In May – Alright then, In May This piece was first recorded by Neil and a small ensemble at Konk studios in London in November 2011, premiered as a theatrical piece in May 2013, and then eventually released on the bonus disc to “Foreverland” in 2016. Here’s the text from the premiere event at the University of Lancaster, whose webpage still exists! In May A new music performance by Frank Buecheler, with music by Neil Hannon (The Divine Comedy) and design by Simon Wainwright (imitating the dog). In May, by German writer and producer Frank Alva Buecheler, takes the form of a series of letters from a son to a father. Each has been set to music by the renowned musician, singer and leader of the pop group The Divine Comedy, Neil Hannon, to form a contemporary music theatre piece in 24 songs. The letters cover the last months of a man in the advanced stages of cancer, and undergoing a period of chemotherapy. He has sent everyone in his life away – his father, his lover – and we are left to puzzle, as they must: for what reason? Sung from the perspective of Anna, his bereaved lover, the piece is a moving and at times funny meditation in song: on life, family, fathers and sons, and the perspective that death might bring to our sense of the beauty and fragility of the world. Featuring Neil Hannon’s trademark music, stunning digital images and live string ensemble, this is a first trial performance before further development. Original text: Frank Alva Buecheler English Translation: Tim Clarke Music/arrangement: Neil Hannon (The Divine Comedy) Direction: Matt Fenton (Live at LICA) Design/Digital projections: Simon Wainwright (imitating the dog) Ensemble: Fredrik Holm (piano), The Ligeti Quartet(strings), Leentje Van de Cruys (vocals) Please note that Neil Hannon/The Divine Comedy are not performing in this production. Dates 31 May 2013 Location The Nuffield Theatre Lancaster University Lancaster. LA1 4YW
Here’s some more background from a newspaper interview with Frank Ava Buecheler ahead of a performance of the piece in Brighton in 2014: A decade ago theatre producer and writer Frank Alva Buecheler came up with the first draft of In May in less than three hours after visiting a sick friend. “It was spring and I was travelling back on the InterCity Express from Freiburg to Berlin,” he says, while walking the streets of his home city. “I sat in the restaurant car and wrote down the first draft of the piece. My father had died from cancer a couple of years before. Seeing my friend in the process of sickness and dying I discovered there are several phases that she and her family and friends went through. “Life and the beauty of the whole world became very important to her. She opened our eyes to be more conscious of how wonderful it is that we are here on this planet called Earth. “Time became a very special phenomena – we normally think a day has 24 hours but we learned a day has much more quality to those 24 hours – life gets much more intense. “Those moments became more relevant and this idea came to transform this experience into literature and into a piece of art.” Putting these feelings through the prism of somebody dying added extra power to the words he was writing. “Describing the beauty of the world is difficult for artists,” he says. “It is much easier to create a tragedy than show beauty. There is a danger it becomes kitsch and will repeat well-known stereotypes. “If someone can identify with a character who is dying though then you can say something such as: ‘What a wonderful morning, I hear the birds singing in the garden’ which a modern artist might reject. In these special situations we can apologise for these simple but true pictures.” When it came to bringing the words to the stage, Buecheler was inspired when he heard Neil Hannon’s musical project The Divine Comedy – most famous in the UK for his Britpop-era hits Something For The Weekend, Becoming More Like Alfie and National Express. “It was clear to me Neil would be a perfect composer for this text,” says Buecheler, who asked long-time English collaborator Tim Clarke to translate his original German text into English. The pair met in London, with Hannon agreeing to do the project after reading Buecheler’s words. “He said, ‘I’m a pop music composer and pop artist, why do you think I could write music for a chamber opera?’,” recalls Buecheler. “I told him all his Divine Comedy songs were dramatic pieces – and that I thought he was an opera composer.” In May takes the form of letters from a son to the father he has sent away as he goes through his final months of chemotherapy and cancer treatment. The whole story is sung, while the son’s lover Anna – played by Belgian actress and vocalist Leentje Van de Cruys – is the only character to appear on stage. She is accompanied by Swedish pianist Fredrik Holm and the London-based Ligeti String Quartet, while Simon Wainwright of Imitating The Dog creates atmospheric lighting. “Anna is a sheer fiction,” says Buecheler, who admits otherwise there are a lot of autobiographical elements to the story. “I felt Anna could be there on stage as a dancer, being the incorporation of the character’s thoughts and feelings. “The director Matt Fenton has taken a risk making a piece of musical theatre with no action or interaction and with only one character on stage. “It’s a little bit avant garde and experimental – theatre managers could get nervous about such a production as an audience expects more people on stage and more dialogue. “When we had the opening in Lancaster [in the Nuffield Theatre at the Lancaster Institute for Contemporary Arts last May] the audience seemed absolutely fascinated – they said it was rich and full. “What you see on stage feeds the imagination of an audience. Your own internal imagination is much stronger than any pre-fabricated piece. “Perhaps that’s the secret of why books are interesting and fascinating – the imagination is much more convincing than any Hollywood two-million-dollar budget.”
