Music and Lyrics

Last Music and Lyrics post

2015-08-13T10:59:00.005+00:00

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Honest Honne

2015-05-18T12:03:00.002+00:00

Our son went to a Honne gig in London last week. He has been mates with the band members - Andy and James - since university days and played me a few tracks beforehand.

Their music is probably best described as futuristic or electro-synth but, for me, it reminds me somehow of classic soul tracks from my own youth.

'Honne' is apparently a Japanese word meaning 'true feelings or desire' as opposed to its living antithesis - 'tatemae' which is much more about our public behaviour and, I guess, the masks we wear or games of pretend we play to in order to win favour for personas that may be very far from being real.

Honne's music explores the distance - or, in my case for many years, the gulf - between these two states.

They have produced two EPs to date - "Warm on a Cold Night" and "Coastal Love" - and also released a single: "All in the Value." These are all available on iTunes and other digital platforms.

I absolutely love the "Coastal Love" track and the soul-searching that goes along with it.

It perhaps resonates all the more for me in that I can look back now from the safety of dry land to the swirling depths of despair that seemed so real at the time.

Bob Marley and I: waiting in vain

2015-02-06T13:52:00.001+00:00

Bob Marley would have been seventy years old today had he lived.

I have to say that I was never a huge fan of Bob Marley and the Wailers. 'Jamming' and 'No woman, no cry' were played constantly in the sixth form common room which often made me want to wail for all the wrong reasons.

Then, in 1977, while I was loving the Pistols and the Clash, a track called 'Waiting in Vain' came out. Released on the Exodus album I was too full of anger to appreciate its simple beauty.

A year later I went off to college and fell absolutely head over heels for a girl but, as usual, this never looked like being reciprocated:

"Tears in my eyes burn - tears in my eyes burn
While I'm waiting - while I'm waiting for my turn..."

I did finally get my turn but, apart from taking in a Woody Allen film at the Hyde Park cinema in Leeds, I promptly blew it.

All of that waiting was ultimately in vain but somehow less painful then than the teenage angst of the hoping and waiting itself had been.

'Waiting in Vain' was part of the backing soundtrack of my life at that time and I am instantly transported back to that time and that place and that person whenever I hear it.

As I left Leeds, so Bob left us all; but his legacy will always be there for many of us, as an unforgettable part of our personal histories.

Endless River from Pink Floyd, with only occasional waterfalls

2014-11-13T16:11:00.000+00:00

'The Endless River' - the new double album by Pink Floyd is the most pre-ordered item in amazon history and the BBC expects it to go to the top of the album charts, a place Pink Floyd haven't occupied for almost 20 years.

I was one of those who pre-ordered the CD and also possess the first Pink Floyd album - 'A Piper at the Gates of Dawn' - from 1967. On vinyl, I still play it often, as I do other Pink Floyd albums on vinyl, CD or iTunes.

Times have changed (you were right, Bob!) in the 47 years that have come between us and we have so much more choice now over almost everything apart from the actual date and time when we will die (unless we force it to be here and now). I think it is great, therefore, that Rick Wright has been given this musical eulogy in the same way as Syd Barrett was with 'Wish You Were Here' in 1975.

I was never sure whether I loved that album or 'Dark Side of the Moon' more and would probably still go for the Dark Side. I played both endlessly when my first love - Elizabeth - died at the age of just 24. It was a very, very dark period for me and, yes, I still wish she was here even though it is thirty years ago tomorrow since she died.

'The Endless River' finds me in a far happier place and, if I'm honest, I'm not sure if that is a good thing when trying to really lose yourself in Pink Floyd's music. At first I found it a pretty indulgent set of out-takes - especially on the first side which felt like fragments of 'Wish You Were Here' being translated to form a new meaning of 'Wish We Were Still There.'

Things really picked up on Side Two and I loved the sax in 'Anisina.' Side Three is reminiscent of 'The Wall' but it is here that Rick Wright's keyboards really resonate and the music is beautiful. I liked Side Four best, enjoying every track from 'Calling' through to 'Louder Than Words.' The latter is the only track with lyrics and, though I knew that this album was to be about the man and the great music he contributed to so hugely, there is no doubt in my mind that it will remain a lovely piece of occasional music that I will play, but nothing like as often as the others where I truly am spoken to and arrested by the fusion of music and lyrics.

