Seven Years - Howard Eliott Payne - lyric

This is another one that that someone asked after this evening.  It is my pleasure to be able to help in this regard when I am able to do so and it also absolves me from the need to consider what the next post should be about!  Just at the moment however that is the least of my problems for there is just so much good music bubbling away and just awaiting a wider audience.

Bright Light Ballads (2009), from which this track comes, is very good indeed and very consistent throughout. Why it is not better known is just one of many mysteries but, on the other hand, sometimes I like the feeling that there are always 'secrets' out there just waiting for me to find and enjoy.

Seven Years

Seven long years as wild as the wind
We cradled the dawn to whatever end
And sometimes when I feel broken and blue
It brings me such peace to think about you.

I was there at the start when you first came in
An angel of soul, a harbour of sin
A moment of doubt not knowing what is true
It brings me such peace to think about you.

I left in the spring with a gun in each hand
We kissed on the tracks and parted as friends
And seven long years beneath a cold prison moon
It brings me such peace to think about you.
  
Yeah, it brings me such peace to think about you.
Yeah, it brings me such peace to think about you.

Whatever happened to Candie Payne?

There is a book I saw a couple of years ago, amongst those aimed at the market for Christmas gifts, with the title 'The Rough Guide to the Best Music You've Never Heard' Nigel Williamson (2008).  I flicked through it in the shop and the only album that I can remember from it was one I already had - indeed it was, and remains, one of my favourite albums of 2007.  It is this...

I Wish I Could Have Loved You More - Candie Payne (2007)

  

I have mentioned it before, including the particular part it played in the events of late summer 2007 in my little world, but I don't like it just for that reason.  I had owned it for a week or two before that and it was on almost continuous rotation in that time; on vinyl when at home and on CD when travelling.  I too cannot understand why it was not better known.

After this she spent much of 2008 touring with Mark Ronson on his 'Version' tour and then for a while the trail, at least as far as I was concerned, went cold.  Towards the summer of 2010 I got the LP out again and started to listen to it quite frequently and it prompted me to look in to the issue in more detail.  That resulted in me finding out about and purchasing the following album.
  

Bright Light Ballads - Howard Eliott Payne (2009)
  

To add that it was produced by Ethan Johns (think Laura Marling, Sir Tom Jones and others in 2010 alone) says a great deal, I think.  She sings backing and harmony vocals on many of the ten tracks.

To say that Ms. Payne comes from a musical family is an understatement.  While the alt-country of 'Bright Light Ballads' bears little, if any, resemblance, one of her brothers and the above-mentioned Howard Payne, was a member of Liverpool band The Stand.  Her other brother, Sean, was the drummer in very successful Liverpool band The Zutons.  Both of these bands have now called it a day.

Come the end of 2010 it became clear that at least one new act was rising from the ashes of these various projects - one called The Big House.
  

  

Her principal partner in crime in this new band is Paul Molloy, also formerly of The Zutons. There are two sides to this: one is that there is certainly no lack of talent and the other is that I doubt very much that it sounds much like any of the aforementioned projects.
  

The Big House is very much one of the acts that I would like to hear live in 2011. 

Why is it that... ?

I can't believe that it is only me that seems to find it that, when I can find a load of new or forthcoming albums that I really want, it then suddenly becomes far easier to find a load more much older ones, often seemingly ones quite unrelated to the desired new releases and each other, that I had either not heard of or had simply chosen to disregard before?
I know that it is not a one-off event because it has happened several times in the last few years. Typically in the late summer and early autumn, when the new releases are a mixture of those by acts I already know well and those by altogether new ones, the pattern is familiar but also quite inexplicable.
It is not a problem because it works out well and the albums that I discover as a result of this phenomenon tend to remain amongst my favourites, even if atypical in overall terms. They probably therefore have a disproportionate - but to me indefinable - influence on the music I might consider in the following six months or so. This apparently annoying contradiction is actually the very best thing about the situation - it is because I can't explain, and not for want of trying, what it means and why I suddenly like this or that music that it is actually so important! For much of last September I only really liked one album and that was I Wish I Could Have Loved You More - Candie Payne. Any reasonable conclusion would be that, at the very least, I am now rather bored of it - but I'm not and neither does it have the negative connotation that might be expected! It is not yet understood why, but music and the human brain are somehow inextricably linked and to understand either would certainly be a huge step on the way to understanding the other.
As I'm unable to do that here are a few albums that, given this tendency, I've recently acquired...

Flying Away - Smoke City (1999)

Often classed as trip-hop, and there certainly is that in it, but it has suffered not a bit for the fact that is now almost a decade old, nor does it bear much resemblance to the original, and often rather exquisitly downbeat, Bristol trip-hop vision. If dance music really is going to make a mark in 2010, then this would probably be a very good place to start. Digital bleeps, analogue electronica, Brazilian influences, disco-pop sensibility and fantastic vocals by Nina Miranda (sometimes sung in French) and... for goodness sake, acoustic guitar. It all seems perfectly 2009 to me.
That makes more sense than it seems, the acoustic guitar providing a link with another influence that has become prominent in the last couple of years. The rise and rise of folk, folk-related and folk-influenced music continues unabated and, while it is easy to find a dozen and more acts of this kind that have featured in this blog in the last nine months, this is an older album that I've finally got around to buying.