I finally bought (digital version) the deluxe Foreverland (with In May). I hope TDC HQ (who I'm sure are keeping an eye on us) will bear this kind of side benefit in mind in case they're thinking of sending a cease and desist notice to LivingForever's YouTube channel. I don't think I'll be able to comment on In May for some time. Every time I've heard it so far it's just gone in one ear and out the other as pleasant background music. I think I need to either see it on stage, or give it some devoted attention with my greatest concentration, to be able to comment on the lyrics (which of course aren't by Neil anyway). So I expect I won't be around much till Office Politics. I promise I will be keeping an eye on the thread though and I won't forget to come back! In the meantime I'll try to find time to play In May all the way through a few times and see what happens. I will say that when the album came out a friend told me In May was much better than Foreverland, and I'm not yet prepared to say that I disagree.
How very appropriate! I think it may have been @Hazey John II who posted this a while back, but I very much enjoyed this interview with the translator of In May Tim Clarke by Alison Felus American writer, podcaster and TDC fan): 021 A Conversation with Tim Clarke, the Translator of IN MAY Sorry if I'm treading on any toes, I just thought it a lovely interview about the piece, and Tim gives a nice insight into Neil's working process (as he spent time working with Neil on getting the translation right for the music), which others may find interesting. Also interesting is that in the interview he says Neil's vocal on the In May recording was recorded in his home studio and then the live orchestrations fitted to that. I think it does need this. I only picked up on some of the musical themes and motifs through listening several times without doing anything else. Also, it took me a couple of listens to get over the fact it is Neil Hannon singing this! Of course, he is often singing in 'character' in his own music, but usually it's some version of himself, so this is something entirely different... But in my opinion its well worth spending some time with. 'Enjoy' is probably the wrong word to use, but I do hope you get something from it
Lastly by way of background, a short chat with Neil from “Exeunt” magazine: How did the collaboration for In May come about? Do you know, it’s almost too long ago to recall how it began. You’d need to ask Frank and Tim why they came to me. All I remember is having a very pleasant coffee with them at the South Bank in London overlooking the Thames many moons ago. Frank outlined the idea to me. I thought, well that’s pretty bloody depressing – I’ll do it! You have done many collaborations before. How did this compare? Was it more of a challenge writing music with theatre and visuals in mind? If I’m to be completely honest I didn’t write with theatre or visuals in mind at all. I just took Frank’s very excellent and emotive words (ably translated by Tim Clarke) and set to the sort of music I thought would intensify the emotions. You’re right, I do a lot of collaborations these days, which is odd for someone who’s not intrinsically collaborative. I guess I just occasionally like the sound of someone’s idea – they’re usually ideas that I would never have myself. I could imagine you writing and staging a musical, a la Jacques Demy. Is there a possibility of this in the not too distant future? Well, I’m glad you could imagine that because I certainly can’t. [Livingforever note - Errrrm, say what, you mean apart from Swallows and Amazons? ] After all, you have your very own Jacques Demy in one Stuart Murdoch (Belle and Sebastian). I’m neither clever enough, interested enough in the dramatic arts, or practical enough to bring a whole show together. I will, however, happily write some rollicking tunes for everyone to sing. Has the piece made everyone involved re-assess their relationships with loved ones? Speaking for myself, I have never been in the situation of any of the protagonists in the show, and I find it impossible to fully imagine how it would feel. I truly hope I never shall. The piece definitely makes me glad I’m alive, but that’s as much because if I were dead I wouldn’t be able to write music. That statement will appear horribly flippant to some people. It’s not. The main character in In May is dying horribly young, but he lives the final months of his life so intensely, and in such a state of self awareness that by the time of his dying he is full of joy and acceptance. To my mind this is better than eighty years of worrying about it.