This album is not louder without words but neither is it just the extra bits that I worried it might be. I think it may well be a suitable epitaph to Rick but not to Pink Floyd. If this is to be their last album, I suppose I still think that is a shame but, like it or not, and like him or not, they are just not the same without Roger Waters and the depth of meaning he brought to so many majestic rivers which ebbed and flowed. Rick Wright was such a key part of all of that but sometimes you just want to approach the rapids, to feel the spray of danger on your face and wonder if the waterfall really does spell the end.

Thank You, Led Zeppelin

2014-08-29T09:24:00.000+00:00

Fresh from reading that 'Whole Lotta Love' had been voted as having the best guitar riff of all time by a panel of BBC Radio 2 and 6 Music DJs, critics and record producers, I decided to play Led Zeppelin 2 again - and not before time!

I bought the album on vinyl originally and then the CD version later. Last night I listened to it on my iPod!

I always loved that opening track and also 'Ramble On' but, for me, Robert Plant's 'Thank You' is still as moving as it was when I first heard it more than forty years ago:

"If the sun refused to shine
I would still be loving you
When mountains crumble to the sea
There will still be you and me"

and, later:

"Happiness, no more to be sad
Happiness, I'm glad"

The album was the first Led Zep album to top the album charts in both UK and US (in 1970) and is a wonderful collection of blues and rock. I still love it and though technology has made it available in so many new platforms now, the same words resonate with me.

Homeward Bound

2014-08-24T08:51:00.000+00:00

Our children have effectively 'left home' now though they often take long journeys to get back here from college and university and various other places around the UK.

Our eldest son is a professional musician and I often think of him when hearing the words to one of my very favourite songs: 'Homeward Bound' by Simon & Garfunkel.

"I'm sittin' in the railway station

got a ticket for my destination
hm ...
On a tour of one-night stands my suitcase
and guitar in hand
and every stop is neatly planned
for a poet and one-man band."

I used to sing these words to myself as I made the much anticipated journey home as a lonely student and still do whenever we are away, now as a happily married husband and father.

"all my words come back to me
in shades of mediocrity
like emptiness in harmony
I need someone to comfort me."

They are shades of the past, not the present or the future. So as Paul Simon was longing to return to his girlfriend of the time - Kathy Chitty - so I have someone to comfort me now and, wherever she is, so that is where home is.

The 'Greatest Hits' album was released in 1972, two years after Simon & Garfunkel disbanded. Like 'Homeward Bound' in the singles it made number five in the U.S. album charts but is not only their best-selling album there, but also the best-selling album by a duo in American music history.

Closer to the eternal Joy Division

2014-01-31T15:57:00.001+00:00

I went through a very 'blue' phase in my early 'twenties. There are a lot of photographs from my time working at Butlins in Skegness in the summer of 1980, in a much-studied Ian Curtis pose. This was before he died and before I had any real reason to think that I was depressed.

I was dumped by post during my time there and had another bad relationship when in my final year back at Leeds University, both of which made me undeniably sad.

Joy Division's 'The Eternal' from the Closer album was always on my record deck and vivid scenes of a funeral parade illustrated the depths of despair I thought I had reached (and Ian had):

Stood by the gate at the foot of the garden
Watching them pass like clouds in the sky

saw me standing by the window for hours on end, staring out at the dreary Headingley skyline, and one of my all-time favourite lines:

Cry like a child, though these years make me older

has resonated ever since and especially after I lost somebody really close three years later. Then:

No words could explain, no actions determine
Just watching the trees and the leaves as they fall

were so very apt as I pictured a real funeral parade over and over again.

I have this album on both vinyl and CD but the vinyl version really does do justice to the mournful, inevitable beat of life now lost.

I have always thought of the album title as 'Clozer' and pronounced it this way. A door closed but, unlike with Ian Curtis, I just had to wait a couple of years for another to open.

As I grow older, I move closer to the eternal and this track could be a soundtrack to that journey's inevitable end.

All of my life

2014-01-08T12:46:00.000+00:00

I was listening to a playlist on my iPad last night as I travelled home by train from London and - as per January commutes - thinking of forthcoming holidays!

'All of my life' by Diana Ross has always been one of my favourite songs - not only of hers but in general:

"All of your life to share
Is all I'm asking
All of the minutes and the years
All of your happiness
And sometimes all your tears"

Still sounds as good to me now as when I first heard it. Also:

"All of my life to share
Is all I give you
All of the flowers in the field
We'll walk together through the sunsets and the years"

is truly what I was thinking on our wedding day.

