timon, my 14 year old nephew who made the stop motion animation for 'Believe it all for you' using his mum's Oppo android phone, a lead pencil, an eraser, some sand, and some paper.
It's a song I wrote withBoo Hewerdine and I recorded it during the 'Fragile as humans' recording sessions with producer, Luke Potashnick at The Wool Hall in Beckington, UK.
You can hear the summer rain in the background of this track.
'Fragile as humans' just turned one.
Hope you enjoy the song, the animation, the extended edition of the album with the two additional tracks.
Over zoom giving online songwriting a go for the first time, Boo Hewerdine told me about a cult called ‘John Frum’ who live on the Melanesian island of Tanna. Multiple theories exist about how the cult came to be, but one is that a man called John (from America) landed a plane on the island and the Indigenous people believed he was a god. The locals made symbolic planes of straw and built runways to welcome and worship their deity.
At the same time, I was reading a book by Jonathan Haidt called ‘The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Religion and Politics’. He writes… “Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.”
It was also around this time, that a beautiful friend of mine told me he had “not got much time left living on this earth”. He grew up in the church and was just now coming back to it as he reckoned with death.
So, I was thinking about religion, spirituality, beliefs – and as with many songs on ‘Fragile as Humans’, I was thinking about compassion.
At The Wool Hall studio, just as we were about to record the song, it started to rain; a heavy summer rain. We threw open the studio doors and put up a mic. The bass line from Tim Harries and the electric guitar through a Leslie amp from Luke brought a playfulness to the recording, a bit of light which was just right.
The lovely and wondrous force of nature that is Emily Barker is back in the UK
She celebrates with a new single left off the last fine fine album ( my album of the year 2024)
called ‘Fragile As Humans’ that explores the darker, deeper, sadder side of life in a way that it is at once emotionally intelligent (not all of us are you know!?) and depth work worthy of our exploration and contemplation in my humble opinion. She is a wonderment! Go see her!
Hello
I have a new song out today.
I recordedBright Ideaduring the Fragile as Humans sessions recorded at The Wool Hall in Beckington with producer, Luke Potashnick - he's who's doing the backing vocals on the track.
If you watch the video, you'll see the beautiful old building that is the studio in the background.
This quote by Virginia Woolf: “I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual” is one I returned to repeatedly when writing the songs for my album Fragile as Humans. ‘Bright Idea’ speaks to it most directly.
Sometimes our idea of what we’d like the future to look like is vivid. We have a narrative we tell ourselves and we do all we can to usher life in that particular direction. But, as you know, life rarely obeys our vision for it and when things don’t go according to plan, it can feel like a loss despite it only ever having existed as an idea. That's what this song is about. I'm sure you can relate.
I started writing this on a train from London to Dumfries, facing backwards, glancing up from the screen to see green fields, leafless trees, the sun just about managing to break through the clouds.
I played the first show of my tour in Dumfries, then a second in Dublin. Now I’m tucked up on my hotel bedroom about to watch episode 6 (series 1) of Ted Lasso having just played a show in Belfast to a very lovely crowd. Storm Éowyn is about to hit and I’ve got a day off tomorrow before I head to meet the band in Bristol.
I can’t wait to see them and to share our show with you soon.
Like Monday today’s is a day off for our hurtling touring shopper songstress (sic?!) and that’s fair enough but she won’t sit still for long . . . . . . . . .:she says:
"I have been LOVING these record store shows! It feels so special to commune with you all, to hear how the songs are landing with you, to sing together the ooos and ahhhs of 'Wild to be sharing...', to hold the record in my hands and sign it for you. Thank you. There's a handful left in this hemisphere and they are...
Emily at TRUCK on launch day of Fragile As Humans - Oxford 3rd May 2024
Well last night was a highpoint of the year for me and finally got to see Emily Barker at my nearest record Store (TRUCK) and it was simply wonderful. Emily has the most staggering vocal range from the quiet intimacies of the first song to the strength of later vocalising, her voice soars and staggers, tantalises and hovers on the highest strongest notes, her voice is perhaps her greatest gift possessed of crystal clear strength and clarity like a mountain stream (!) seriously she has the most extraordinary range and power to her voice yet you dismiss the quiet voice at your peril for its emotional depth and strength will knock you for six if not careful! (the listening party I am not ashamed to admit reduced me to tears twice!) Her guitar playing fascinates too and her taking a moment to adjust to open tuning is brave mid-set it seemed to me! But it is her writing that so fascinates us all I think, her poetic depth and increasingly expressive voice is given to exploring loss, loneliness and grief here but it is not once maudlin or melancholic. Truly an emotional intelligence exploring the depths of its feeling
ASIDE : Why a record ‘store’? I have to say I don’t really get it. This playing in record shop windows. Her fifth appearance here we think?! On the record launch day of her new album FRAGILE AS HUMANS she can appear in a record shop and to a ‘crowd’ of about 20 including yours truly and it occurs to me later this is open to the public so anyone wondering past can just come in and a couple did. Whilst queuing to get in at 5.30 a couple asked if they could get a coffee (Truck is known for its side game of coffee bar a later edition to a little record shop in the heart of Oxford’s multicultural heartland of the Cowley Road) Now I had bought the vinyl deluxe in advance and was waiting patiently to get my hands upon it and listen to her sing finally and then to have it signed I hoped! I assumed this was true of everyone there but it was just open to all so nobody actually pays to see her!? I counted 17 of us at the outset and increased to twenty plus from people passing by (sic) How do such things make the artist money!? I really don’t get it. Anymore. I know I am now very old but it troubles me. Not everyone there had even listened to the album live chat launch party via Bandcamp!