Just before you all delve into the tough world of In May, here's something more fun and digestible to enjoy: a Hot Press video interview from 2017 about Neil enjoying chart success with Foreverland (though nothing about the songs themselves, but the Portuguese interview I posted covers that), whether there'll be a return of DLM, his Mastermind participation, and how he reacted when meeting Scott Walker and Jeff Lynne.
Here we go then. I rather liked @lazzaa 's suggestion to do "In May" one "month" at a time, so let’s begin that way. I’ll give you tonight and tomorrow to digest December and then we’ll move on on Wednesday. 6th of December
(Sorry for not following the rules again @LivingForever - this turned into a big blob of stuff, not easily split by tracks, and I'm not going to be able to post for most of this week anyway. All Tim Clarke quotes are from the excellent Allison Felus podcast @The Turning Year mentioned earlier. Allison's post on In May from 2017 is also excellent and was the reason I listened to In May properly, so make sure to read that. TL;DR: In May is definitely worth your time and attention, though of course we can still be friends if it doesn't take!) There's a funny bit in a Duckworth Lewis Method interview - in December 2010, Neil's idea board contained four major projects: Bang Goes the Knighthood, Swallows and Amazons, The Duckworth Lewis Method, and The German Cancer Opera. One of these things is not like the others. The very working name sounds dismissive: an opera. About cancer. By a German. Only, not really an opera, more a... song cycle? Something like that. Only, not songs, but... letters. Accompanied only by piano and string quartet, no backing vocals, no brass, no vocoders, no wanking jokes (well, sort of). And actually, not letters, but emails. Nineteen sung emails. About cancer. The letters Maybe the letters would stand alone in a small booklet, as a form of poetry (though Tim Clarke makes it clear that he and Neil revised the words as they were set). The formal structure ('Dear Father...Your son', not 'Hi Dad') contains a rich variety of thoughts, from bare facts and incidental details to striking observations and flights of fancy, all shot through with shallow and deep emotions, both said and unsaid. TC: I have sent the script out, and the CD, of In May, to various people I've thought might be interested in producing a version of it. There's a sort of criticism comes back and says, 'Yeah, it's a lovely piece, but there's not enough dramatic interest in the script to turn it into a play'. As the premiere blurb @LivingForever posted notes, there are several surface dramas that play out. Firstly, will the father visit? The form of the letters dictates that this can't happen, as there would be no more letters. But it is still interesting that the son won't allow the father to come; what is it exactly that the son has to do that stops him from flying to California, or letting his father fly to him? Although he seems happy and friendly with his father's new family ("I like imagining you, Lou, and the little one under Californian sun"), there is a distance here, a strange sarcasm in 'Are there parks for children in Los Angeles?' and later even in the way Neil says 'How's Lou?'; does the son at some level resent his father remarrying after his mother's death? Is he conscious of being the end of this line of the family, distinct from his father's new branch? Secondly, poor Anna. Although she and the son appear to have lived together, she is asked to leave when the son's surgery fails, and she calls almost daily for months with no response. When he finally leaves a message for her, she does not come, and he pines for her for the rest of his life; I wonder what he said in the message. Who is this somewhat proud, perhaps selfish man, who turns away everyone who loves him and suffers through his terminal illness virtually alone? Why didn't he see anyone during his final Christmas? These surface dramas give the letters some tension, shading mundane observations with subtext, and make the son an intriguing narrator. But of course there is a deeper drama: AF: What is more dramatic than a person facing their own mortality? My God! T: I know! In a way, I think that's down to their lack of imagination, because you could say, we know where it's going to end, he's going to die, but in between that starting point and finding out he's got inoperable cancer and dying, it's all that emotion that's tied up with it, you know, there's not a plot, there's not a subplot, and that's where those possibly more commercial theatres are coming from - is this going to hold the interest of an audience? The first half of the cycle is a gruelling trudge through winter, full of anger and resentment, but when Spring arrives the son reaches a point of acceptance, and then joy, sometimes to the point of delirium. It even has some jokes - "I am, after all, your son", "How awful! A man with thin legs", the enormous erection. Arguably, this is the only way the piece could be; if the son railed against his condition until the end it might be unbearable. But it does ring true; I have seen people with terminal illnesses go from denial, to acceptance, to radiance; and even if it is not true, it gives us an example we might do well to pay attention to if we find ourselves in a similar situation. Because we all will be - all are - in a similar situation. Cancer is just an extreme case. Let us hope when our time comes, we can accept our thin legs and insomnia with good humour, and take time to notice