I first listened to this song properly when I was working a summer holiday contract in Butlins in Skegness in 1980. It meant a huge amount to me then as, surrounded by other students, I wondered when or if I would ever meet someone so special that they could possibly be worthy of these beautiful words.

Well, the holiday I was thinking about is coming up soon to celebrate a 25th wedding anniversary to the most special person that I am blessed to be able to walk alongside, I hope for all of my life.

Morningtown Ride into evening

2013-10-14T16:34:00.000+00:00

I was reading about Judith Durham over the weekend. She became lead singer with the Seekers in 1963 and this year was to see the start of their 50th anniversary tour. Unfortunately Judith had to cancel in May after she suffered a brain haemorrhage. It seems that Judith, now 70, is preparing to tour again.

The Seekers were my Dad's favourite group or, rather, the only 'pop' group he would actually tolerate. I'm not sure he ever realised that they were from Australia. He can remember very little these days but I can recall him crying at their televised farewell concert especially when they played the literal and metaphorical finale that was 'The Carnival is Over.'

The Seekers provided part of the 'Sixties soundtrack to my young ears. My sister, at four years older, had one of those pink record player cases where the lid opened up to form the speaker. She played The Seekers (funnily enough my parents had brought her one of their records for Christmas) over and over again. My favourite was always Morningtown Ride:

"... Train whistle blowing makes a sleepy noise
Underneath their blankets go all the girls and boys

Rocking rolling riding out along the bay
All bound for Morningtown many miles away..."

The truth is that I was just a little boy then and loved trains so this song struck a particular chord with me and still does. It was somehow magical and promised the surety of a safe morning destination once the horrors of night (I was terrified of the dark) were over.

I used to sing(!) this to comfort our own children at bedtime when they were tiny and relived my own memories all over again then. I wish Dad could.

Lumerians illuminate

2013-09-25T14:29:00.000+00:00

I was listening to a recent monthly Uncut collection when a song belted out of the speakers.

It was 'Dogon Genesis' by The Lumerians. At first I thought it was some kind of Joy Division-inspired group but, as I listened, it began to sound more like a late 'Sixties band with an early Pink Floyd psychedelic feel.

Apparently, they were formed in San Francisco in 2006 and the 'mindbender' sound is something they've strived to create. I've only just heard of them - such is the value of magazine subscriptions such as Uncut!

The track is from The High Frontier album which has only been out for a few months here in the UK. I instantly went on to Spotify to listen to a few other tracks and what an album!

Rolling Stones finish the jigsaw puzzle at Glastonbury

2013-06-26T14:43:00.000+00:00

Our son is at Glastonbury for the first time this weekend and so are the Rolling Stones.

As he was growing up we listened to a wide variety of music together and that included a lot of Rolling Stones' albums. Beggars Banquet was the band's seventh studio album and released in December 1968. It marked a return to the band's more usual R&B sound from the hallucinations of 'Their Satanic Majesties Request' of the previous year.

It was pretty much the last album Brian Jones played on and 'No Expectations' with its mournful slide-guitar backed sound always makes me feel whimsical for a time I remember as a child rather than music-loving teenager or grown-up (well, I'm not sure the latter will ever happen)

But it is 'Jigsaw Puzzle' I love most and play again and again. From the opening lines:

"There's a tramp sittin' on my doorstep
Tryin' to waste his time
With his methylated sandwich
He's a walking clothesline "

to the last chorus:

"Me, I'm just waiting so patiently
With my woman on the floor
We're just trying to do this jig-saw puzzle
Before it rains anymore"

I adore it and am back there pre-Hyde Park, pre-Altamont, probably with jigsaw puzzles of my own to work out and trying to see those pictures in the future, just as today's youth attending the festival this weekend will one day have.

From the ground up, it leaves a memorable presence

2013-06-21T12:03:00.000+00:00

I've been listening to 'From the Ground Up' by John Fullbright - a singer/songwriter from Oklahoma - this week. I hadn't heard anything at all by him before until the words to 'Jericho' floated through my semi-conscious mind one morning:

"I go searching through this world
I wait on something to unfurl
Thinking back on toys and paper dolls
Now all I ever find are walls..."

Released in 2012, it's his first studio album and has flavours of folk and Americana throughout. I particularly love the ballads on the album and feel as though I've discovered a new and lasting friend.