Blues For A Honey - Barefoot Contessa (1998)

Not cheerful perhaps, but certainly acoustic and modern - nu-folk almost a decade ahead of its time - and this album really should be better known. However an easier place to start is perhaps the 2006 album Routines. The singer is Helene Dineen (vocals, lyrics) who did the same in Barefoot Contessa, which also included Graham Gargiulo (guitars, keyboards) and when it comes to the crunch few songs can hold a candle to 'Superanything'


She limped to the door
She was kicked into touch
She would've run out yesterday
But it all had got too much
There are worse things in the world
Couldn'a happened to a nicer girl
I felt sorry but I had
Other things on my mind - too bad!

There's a light-hearted feel
To things these days
It's superanything

There's a light-hearted feel
To things these days -
Will it carry mine away?
And all those achy-fakey
Steel-hearted bitch-tunes.
All in the spirit
Of everyone having their say.
I called the bad-taste brigade
I had them all arraigned.
I said it so it must be true
I am here to bring
Wisdom and courage to you
Ha!

There's a light-hearted feel
To things these days
Oh superanything.

Trust to your family to fit you up
Watched the way mine fucked things up
Cut myself on some grit from the pan
Opened me up just enough...
To let in another bad man.

There's a light-hearted feel
To things these days
Oh superany... thing.

To finish this particular trio here is another, from 2001, that perhaps serves as some kind of link between the forgoing, between the Cocteau Twins' Robin Guthrie and acts such as Stephanie Dosen and Fleet Foxes now signed to Bella Union Records in the UK.

Roulette - Violet Indiana (2001)

I Wish I Could Have Loved You More - lyrics

To whoever asked just now, here are the lyrics...

I Wish I Could have Loved You More.
I wish I could have loved you more.
I wish I could have loved you more.
(repeat)

And ever since that day
I had to say goodbye
How I've longed to change my mind
But I know it won't be right
And in so many ways
You were made to be my man
Why I had to make you cry
I hope you understand.

I wish I could have loved you more.
I wish I could have loved you more.
(repeat)

And ever since that day
I had to say goodbye
How I've longed to change my mind
But I know it won't be right
And ever since that day
I had to say goodbye.

I wish I could have loved you more.
I wish I could have loved you more.
(repeat)



Another of my favorites on the album is this song, but it is a hard choice to make...

All I Need To Hear
That you'd rather be with me Is all I need to hear
Don't deny it please
Don't deny it please
Cause it's all I need to hear.

Just one little white lie
Just one little white lie
Is all I need from you
What harm can it do?

Give me just this lie
So I can keep my pride
If it's just between the two of us
It's all I need to hear.

Just one little white lie
Just one little white lie
Is all I need from you
What harm can it do?

I'll happily post the lyrics to the other tracks on the album if anyone wants them. Love lyrics - love life.

More bands to see live.

My musings this afternoon, concerning those bands I might like to hear at a festival, have continued. In fact the excitement of not yet knowing which artists will be playing is probably one of the most appealing aspects.
Continuing the hi-energy theme, like The Go!Team, another band with Brighton connections would be right up there.

'Fashionista Super Dance Troupe' (Fantastic Plastic, 2004) was the first LP by shouty-punk quintet Help She Can't Swim. They returned, but as a four-piece, after a run of singles and EPs with their second album 'The Death Of Nightlife' (Fantastic Plastic, 2007). While they have never had mainstream success this is infectious music that could only benefit from being performed and heard live. Both albums are still readily available on CD and 'The Death Of Nightlife' can still be found on vinyl too. 'Fashionista Super Dance Troupe' exists on vinyl but only to the extent of three-hundred copies all of which were pressed on turquoise vinyl.

Some more Latitude 2008 acts have become known, amongst them M.I.A., The Breeders and Mars Volta. What fascinates me most now is who will be appearing on the smaller stages. I believe that Huw Stephens will once again curate the Lake Stage, which last year was a treasure trove of new and often less well known acts. Thinking of such things has reminded me that one of those artists previously unknown to me that I saw at Latitude 2007 was Candie Payne and, while the all-conquering Mark Ronson has recently been in the news for projects he is not involved in (Lily Allen's second album and the 'Quantum of Solace' Bond Theme' with Amy Winehouse are but two that come to mind), he is most definitely working on the follow up to 'I Wish I Could Have Loved You More' (Deltasonic, 2007), which was Candie Payne's début album and remains one of my favourite albums of 2007 and quite rightly so I believe.

I Wish I Could Have Loved You More...

The album that I've listened to most in the last six weeks, and the one which I continue to do so without fail, is this one.

This is actually the cover of the single I Wish I Could Have Loved You More, which is also available on 7" vinyl, but the album has the same title and the cover illustration is in a very similar vein. This is the début album by Candie Payne and the UK indie label 'Deltasonic' has also had the great sense to release the album on vinyl with an illustrated inner sleeve.
What is more is that it is also frighteningly good, if rather different to that which might usually make the charts, and when she needs backing vocalists she calls on her brothers, including Sean who is the drummer with the Zutons, and also Abi Harding who is the saxophonist with the same. All are actually very good backing vocalists but neither this album or their contributions to it sound remotely like the Zutons own works.

The opening track, I Wish I Could Have Loved You More, may sound rather like a James Bond theme tune that is just slightly too realistic and melancholy to be real and so, and therefore also in many other ways, this is the track that goes far towards defining the whole theme from the start. If an album can be wistful and sometimes nostalgic, but also both positive and realistic at the same time, then listening to the first side will probably seem too good to be true. The second side might actually, however, turn out to be the better one and that really is an achievement.
I have found three singles, all taken from the album, that are available on 7" vinyl; these are 'I wish I could have loved you more', 'Take me' and 'All I need to hear', which are tracks 1,3 and 5 respectively on the first side of the 12" LP.
For the dates of live performances see here.