the lacquer on the piano, or the bird singing in the garden. Perhaps we will even be blessed with a sense of acceptance, of wonder, of joy; maybe even a sense of rightness, of our lives being completed, just as the son has a sense of cosmic alignment, always knowing he was destined to die in May. As Buecheler says in the interview @LivingForever posted above: “Describing the beauty of the world is difficult for artists,” he says. “It is much easier to create a tragedy than show beauty. There is a danger it becomes kitsch and will repeat well-known stereotypes. If someone can identify with a character who is dying though then you can say something such as: ‘What a wonderful morning, I hear the birds singing in the garden’ which a modern artist might reject. In these special situations we can apologise for these simple but true pictures.” Strange connection coming up, but bear with me: in Drawing On The Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards explains that the key to drawing is to turn off 'left mode', the part of us that draws circles for heads and rectangles for bodies, and engage 'right mode', which actually sees what is there, and enables us to draw from life. The trick is to get the egoic, self-important left mode out of the way, by giving it a problem it isn't interested in or doesn't understand. For example, drawing a person upside down prevents us from recognising the familiar parts, and we don't immediately think 'that's a person' but rather have to look at what's really there. (The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist explores the same distinction between left and right hemispheres in much more detail.) In May strikes me as a musical version of this - the cancer is not the point, but rather just a way to distract the left brain into thinking it's listening to something serious and artistic, so it will let us notice the birds in the garden, which are usually far too unimportant for it to bother with. The end goal of the piece, as Buechler says above, is to engage the right brain, so we are drawn into the world of the everyday details that we usually neglect. Or, as the son says, where are we? Still here! Music, music, music. The music Buecheler thinking of Neil for In May is surprising but inspired. We're a world away from I Like or How Can You Leave Me On My Own here, but there's definitely a continuity with Our Mutual Friend, or A Lady of a Certain Age. We can imagine an alternative career where Promenade was followed by a string of chamber pieces like this. Not only does the Nyman-esque string quartet and piano recall Promenade but even the Tonight We Fly drums creep in to 4th of April. But what to do with nineteen prose letters? What kind of songs could they make? At first it's hard to get a hold on them; there are no really obvious choruses, barely any repeated lines. But Neil does a ton of work here to make them listenable, melodic, structured. Most of them have a verse-chorus structure, blocks of chords repeated once or twice, with the same underlying shape to the melodies, even if the details are very different. Though there are nineteen tracks, there are only about nine unique songs; most songs recur once or twice, but each time the arrangements, or keys, or tempos are different, making the resonances subtle, subterranean. But the similarities are there: for example, 6th of December, 13th of January and 7th February share the same music, and each reports news from the doctor. The songs where his thoughts turn to Los Angeles (13th of December, 22nd of February) share the same music, as does, obliquely, the raging 15th of January (curiously enough in 15/8). The early letters are deliberately monotonous, see-sawing between tonic and dominant chords in various forms and inversions. For example, both the first and second letters alternate between E minor and B7 chords, the similarity masked by an A bass in the second letter, though each letter does have a different bridge. More often than not, the chords in the first half descend, particularly in the shared music of 13th of December, 15th of January and 22nd of February, where the impending horror of 'I have not lost any hair yet' in 13th of December becomes the absurd two octave depression of 15th of January ('What utter rubbish we can come out with!'). These features make the first half a difficult listen - is the whole thing going to be like this? I can understand people bailing on the whole thing early. But of course, there's an artistic point to it - that's how the son feels too. And then... TC: ...as the protagonist approaches the end of his life, he sees life around him in much more vivid colour and detail, and notices small things, the blue eyes of the dog who comes from next door to look at him, and Spring is coming, the snow melting, the buds are coming out, there's green everywhere, there's a sort of bizarre sense of vitality as his body is giving up on him, a sense of life going on and blooming around him. The music follows the son's emotions sensitively and subtly at every turn - his depression and fear at the snow and rain falling, his playful response to the bird hopping about, the delirium of Spring's triumphant entrance, the circular melody as the son sits looking round a semicircle of family photographs on 31st of May (almost a crib from Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, an interesting reference point). There are no false steps here even where they can be easily imagined - the Bruch violin concerto mentioned in 4th of April (Midnight) could have been