Phosphorescent's Muchacho: much to savour

2013-06-16T10:14:00.001+00:00

I've been listening to Muchacho from Phosporescent, the public face of
American singer-songwriter Matthew Houck. I find the combination of his voice, the arrangements and lyrics quite mesmerising.

My favourite track so far is 'Song for Zula'

"So some say love is a burning thing
That it makes a fiery ring
Oh but I know love as a caging thing
Just a killer come to call from some awful dream"

The tracks really draw you in to Matthew's cage but I'm not at all sure I want to escape...

Metamorphosis? No. Rolling Stones? Yes

2013-03-20T09:47:00.000+00:00

Metamorphosis is defined in Dictionary.com as "a profound change in form from one stage to the next in the life history of an organism"

Our son bought the Rolling Stones's version of this for me at the weekend - and a digitally re-mastered vinyl version at that! Like my present of Genesis vinyl before it, it was strange but great to be placing a new piece of vinyl on my record deck and, like 'Seconds Out', the sound quality is superb.

The album is not a metamorphosis in any way though. Rolling Stone magazine describes this compilation from its namesakes as both 'interesting and embarrassing." It was released in 1975 at the same time as the official 'Made in the Shade' compilation and was the third collection put out by former manager Allen Klein who latterly handled their Decca material before Rolling Stones Records was formed in 1970.

It is a collection of out-takes and tracks from jam sessions - and no doubt the re-mastering has improved the sound quality - but it's great to hear 'Out of Time' again and also 'Downtown Suzie' which I've always loved (and one from Bill Wyman to boot).

Oh, CD

2013-03-14T10:33:00.001+00:00

CDs were launched thirty years ago and lots of nuggets about them are flying about: 'The Visitors' by Abba was was the first commercial pressing of a contemporary band; 'Brothers in Arms' by Dire Straits is the most successful CD album to date and the first to sell a million copies; global sales of CDs peaked in 2000 at almost 2.5 billion.

Of course everyone has their own story about the CD revolution. Some, like me, witnessed old 78s on an ancient gramophone as a child, the wonder of vinyl albums as a teenager, the perfect clarity of sound as young adults and now digital downloads as supposedly more 'mature' listeners. We have been part of the revolution all along.

The first CD I listened to was the soundtrack recording of Les Miserables - it was also the soundtrack to my first date with my future wife. A few days later I bought my first CD - 'Duke' by Genesis - as a present for her.

We and our children always have music on in the house and on the move. I still listen often to vinyl as well as favourite CDs over again - and often on my iPod or iPad too. So many stories are told in those songs and so many stories come back from the time we first listened to them. CD formats may be thirty years' old but stories in and through songs are for life.

Seconds Out, Genesis still boxing clever

2013-01-18T16:01:00.000+00:00

I hadn't added any vinyl items to our music collection for about twenty five years - apart from a second copy of 'Sticky Fingers' by the Rolling Stones with the original zipper sleeve, found by our eldest son in a record shop at a very reasonable price (all we had to pay for was the replacement rubber on his trainers as he'd legged it so quickly with what he and I knew really was a bargain).

This all changed and yet stayed the same over Christmas. The same son bought me a copy of Seconds Out by Genesis and took me back a further ten years to when it was first released. This is a special 35th anniversary edition on vinyl and, even in a digital era of CD and music download, the sound is still marvellous to my ears - especially the fantastic, warm bass notes.

I had 'discovered' Genesis in 1976 when my friend Graham Black - who really wanted to be Phil Collins - introduced me to a whole range of progressive albums from Genesis, Supertramp and Pink Floyd that helped to completely change my musical tastes. The 'Lamb Lies Down on Broadway' quickly became a favourite but Peter Gabriel had just left the band and 'A Trick of the Tail' had just been released with Phil on vocals. This quickly led on to 'Wind and Wuthering,' both albums of which I loved and inflicted my record player stylus on whenever possible.

Apart from Graham most of my friends in the Sixth Form were unaware of the Peter Gabriel years and focused their lunchtime debates on the merits of Trick over Wind; punks in our midst tried to combine the two of course. I was tempted to buy Seconds Out on several occasions but never quite did so and then Steve Hackett left and the seconds turned into minutes then months and, eventually, to years. I liked later albums such as Duke but the first three Genesis albums were and are the ones I go back to.