Anyway I digress . . . . .
Emily Barker
At Truck OXFORD (5th appearance there?!)
20+ people!
Song list: as Emily points out this is the first time she has played any of these new tracks unaccompanied! From memory these included :
With Small We Start
Wild To Be Sharing This Moment
Call it a Day
Feathered Thing
Loneliness
Fragile as Humans
which song about first love, then her husband (Lukas0 and her beloved Dad x
Close: requests!
Nostalgia (of course perfect)
Blackbird
Maybe ten songs in an hour plus a signing and meet n greet
She started with the quietist of songs from her new album
Opening song - With Small We Start
then
Wild To Be Sharing This Moment . . . . . . (it was!)
This next as Emily explained inspired by this:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
from Emily Dickinson
Emily is a published poet herself now and I await her latest volume which looks really good too! From Broken Sleep Books : Where The Black Swans Swim
then the title track as she explained about three men in her life her childhood sweetheart, her husband (the wonderful Lukas Drinkwater) and her beloved Dad x
and of course finally this is where I came in watching dear Ken Branagh as WallanderNostalgia (unaccompanied) it was later adapted and re-recorded by Emily with composer Marin Phipps for use as the theme to BBC TV crime drama what’s that 14 years ago!?
I have everything now I think! and what with finally seeing her sing live for us, another bucket list ticked off the list . . . . . . . . now I just need to see her with a backing band in concert!
Nostalgia...
Tram wires cross Melbourne skies Cut my red heart in two My knuckles bleed down Johnston street On a door that shouldn’t be in front of me
Twelve thousand miles away from your smile I’m twelve thousand miles away from me Standing on the corner of Brunswick Got the rain coming down and mascara on my cheek
Oh whisper me words in the shape of a bay Shelter my love from the wind and the rain
Crow fly be my alibi And return this fable on your wing Take it far away to where gypsies play Beneath metal stars by the bridge
Oh write me a beacon so I know the way Guide my love through night and through day
Only the sunset knows my blind desire for the fleeting Only the moon understands the beauty of love When held by a hand like the aura of nostalgia
credits
released January 2, 2010
But she closed with
BLACKBIRD from her first album Photos. Fires. Fables and here a live version with beloved husband producer, bass player, guitarist, singer, songwriter and all round renaissance man, Lukas Drinkwater!
I’ll leave it there but this was truly an extraordinary experience and I should balance it out with a ‘proper’ concert in the venues she is playing later next year somewhere like my favourite live haunt Union Chapel or hopefully somewhere nearer home.
and she is also playing support to her old friend King Creosote
I have to add this did me in rather (i am sadly not as young as I was and no longer in my prime falling prey to a range of VERY boring conditions that will doubtless see me off!) and as I realise my health is not what it was, to stand for an hour despite kind souls in the crowd offering me a seat (sic!) I found myself jigging along and even singing along ( I kid you not! Emily taught us a chorus to join in with!?!) I would have liked to have stayed to chat more if it was possible and didn’t really want to leave but a motorbike ride home in the rain some 8 miles was enough and I collapsed in a happy heap when I got home.
Glorious stuff and she was so kind and gracious and lovely to chat with however briefly! . . . . . . .
New Album: yes and it is going to be amongst her very best, I would say top three (Dear River, Dark Murmuration of Words, and Sweet Kinda Blue) I had wanted to tell her that I listen to pretty much everything on a haphazard rotation basis but in terms of playlists found myself returning always to Dear River but then this was overtaken recently by Room 822 which she and Lukas recorded during lockdown waiting a fortnight’s clearance of the Covid quarantine in a hotel when they first got ‘home’ to Oz. Now I think there is a new contender . . . . . . .
