‘Deleted Scenes’, the first single from my new EP, ‘A Place Like Home’, was the first song I wrote after my last album, ‘I Used To Be Sad & Then I Forgot’.
I wrote it during lockdown.
I was trying to not write songs about lockdown.
I was also trying to not say that I wasn’t writing songs about lockdown. I didn’t want to even mention it, but everyone asks, so there you go.
I tried to concentrate on considering what I DID want to write songs about. Lockdown was good for that, at least.
I wanted to find something honest & worth saying amid the chaos & self-reflection that lockdown forced upon all but most privileged.
This period of self-reflection created a glut of wankers like me banging on about how they faced a period of self-reflection; I disappeared at least as far up my own arse as the next man, perhaps further, as this article appears to indicate, and so THATS what I wrote about – what I DO think. What I DO want. Not what or might think or might want. I’m not giving advice or speculating on lofty principles.
The people who started tweeting live songs from their normandy retreats, sharing their two-AGA kitchen tales of poverty, covering John Lennon from beside the private family pool while the rest of us queued outside Asda for an hour to get our hands on the government-allocated quantity of bleach, they have nothing to tell me. They shed no insights on my world. But why am I different? I dunno. I don’t consider that I am, but I’m self-aware enough to try hard to be better.
Since I’m also likely no worse, I tried to sharpen my ideology into the words of a song, something firm, bold & honest. I wanted to be clear, focussed, clean, new & free. Nothing unique or interesting about that, but here we are. It is what I did. I tried to describe exactly what I see from the shade where I sit. Whether I did that or not is up to you. ‘Deleted Scenes’ is about the search for meaning & a place in this lying, decaying late-stage capitalist nightmare of a reality we are fortunate enough to inhabit.
You can hear it on Bandcamp from 8th October & I’m working on a video, too.
ffm.to/aplacelikehome