referenced crudely and obviously, but in fact its just a small, deepening grace note towards the end, just enough to connect but not enough to intrude. The move from despair to joy is very gradual, perhaps because the end of one letter tends to connect with the next, usually via a shared chord or key. The chords finally start to move upward (eg 8th of March, the bird singing in the garden) or breathe, even leap (3rd of May). And over the course of the cycle, the keys subtly change; from sharp keys like Em and C#m to flat keys like Gm and Eb. By the end, we are somewhere quite different tonally from where we began, just as the son has transformed. This close harmony between text and music produces some breathtaking moments, like the remarkable end of 23rd of December, where the second verse transitions from reassuring details about painkillers and plans for Christmas to peculiar observations about the light across the piano, the kind of thing one never notices in day to day life until something happens and everything looks different. But the light was always there - just like Neil's piano line has been hanging in the air for the previous two minutes, with the string chords shifting below. Then there's the metaphorical transition of the light's 'silvery powder' becoming 'angel dust' (two final outcomes the son may be considering, angel / dust) and finally the glorious leap to 'Where is Heaven?' - where Neil first introduces the theme of 31st of May which will end the cycle. But that's only one of many places where I find myself welling up. The recording TC: The first time I went to Dublin, I think he recorded it all then with me... The string sections he recorded on his computer in Dublin, computer strings. He sang the vocal to that when I was there. Then he hired Konk Studios in London, owned by The Kinks, and put together a string quintet and the pianist, I think he was there two days recording. Frank came over from Berlin and I came down from Manchester to sit in for one of the days, and that was amazing. He used the vocals of the recording in Dublin and put them on top of the string recordings in Konk, he matched them up... Actually, the day before Konk he'd had a rehearsal in London, I went to the afternoon rehearsal with the musicians, in a rehearsal studio, to get it right and iron bits out, and then went into the studio the following day and did it... so he matched the Dublin lyrics. I think, from what I could gather from his manager Natalie, that at some point he would like to maybe re-record the vocals in a better way, or re-do them, but whether that will actually ever happen... because the current version is really nice, I mean, really well done. I'd assumed the recordings were live in the studio, but no. The giveaway is that the tempos are completely static and are often rounded to the nearest 5, the kind of thing you might do when setting up in ProTools. I'd love to hear a genuine live version to see how it breathes, but what we have is still wonderful. I'm a bit stunned this is how it was done, but it sort of makes sense - who wants the pressure of doing the vocals at the same time? Especially since - well, despite what Tim says above, what would you want re-recorded? It's a spellbinding vocal performance, a wonderful bit of acting, expressing almost every possible emotion, sometimes several in one sentence. So many striking moments: "Oh, my lovely feet!", "May is the best month", the twinkly determination of 'Later / I shall try / and go / for a walk'. And he knows when to hold back too - while the first half is loaded with dread ("A new year has begun - the last one"), by the 3rd May the son is able to unemotionally request his father to "Please get in touch with him after my death". Although the voice is often cracked, or strained, it's all part of a superbly controlled performance - always full of the son's strength and soul. The play TC: Frank, Neil and me had a real belief in it, and still do, that it's a great and original piece of music theatre, if you want to call it that. I think it's still actually waiting for the right director or right production to come along to give it to a wider audience. I'd be intrigued to see In May as it was originally performed, with Anna reading the letters after the son's death, and I could imagine other stagings working - a three-hander with the son, the father and Anna reading different parts of the letters maybe, or a solo piano performance. It would be great for an Edinburgh Fringe show. But in the end, staging seems superfluous to me. Unlike Swallows and Amazons, where I felt uncomfortable assessing the show from the piano demos, Neil's recordings of In May seem definitive. I don't see what staging would add that isn't already fully realised in the recording. I don't want to say anything as pat as 'It's the best thing Neil's ever done' though some days I think that's true. I'm wary of praising it too much because I'm conscious of the pretence of raving about the fancy chamber opera after turning my nose up at the percussion in Napoleon Complex (the left mode drones on again). But it's definitely not the work of a dilettante, a pop star's indulgence or a low stakes side-project. It's a major work, a very special piece, and it deserves a lot more attention than it has had. It gets under my skin in strange ways - it changes how I see, how I move, how I breathe. Although it seems like an outlier in Neil's work, in a sense, it's the most extreme and fully realised expression of his 'divine/comedy' philosophy - even in death, joy.
