Who remembers the game Battleship; the one where you would try and blow up your opponent's ships by guessing where their hidden plotted fleet was based on a grid?
Sometimes organising an album recording is a bit hit and miss too. We have had a handful or recording days so far but none where all three of us have been together. Turning up and hearing a recorded track for the first time where you have to add your instrument or vocal can feel either like gaining a hit on that 2 square destroyer you've been hunting for ages or missing the 5 square cruiser you were convinced was in the top left hand corner. There is both the sense of familiarity in knowing what the ship looks like, but a slight nervousness in that it is sailing in unknown waters.
Four strings good. Hannah takes a bow. February 2019. Photo: Ben Brockett.
So as with recording. You've rehearsed, but now your bandmate is on their own, will they place the ship on the agreed part of the grid, or throw in a curve bull and turn it into an 'L' shape.
So far we have stuck to the planned manoeuvres. Not too many surprises, though I had to have John's extraneous 'but' removed from our song In Sun Bled Yellow, and I noticed he left out 'A' in the chorus of A Queen Of Sorts, which means that its now called Queen of Sorts. To be fair I had to change a line on one verse on Come Get Lost, as I just couldn't get the hang of launching into the first line. Picky? Nah.
A line in the stand. John taping his lyrics. January 2019. Photo: Ben Brockett.
As the lyricist though, I do admit I am rather precious about unagreed changes to lyrics, and so I am thankful to Hannah for recording the correct (meaning my) version of a line in Dateless Wonder Club rather than what she sings when we play live. Is it important? Depends on who you speak to.
John is pretty adamant that no one really listen to the lyrics, which I suppose he means with real intent and understanding beyond a general impression. He may well be right. After all, some of the most popular songs for weddings and funerals are often lyrically inappropriate beyond the title and half remembered chorus.
However, maybe because I am the lyricist I disagree. Yet, since being a kid I have always poured over lyrics, whether in a music magazine or paper, or on vinyl insert or never-to-be-folded-back-again-properly three foot long cassette cover. Once you've analysed Marillion's Chelsea Monday to death then you're not going to be someone who just has a vague sense of what a favourite band is singing.
Shed heaven. Nick outside Route 49 Studio. March 2019. Photo: Nick McMaster.
I'm also a keen follower of the folk tradition of storytelling, especially from real events. So it is important if its three score and ten fisherman. It still grates me that in our song, the aforementioned Come Get Lost, we changed a fact because my two bandmates felt a different word was easier to sing. They may have well been right, but its a good job we haven't got a song about the Welsh village of Llanfairpwllgwyngyll. Yet.
Still the tracks are gradually taking shape, words and all, and I suppose a lost 'A' or added 'But' is not the greatest crime in the world. Unlike sinking my submarine on C4,5 and 6.
