This ltd edition 7” white label single/b-sides came out 3 yrs ago today. Only a couple of hundred were ever made & (to my knowledge) no more have been pressed. So it stands alone, a little timestamped signpost of where things got truly interesting for me.
This is the first release from the phase of my work I can say I’m truly proud of, my (duo) output up to that time was always weirdly compromised. To be honest if I could I’d take a torch to what I produced between 2011-2018. I’m proud of my older songs, the writing itself, but not their recorded versions. This single release in 2019 was the start of a singular vision, writing that got the setting it deserved not the setting that best served someone else’s desire to showcase their technical skill.
‘Things I Didn’t Need’: A love song to myself from the perspective of the fragile male ego, something I’ve come to know more about than I care to, and one of the only times I’ve written a song from a male perspective. The subsequent two B-sides – ‘Season & Time’: appearing later that year on full length album ‘In All Weather‘ bears a Nick Drake reference for its title. It picks apart the resigned futility in communicating through song. ‘Never Lie’: (revisited on 2021’s ‘a small unknowable thing’) acts as a response to the self-delusion of the A-side’s protagonist.
It was the first tiny rumblings of the storm I was cooking, the storm that ultimately shed all the things I never needed. A first step on a bold journey to a better place for me and my songs.
Lyrics
Things I didn’t need
That song plays
And my heart actually aches
I need a guarantee
Though I detailed all the things I didn’t need
And it turns out
I’m weaker than I would care to seem
Come to me, this is enough
Before I turn my head and it disappears to dust
What have you done to me?
What will this do?
Now I cannot think of anything but you
That song plays
And my heart actually aches
I need a guarantee
And it turns out there’s a weaker man in me
And his need is more than I would have believed
Come to me, this is enough
Though I cannot give you anything but love
What have you done to me?
What can I do?
To show you I’m the only one for you
Come to me, this is enough
Though I cannot give you anything but love
What have you done to me?
How can I be?
The only man that you will ever need?
Season And Time
Singing is just talking to a tune
It’s trying to convey something, desperately
To communicate
With the added use of futile music
I’m pretty sure you never understood a word I said
Still I’m pinning all my sentences on melodies instead
This one struggles with structure
It wanders in its rhyme and it’s reason
They never got me nowhere in my season and time
Love me like you ought to
Or leave me if you don’t
Cos I’m tired of talking
And I’m running out of notes
Blue sky in the morning
And birds fly along the shoreline
Beautiful pictures captured in a rhyme
So love me like you ought to
Or leave me on the line
Where I’ll sing beautiful pictures
Of my season and time.
Never Lie
Read yourself a story that you wrote
Tell yourself whatever lies you like
I can never lie
The truth is sharp it hurts my eyes
Walk around a hole that’s in the floor
Pretend like you don’t see it anymore
I can never lie
The truth’s so bright it hurts my eyes
There’s a sound
Drowning out all the other sounds
How do live with that din in your ears?
If you can only learn to let it lie
Then all the falling stays up in the sky
I can never lie
The truth runs all through my inside
Just pretend you didn’t hear
And nothing good will ever disappear
I can never lie, dear
The truth is like a needle in my ear
There’s a sound
Drowning out all the other sounds
How do you live with that din in your ears?
Josienne Clarke 