INTRODUCTION:
Hello! It sometimes helps for a writer to build rapport with a reader if the reader has an image of the writer in mind. As we’ve probably not met, imagine if you will someone with the rugged good looks of a Russell Crowe combined with the dash and mystery of a Jonny Depp. I don’t unfortunately combine these two looks – my head is comprised of an upside down triangle, a slightly startled and anxious face framing sad, sad eyes, and a bent ear. So you it is up to you whether you want to imagine these words from a Crowe / Depp hybrid or a melancholic geometrical shape.

About the album then. Recorded between September 2009 – October 2010, it was undertaken with the following aims:
o I wanted my girlfriend not to dislike it too much
o I have a 12-string guitar that I’d previously not managed to shoehorn into other tracks of mine recorded
o I wanted the mood to be mellow throughout
o I wanted to call it Words Cannot Tell, because I thought this sounded profound. Ahh, Words Cannot Tell sounded too profound, Words Cannot Tell, Can They Colin? was not profound enough. Worldly Carrot Hell was just plain silly and was discounted almost immediately.

Accordingly, I gathered together a bunch of about 10 songs previously written. 5 of these were recorded; the other tracks now appearing on the album were written and recorded during the above period, mainly as a result of mucking around with the arrangements of the older 5 tracks.

ALBUM RUNDOWN:
01 – PILGRIM: It took a while to decide whether Pilgrim should be the first or final track, but in the end I quite liked the extended fade-out of Bittersweet closing the album. I also liked the starting the album with an (almost, but not quite) acapella, as I hope that the sparse arrangement focuses the listeners attention, allowing the subsequent instrumental section and following tracks to be a pleasant contrast and seem richer by comparison. Genesis did something similar on Selling England By The Pound, and look where it got them. Once I finished the track, I played it to my girlfriend without telling her what she was listening to, and she thought it was Fleet Foxes! Sorry, Fleet Foxes.

02 – VENUS: Unlike most of the tracks, which were painful to write, record and then listen to, Venus was easy to write and record.

03 – THE GIRL WITHOUT A FACE: Don’t worry – the girl in the song does in fact have a face. The title is reference to her being a shy lass who prefers to remain in the background and is unmemorable as a result (the girl, not the song).

04 – SERPENTINE: this track came about as a result of struggling with arrangement of the middle instrumental section of Indelible. The opening chords are very similar to those of Lay Lady Lay, which will hopefully make the song (and the rest of the album) appeal to the millions of Bob Dylan fans (and their wallets).

05 – THE TROUBLED HEART OF MARIGOLD SORROW: During the year spent mulling this track, it went through a few incarnations, having at various times two verses, or being arranged for either a string quartet or brass band (I had in mind something like My Head Sounds Like That by Peter Gabriel, rather than whatever it is that Monty Python use for their theme tune). However, as I liked playing the chords on 12-string guitar, I stuck with this instrument as the base for the recording, popping on a simple electric guitar solo to fill in the gaps.

06 – NO MORE DISTANCE: I struggled with the first few bars of this track, before hitting on something reminiscent of Fountain of Salmacis by Genesis, something splendid but that I don’t know the name of by Porcupine Tree, and the sound of a reversing lorry. Like a reversing lorry, the songs slow down before stopping.

07 – LOSS: The intro (up to the chorus guitar solo) is a few years old and I wasn’t inspired to do much with it until I’d recorded The Troubled Heart Of Marigold Sorrow when it seemed to lend itself to a similar arrangement; the remainder ¾ of the song came quiet easily after that. When the song was finished, I played it to my girlfriend whilst she was chopping onions, and it made her cry. And cook a lovely Bolognese.

08 – THE REVELATIONS OF VERITY GREY: I’d recently acquired a mandolin and violin; the tuning being so different from a guitar confused and upset me, and made me prone to panic attacks. However, I eventually found a scale that I could play and wrote a song based on that. Now I no longer get panic attacks, but instead get criticism from mandolin players, violinists, people with ears, etc. Some you win, some you lose.

09 – CIRCLES: Along with Serpentine, came out of the struggle to arrange the middle bit of Indelible, so is similar in structure, chords used, instrumentation and tempo. Unlike Serpentine, it doesn’t sound like Bob Dylan though.

10 – CYAN INFINITY: I had a dream in which Bill Bailey cloned himself so that he could form a trio with himself on a couple of guitars and a sitar. The music played by the clones morphed into the middle bit of Cyan Infinity but as this section was out of kilter with the rest of the album, but I liked it so much, and also because I wanted a track that would link between Circles and Indelible, I wrote the first and last bits of the song. Then I had to write other bits to link between these bits and the middle bit. After that, I got confused by all the bits and so left them alone in the hope they would come to an amicable arrangement and finish themselves off.

11 – INDELIBLE: there’s probably a lot of listening to Genesis early in the morning coming out on this one, particularly in the 12-string-guitar-ridden instrumental section in the middle. Not sure who to blame the rest of the song on.

12 – BITTERSWEET: When I was a small boy of 18 years, I had a friend with whom I started a band. This band went on to achieve tremendous obscurity, but that’s not to say that we didn’t produce some great tunes; and that’s not to say that we didn’t also record some utter garbage. Bittersweet started off as an improvised chord sequence by this friend, which I subsequently knocked about a bit, adding words and extra passages to (the song that is, not my friend). Several years later, I thought the song would make a grand finale for the album, so it was dusted off, cropped, re-orchestrated then extended again. Thanks for inspiration for the orchestration used in this track goes to Ralph Vaughan Williams for the french horn solo, Steve Howe for the sound of the slide guitar solo starting 2mins 32secs into the song, Steve Hillage for the repeating guitars used towards the end of the long fade-out. Not sure who’s responsible for the brief oompah section, but if you could get out of my brain I’d be most grateful.

So there you are – welcome to the album and I hope you like it. More importantly, I hope you buy it.

ALBUM REVIEWS:
“I quite like the first one” - my dad

“Sounds like the Mighty Boosh!” - daughter of a friend

“You strange “retro-Gregorian-folk with a twist of Clannad for good measure” type dude . . . Very dark . . . I feel as though I should be watching “The Wicker Man” on silent with your melancholy licks of 7th and 9th chords in the background . . . Cosmic” – a colleague

“Actually, track 6 is quite good” – another colleague

“Honestly, I do quite like it” – my girlfriend