33 1/3
released in 2007
33 1/3
I have always been an interpreter of songs, whether my own or other peoples. Some songs have a life force of their own, their character living through you as you live through them. As a singer, I look for songs to which I can offer myself as a vehicle of expression. The songs here all have a sense of magic, of ritual or rapture, and are the work of music-makers who draw you into their universe. The decision to make an album exclusively of other people’s songs was quite sudden and spontaneous. We started the record in May 2006 although, as a late as April, we were not even planning to make a record at all. After several years of continuous gigging, I developed a throat problem and had to stop live work for several months and work hard to regain my voice. It was a time of reflection, of precariousness, and of listening to a lot of music and thinking about my own direction. Meanwhile, along with Sam Mills, I had been slowly gathering material for a new album and felt that it was about a year away from being ready. Then a late-night discussion about songs we would like to do someday ‘grew horns’ and soon developed an eerie momentum of its own. We were surprised but sometimes you have to go with the flow. We chose songs which were mostly album tracks, rather than classic singles, that we had been listening to over the last few years, sometimes rediscovering them as one does in this era of changing formats, hence “33 1/3” sprung to mind as a title. A kind of homage to the well-attested pleasures to the ‘long player’, of owning some tangible aretfact of music’s immaterial magic, and to the obsolete warmth of vinyl; nowadays our ears are being cheapened by horrid data-compressed mp3s. Also, an album can be a complete, coherent experience in a way that our mix and match culture now has no patience for. Sounding old? 33 1/3 was also my age as we were finishing the album.
I have always been an interpreter of songs, whether my own or other peoples. Some songs have a life force of their own, their character living through you as you live through them. As a singer, I look for songs to which I can offer myself as a vehicle of expression. The songs here all have a sense of magic, of ritual or rapture, and are the work of music-makers who draw you into their universe. The decision to make an album exclusively of other people’s songs was quite sudden and spontaneous. We started the record in May 2006 although, as a late as April, we were not even planning to make a record at all. After several years of continuous gigging, I developed a throat problem and had to stop live work for several months and work hard to regain my voice. It was a time of reflection, of precariousness, and of listening to a lot of music and thinking about my own direction. Meanwhile, along with Sam Mills, I had been slowly gathering material for a new album and felt that it was about a year away from being ready. Then a late-night discussion about songs we would like to do someday ‘grew horns’ and soon developed an eerie momentum of its own. We were surprised but sometimes you have to go with the flow. We chose songs which were mostly album tracks, rather than classic singles, that we had been listening to over the last few years, sometimes rediscovering them as one does in this era of changing formats, hence “33 1/3” sprung to mind as a title. A kind of homage to the well-attested pleasures to the ‘long player’, of owning some tangible aretfact of music’s immaterial magic, and to the obsolete warmth of vinyl; nowadays our ears are being cheapened by horrid data-compressed mp3s. Also, an album can be a complete, coherent experience in a way that our mix and match culture now has no patience for. Sounding old? 33 1/3 was also my age as we were finishing the album.