Here’s where I’m at with “In May”. I, perhaps like a lot of people, got this as the bonus disc to “Foreverland”, listened to it once (if that!), wondered why the heck Neil had written all this depressing stuff for disc 2 of the album, and promptly forgot all about it. Without any context (which I don’t believe there was in the CD packaging?) it’s a tough ask, especially coming off the back of some of Neil’s most fluffy and middle-of-the-road songs yet. I think I even set up a new rule in my iTunes to exclude it from my playlist of 2016 new music because it kept popping up on shuffle and I wanted to make it go away So I’m basically going to be coming at this fresh, which I’ll do one track at a time. Should be fun! One thing that strikes me immediately though is that this is what it would be like if you took all the silliness and humour out of the Divine Comedy (as someone suggested to Neil in that interview where he said that would never happen…!) Is that a good or bad thing? Maybe the light and shade of albums like “Promenade”are what makes them so good? Anyway; let’s see how I get on this time.
Wow, what a post! Thank you so much for all that, it must have taken forever. I’ll be listening now with a closer ear and a little more insight into what it’s all about - that and looking forward to the moments of light that I’ve probably never made it to so far…
Didn't finish off Foreverland! The one who really loves you is fine I think. Not one of the great TDC closers but better than a lot of album. 3/5 I had hoped to find something new in Foreverland but it's really cemented it in my mind that this is probably my least favourite album of his. I just think so much of it is so unchallenging, I almost never come back to so much of it. That being said this is Neil Hannon album so if course it has some solid gold on it (looking at you To The Rescue) I'm glad he changed course on Office Politics and I'm looking forward to giving that another examination. As for In May - I listened to it a lot when it came out since it just ran on from Foreverland on Spotify, after a few months I was just playing this instead of Foreverland. The instrumentation is gorgeous, quite Promenady of course. There's great moments of proper melancholy, but also elation. I think it's really good! I'm not going to rate the songs individually (unless everyone else really is) as I kind of think of it as one whole thing. 6th of December - a very Bathian into. Sets the tone for the rest of the piece very well. 11th - not the most engaging first half but the second half once the high strings take off is great, I love the instrumental at the end. 13th - I enjoy how abrubtly this ends and the fluttering of the strings as he talks about going down the slide 23rd - quite an early gut punch! I think this is a majestic Hannon tune once he starts singing - 'it makes me think of Angel dust' onwards is just sublime. Gorgeous. I often have to replay this one when listening to it just to get to that bit again.
Wow amazing post, thank you! My vote for post of the thread! I'm looking forward to listening to it all again with your insights and those of others, particularly as I'm very much a novice when it comes to deciphering musical keys etc. This is all great for understanding the technical aspects better, as well as taking on board things others have taken from it which had not occurred to me.