It's incredible after such a long time to hear Phil singing the lyrics of my favourite tracks such as 'Carpet Crawlers' and the magnificent 'Supper's Ready' which obviously takes up a whole side on this set. Recorded during concerts in Paris in 1976 and 1977, this is recognised as one of the finest live albums ever made. I was just thrilled to go back once again to those formative years and be able to share all my old memories, through music, with our son who is more progressive now than I will ever be!

Suede were so young

2013-01-11T17:09:00.002+00:00

March 2013 will see the twentieth anniversary of Suede releasing their debut album on Nude Records. One of the fastest-selling debut albums ever, the group unsurprisingly won the 1993 Mercury Prize and I was thrilled by it all over again when hearing the tracks in a Cambridge music store.

Suede were one of the originators of Britpop and while the music press quickly moved on to Blur, Oasis and Pulp, this album really stands the test of time.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I have a very broad and somewhat eclectic taste in music, including glam-rock of the early 'Seventies which inspired this record. Brett Anderson's vocals from the opening track - 'So Young' onwards:

"Because we're young, because we're gone
We'll take the tide's electric mind, oh yeah..."

and the swirling, jangly guitars, took me back the twenty years and and a further twenty before that. Rather than feeling my age, I felt forty years younger.

Foppish? Not Ferry

2012-10-27T10:22:00.004+00:00

The Fopp music store in Cambridge reminds me of my favourite record shops where I would spend all of my Saturday money from my detestable Co-op job on music. The most regular recipient of my cas was Andy's Records in Peterborough. They developed a chain of stores in East Anglia - including one in Cambridge - but sadly went out of business a few years ago.

Like Andy's Fopp always has bargains - in CD form these days - and I recently bought Manifesto by Roxy Music.

I hadn't listened to this album in years and got a sort of thrill when the title track revisited my memory bank. The lyrics are pretty good throughout including:

"Now and then I've suffered imperfection
I've studied marble flaws
And faces drawn pale and worn
By many tears"

and have a poignancy for me, given that I was going through the the very brief cycle of a stiudent relationship at the time - you know the kind, where you see the ending before the end of the beginning!

Spin Me Round is also a great track and, love him or loathe him now, Bryan Ferry certainly knew how to pull those emotional strings.

Stargazers - one and all

2012-08-28T13:39:00.000+00:00

Having just written a BookMark piece about my memory of the first moon landing in 1969, I suppose it was appropriate that I found myself listening to 'Rising' by Rainbow yesterday.

I always knew the album as just Rainbow Rising and thought that Ritchie Blackmore's guitar playing was extraordinary. Little did I know what a control freak he was or that the band would go through so many line-up changes. I actually liked Ronnie James Dio best as the lead singer but Graham Bonnet gave the vocals a different dimension when he joined later on.

I was in the sixth form at school when I first heard this album on the turntable and it literally held me transfixed in a corner of the room (that and the desire to avoid Economics lessons). The boy who had brought it in was unsure whether he really had the appetite to reject it and other heavy metal bands for punk, which of course he had to if he wanted to go down that road with the Clash and the Damned.

In the end he tried to straddle both camps but was still accepted bcause he had a great record collection that we could all share. For those of us who did adopt the punk glue, many of us came back to classic albums like these after quite a short time anyway and stuck with them. I suppose we still do.

The track - Stargazer - is still one of my all-time favourite metal tracks and I was thinking of Neil Armstrong and the moon landing when I listened to it again. What a difference seven years of growing up had made in my life; and what a transformation that event had on all our lifetimes:

Lisa says Lou Reed's debut solo album wasn't that bad

2012-08-20T10:13:00.003+00:00

I was listening to Johnnie Walker on Radio 2 yesterday. He was doing a feature on Lou Reed and his 1972 debut solo album: Lou Reed. Although widely anticipated, the critics hated it and commercially it failed, reaching only 189 on the Billboard 200.

Johnnie played a track called 'Lisa says' and I absolutely loved it, downloading it from iTunes this morning. I'm so used to listening to tracks from 'Transformer' that this was such a refeshing surprise.

You think you know Lou Reed and you think you know Seventies music but good to see that little gems like this still lay hidden from my mind.

Breakaway

2012-06-11T14:51:00.000+00:00

I was listening to Jonnie Walker's radio show yesterday afternoon. It features sounds from the 'Seventies and losts of stories and comments from those great music years.

