Yesterday and today I've been working on music, working on the songs of The Modern Game, my first album of songs in a long time and my first 'proper' vocal performances. I had already released this music last year, but last month re-listened to it with fresh ears after many months and really felt that I needed to work hard to improve some tracks, two in particular. There was no cost in taking down the album and re-releasing it, so I thought I'd do that. I must make reasonable haste as the themes are quite of the time, most of the album is about the internet and social media age.
Yesterday I added a new string arrangement to the last epic rock song 'Coming Back To Earth'. I had written something on a similar theme, almost the same music, with the same starting words, back in 2015, but it came to a quick end rather than going anywhere (a bit like Queen's first version of The Seven Seas of Rhye). When working on The Modern Game, I revisited this, but didn't even notice until I'd nearly finished it that I had recorded it three years ago! I've been tweaking this today.
Many songs were fine to start with, but about half can use a few tweaks and could benefit from new vocals or, in the case of The Trees, lots of work. I love this track and its feeling, but it is challenging to work on because it had a very drifty mood-based structure that needs to grow organically, perhaps best improvised, but for things like this you need to be in exactly the right mood when doing it, perhaps playing a basic live track as an emotional template (which is an ideal way to compose). Lots of influences on the album, almost every song is influenced by another by a different band, even if I didn't realise at the time. One of my favourites is 'All The Broken Flowers', a simple romantic song that I played 'live' on the piano in one go while imagining the words, then later sang it loosely to fit, in a very organic way. Here are the words, which are vaguely in sonnet form and were written as a poem:
All the broken flowers that she gave me
as Christmas presents, as birthday gifts.
She gave what she could, but had nothing.
Oh how pitiful, the anguish.
All the broken flowers that she gave me,
lined up on the window sill waiting for entropy
to eat them away, like her bones, her hair
now grey and lost, the anguish.
Eight summers since we met, five of rain.
How being downtrodden can be addictive,
and how romantic nostalgia is
hiding the awful truth in a cloud of pink scent
of flowers.
Eight summers since we met, five of rain,
and now she is gone to heaven.
How romantic nostalgia is
like a cloak of comfort for the tears.
Perhaps if I'd loved the flowers more
she wouldn't have broken.