In May I like this album. It works for me a lot better than Swallows and Amazons (plus his home recorded vocals sound so much better this time), and is more consistent than Foreverland. Like @LivingForever says, maybe this will be the closest album that we would have without the silliness (well, maybe Regeneration?). I would still love a TDC album without some of his sillier songs on them. Or even without some of his upbeat lovey songs. Give me a nice album of grittiness and important sounding songs, so that it could maybe be my favourite album. Maybe that's why I like ASAAL so much, although it does have a fair bit of humour, which does work well for me there. Anyway. This album. I think I'll find it hard to rate each song also, as it's definitely a full piece really. So maybe I'll do similar to Swallows and give every song the same rating, this time a 4. I feel like it would be a good album to just sit down with a lyric booklet as it goes through, as it is quite long and hard to stay focussed on and necessarily notice the difference between the songs and 'story'. I am pleased that my birthday is one of the songs, although not a highlight of a song in tune or big feeling, but thanks to @Hazey John II 's post I know that it's one of the doctor results themed set of songs! Maybe if this album has its own separate release then that would help it stand out on its own a bit more. Although there are obviously plenty of reasons why that didn't happen, and it's a great bonus cd to have received with the album.
In May For me, personally, this is a very difficult listen. I didn't buy Foreverland immediately when it was released, instead getting it during autumn 2016. And true to my listening habits, it lay in my TBP pile until I'd gone through all the other CDs I'd bought around the same time. And that was the same autumn my mother passed away from cancer. Which meant that I reached this recording just months after that tumultuous occasion. As I've mentioned, I mainly listen to new CDs in my car going to work and home again. And if a piece of music were less suited for being played in that way, so soon after bereavement, I don't know what it would be. I haven't listened to it since, and we'll see if I get through the whole thing this time. I've listened to the December pieces now, and I am glad to hear that the later pieces will be less monotonous, because as it is it feels like a bit of a chore. What I will say, however, is that if these were released as instrumental pieces, without Neil's recitation/singing, then I'd probably enjoy them quite a bit more, for the music is rather lovely. I'd probably find it a tad too repetitive at times (as I've already done with these four pieces), but I like the baroqueness of the sound - the comparisons with Promenade made in the thread here seem quite apt - and while the music is still sombre, it'd be easier for me not having to constantly link them to a terminal cancer illness. Whether I manage to listen to all the pieces of this, don't expect any scoring from me on these recordings.
In May Some interesting reading so far - thanks, @Hazey John II in particular - about a project that more or less passed me by. Despite having In May on the second disc of Foreverland since release week, I think I've only listened to it once up until now, and the context of the project eluded me at the time. I think in my head it had merged with Too Our Fathers In Distress, and I regarded it as a worthy side project, but not actually something I was especially interested in. So, I'm also coming at this effectively for the first time. I'm listening to the December tracks right now, and although it's intriguing, I can't feel it working my way into my consciousness like I could when I was doing the same thing with the Swallows and Amazons tracks. In some ways, I'd see that as a failing on my part - this is clearly a well-considered project that deals with some difficult and profound issues. Seeing it live, perhaps, would help - I can imagine it being quite moving in a theatre. So, I find myself in a similar position to @a paul with regards to scoring. I don't think it'd be fair or workable to try and drill down into which tracks I prefer, and I think even if I did, I'd end up working in a very narrow range so there'd be little point. I'm going to pre-emptively give a blanket 2.5/5 for each track, but I'll keep reading, keep listening, and if anything starts to click more significantly over the next however many days, I'll let you know! Despite all this - kudos to Neil, of course, for writing this, and for being enough of an artist to be capable of pulling it off. I can't think of many other musicians I listen to who would even consider attempting it.
This is pretty much exactly how I feel, having listened to the “December” tracks a few times. Really nice and sometimes quite interesting music - but with a sort of recitative vocal line rather than being what you might call actual “songs”. But I’m looking forward to going deeper in and seeing what else is in there.
Other People - I think this is a good song anyway, and if it had been done more conventionally then I'm sure I'd have liked it too. But I think the ending actually makes it better, though I can see why it might annoy others. But if the lyric already says everything you wanted it to say already then why not just leave it at that. I see it as a welcome moment of daring from someone who isn't really daring enough these days. 4 / 5. The One Who Loves You - this is one of those songs where the title means nothing to me, and then I hear it and think "oh yeah, it's that one..." It's actually very good. The verses are an example of repetition used to good effect; I'm sure Brian Eno would approve. And then the middle section breaks it all up nicely. Oh and the "Dodo" / "Soho" / "So rare" rhyme always makes me smile. The demo is very similar so can't really score it separately. 4 /5 again! Yay, I finished the album!