One caller from Leeds requested Breakaway from Gallagher & Lyle. He said that it reminded him of the summer of 1977 before his family moved to the Channel Islands. He said that the move had altered the rest of his life.

I too remember the summer of 1977 and listening to Gallager and Lyle. One year later I would move to Leeds and my life would never be the same again. I was very nervous about moving away from home for the first time:

"It's not the place you're going to,
it's just a phase you're going through."

The seeds of success were sown in 1978 as well as tragedy. Some things I have never been quite able to break away from:

"Oh you know I'm with you on your journey,
never could say goodbye."

Robin Gibb - first heard when I was small

2012-05-21T19:18:00.001+00:00

Not quite the First of May today but one that will be remembered forever for the passing of Robin Gibb.

This is one of my favourite Bee Gees songs. I remember it clearly as it was played day after day on our old kitchen wireless. I was nine years' old and the words made me feel even more insecure and sad than the hormones which were beginning to kick in. It was also the first Robin Gibb song I really listened to - and still do.

I was unaware until recently that this song had marked a split in the band as Robin's elder brother - Barry - wanted Robert Stigwood, the Bee Gees manager, to release 'Lamplight' instead. With Robin's death today, Barry has only the shadow cast by all of his brothers, now dead, and possibly one of the most moving and soulful male voices I have ever heard:

"When I was tall and
Christmas trees were small..."

The lyric also reminds me of a Christmas tree we bought when one of our sons was very small. It's the only thing he can remember about his first Christmas and we planted it in the garden afterwards. We don't live there anymore and he is no longer small but it's still growing and will always be 'Sam's Tree' to all of us.

"Don't ask me why
The time has passed us by..."

just enjoy every day as if it might be your last.

Love to have Loved you Baby

2012-05-18T16:13:00.001+00:00

I could barely believe the news that Donna Summer had died yesterday. People say 63 was far too young but isn't any time of death too soon?

I remember the steamy, disco beats of the late 1970's and especially 'Love to Love you Baby' which was a favourite music cassette in the car stereo for many of my would-be Lothario friends and most, like me, who could only daydream and hope that one day...

The Donna Summer recording that had the most impact on me was her version of MacArthur Park. Strangely, I'd always liked the Richard Harris original but Donna sang to me when I was in my first term at Leeds University, often sitting alone for hours, gazing out on a damp and quite grim Yorkshire landscape. I was homesick and missing a girl who I knew, at the same time, there would be no future with; like the cake, the fantasy was melting right in front of me.

I have the The Donna Summer Anthology and play it often. If it's a guilty pleasure then lock me up with my memories and Donna Summer.

Jonathan Wilson

2012-01-15T12:58:00.003+00:00

My wife bought me a subscripton to the music magazine - Uncut - some years ago as a birthday present. I enjoyed it so much that she renews it annually for me. She doesn't now have to worry about what to get me and I don't have to worry that each month will be full of music surprises!

There is quite a lot of material about bands from the late 'Sixties and 'Seventies which were the years I relate to most, musically. There are also stories about new bands and artists that I didn't know about. The magazine featured a piece on Jonathan Wilson recently which was really interesting. He's collaborated with the likes of Roy Harper, Jackson Browne, Crosby Stills & Nash and a host of other more well-known names and yet, had it not been for Uncut, I may never have heard of him. I sampled a few tracks on iTunes and it still sounded good so I bought the album Gentle Spirit from amazon.

It's very much in the easy Eagles/West Coast vein and made a marvellous introduction to Sunday for me today.

Civil Wars

2012-01-07T10:54:00.005+00:00

This very phrase conjures up so many images and memories of images doesn't it?

My earliest memories of civil war are the vivid black and white television pictures from Biafra and then Vietnam, followed by my first colour sighting of Crowland Abbey in Lincolnshire. Crowland was a Royalist stronghold during the English Civil War until its fall in 1643. Our own family tree has a branch there: my Granny was married and my Mum christened beneath the huge dog tooth arch that still remains.

Today the Civil Wars has a new meaning for me. The Civil Wars are musicians Joy Williams and John Paul White (who does look scarily like Hugh Laurie). With their own roots in California, Nashville and Alabama, their music forms a beautiful, haunting backdrop to inspired lyrics that take you forward as well as back. I got Barton Hollowfor Christmas and if there was any strife in my head beforehand it has long been replaced by a lingering sense of peace.