You know that album I mentioned I was writing while I was supposed to be doing work a couple months ago?
I’ve finished writing it.
It’s called This, Too, Shall Pass (don’t question me on the grammar, it’s correct). This is just gonna be one of those blogs where I go through each song and talk about what each of them is about. Gonna give you some fair warning - it’s pretty heavy.
I don’t really remember writing this song - good start, eh? What I mean is that it’s one of those songs that started with a single line that I wrote in my phone, “I’ve been talking to myself lately”, and then the song snowballed from there. It’s somewhat about what’s happened in the last 8 months for me, and about how generally I’ve been multiple versions of myself for a long time now. There’s some classic Phill Vidler wordplay™ in the chorus - “This is not the former me, this is just a form of me”. It’s setting-off point for the album, in tone and lyrical content.
Lyric of choice: “I tied my noose and, of survival, I am proof.”
You know when you abstractly think about something and make it a really weird metaphor? Robyn’s bedroom was getting redecorated for a while, and during a conversation with her about looking forward to things, I mentioned her impending new room, saying “soon; the room”. I liked the idea of my journey back to feeling alright again being akin to the redecoration of a room - the old version is still underneath somewhere in the memory, but for the moment, everything is new and exciting. I like doing this with my albums, at least since The Benefits of Devolution, where the first full track sets up a lot of the themes of the album, and then the second full track details a journey, or at least  the intent of progression.
Lyric of choice: “I wrapped myself in you; I lined my walls with what I know to be true.”
Here’s one of the earlier-written tracks on the album, a song about bad things creeping up on everyone and trying to find the lessons that are always said to be hidden in them, and the general futility of trying to solve problems that may very well solve themselves eventually.
Lyric of choice: “Be like the birds, take wing and take aim.”
This is probably going to be one of the “big singles” of the album - if there’s gonna be anything like that for this release. It’s about loneliness and feeling the need to express myself through music and being unable to. I had to hit a real low in order to find my music again, so I wrote a song about the journey to the metaphysical “low” and how cathartic it can feel - or how it can make you feel even worse than before. Swings and roundabouts. Got a killer double chorus at the end though.
Lyric of choice: “Why, when I’m standing still, do my colours still run? Shades of me are bleached from summer’s sun.”
The title track of the album was, in fact, the last to be written. I knew the album title before I wrote the song, but I knew I wanted to have a track that either was called the same thing, or at least featured it as a lyric somewhere. Something to bring a thematic link to the whole thing. It’s also the first song in about 4 years that I’ve written for piano by sitting in front of one and pissing about for a few hours. I showed it to one of my best friends; she said it sounded like a ballad from a musical. Given that the last songs I wrote on piano were for a musical that I’ve since canned, I take that as a massive compliment. It’s got nice strings in it too. And also a middle 8 that I ripped from an unreleased song from about 2012. Ssh.
Lyric of choice: “My stirrups and my saddle are looser than before; I hide behind my walls but I can barely tell the ceiling from the floor.”
Always gotta have an intermission, haven’t I? This one is a piano instrumental that incorporates melodies that span around 4 other songs on the album, from before and after it, blending them together to create one piece of music. It’d be a nice place for a record to be turned over at the end of side A, and it hints at melodies that are as-yet-unheard. The title is a reference to the aforementioned chorus lyric in Phosphenes.
This is another one that could very well be a single if the situation called for it. Chordally and melodically, the track is a reference to a song called Know You, from my very first album. That song was about an ex that I felt I didn’t know anymore after we broke up, whereas this song turns that into a more introspective look at whether I know myself anymore. There’s also a reference to Heliotropic, and it having been “a while since [I] turned to face the sun”. If that’s not pretentious then I don’t know what is.
Lyric of choice: “I’m losing track of all the stems of me.”
Another song about duality - there’s almost a running theme here. The overall message is that Robyn is, and has been, an absolute rock for me this past year, though sometimes even she hasn’t been able to distract me from all the brain stuff. It’s quite pleasant to listen to though, so it serves as one of the lighter points on a pretty dark collection of tracks.
Lyric of choice: “I’m always trying to balance midnight and noon.”
And so we reach the very first song written for this album, back in the gloomy recesses of August 2015, coming off a high of some people caring about my album Heliotropic, and realising how lonely I really felt. The issue was, I didn’t think I had much to offer anyone else, from friendships to relationships and everything else. There’s a passing reference to Lisa, as the proverbial “next girl”, who was in fact under my nose the whole time. Luckily, she’s stuck around to be the subject of the final track.
Lyric of choice: “It’s only when I’m surrounded that I remember how lonely I am.”
The closer is about Robyn. She has a tattoo on her wrist of a crescent moon, and it’s grown to be something of a symbol for me, as the antithesis of the “sun” of the Heliotropic era, which had a bit of a foreboding edge to it, with the “moon” of this era being a guiding light whenever it’s mentioned. Though the lyrics don’t sound very positive on the surface, there’s a clarity that Robyn has helped me find in the last year and a half, and this song is a testament to that.
Lyric of choice: “Incremental trust is not a sign that I’ve grown.”
So there it is, the first decent insight into this upcoming album. Still don’t know when it’s coming out - if I give myself a release date, then it’ll just turn out shit.
WE DON’T WANT THAT DO WE?
Thanks for reading if you have, and if you always read these, just know that you’re wicked <3