Ok, I’ve managed to listen to the “December” tracks a good few times in the last day so here we go. I’m going to talk about the music of course but probably more about what I think is happening in the story as I don’t think there’s any full synopsis available anywhere? Oh, like others; I’m not scoring this. It almost seems wrong, frankly! December It’s fair to say that when this starts, the protagonist is in the denial / despair phase that accompanies anything traumatic, and these 4 tracks reflect that but also with some tiny fragments of acceptance and even joy towards the end. 6th of December It’s a very Bath-esque start, like a small Overture. That syncopated piano figure repeating around the shifting chords, and then with the nice pedal cello/ bass octave-unison line kicking it up a gear. Then Neil comes in, sounding the most fragile he ever has. This is a million miles from the “Foreverland” Neil. “Dear Father”, he begins, as he will begin many of the letters. (Although, without context we don’t really know if these are letters or emails?) We learn that the protagonist has cancer and is about to start chemo but doesn’t think he will make it. “Why me?”” I’m much too young!” We also learn that he’s sent someone called Anna away but we don’t know why (and neither quite does he, by the sounds of it?) It’s interesting to note that the stage production is performed by Anna reading out these letters - but we have no way of knowing that from this recording, so on the face of it we imagine Neil is performing the role of the dying man, or perhaps his father reading the letters? I wonder if this will change the meaning of anything as we go? We also learn that he is basically living in empty rooms, in a place he describes as clinical (“how apt”, he then adds with grim humour.) He tells his father not to worry, and signs off the letter “your son”, as he will with most. 11th December More pretty but mournful piano and violin kicks this off. “Please don’t come, father”, he begins, explaining how he really wants to be alone right now, despite their closeness. The character of Lou and the little one (in California) are introduced for the first time and there’s a nice contrast between the sun in LA and the overcast nature of where he is (where that is we actually don’t know, and it probably doesn’t matter.) There’s a sudden pivot to talking about his visit to the doctor, which he tells in a quite matter of fact way “he said my hair would fall out, I’ve had it cut very short” He mentions someone called Ray who apparently came by and showed him how to bind a turban - this leads to a great but haunting parallel between the desert and his disease “sand and drought lie ahead of me” “Maybe Think of me when you go to the beach,” he tells his father, in another sandy parallel (Sacrcasm? Or not? It’s Hard to tell!) There’s a nice violin motif after this and some more positive sounding music - in fact it almost turns into one of Neil’s trademark “big outtros” (ala Our Mutual Friend), before resolving back to minor key for the brief singing off “Your son”. more later…
13th December The pizzicato strings at the start of this make me think of a sad version of “Your Daddy’s Car”- another song that’s about death, but one which manages to skirt around it obliquely and apply a dash of fun by way of misdirection. No such jollity here… The protagonist says he’s allowed to fly and thinks he will fly to the US - but then immediately changes his mind and says he can’t, he has too many things to do (does he? Or is he avoiding people?) One of Neil’s spoken lines* “I’ve been thinking a lot” introduces a new topic - memories creeping in that he doesn’t want (which largely relate to his childhood, namely playing in a park.) * I’ve talked before about how Neil’s sudden spoken lines in the middle of songs are quite annoying to me - but I let him off in this piece. Sometimes the juxtaposition between heartfelt singing and deadpan speaking in this piece is a perfect fit for the lyrics. 23rd of December This one starts with some very sparse piano (putting me in mind of “Snowball in Negative”) “Don’t blame yourself father” says the protagonist, “we’re not to see each other, it really is what I want” - is it? Is he protesting too much or does he really want to be alone? It’s hard to tell. He urges the others to be happy and think of him a little. Interestingly he speaks most of this but then switches his heartfelt singing voice for some very matter of fact Doctor news - an interesting turnaround from previously. We learn that Anna is trying to get in touch with him but he is ignoring her, another sign of wanting to shut everyone out. And lastly in this piece, a most wonderful line that some others have already mentioned: “Sometimes when the sun’s going down, it catches the black lacquer on the piano, and it’s as if a velvet sheen of silvery powder is just floating there, it makes me think of Angel dust and I have to laugh, where is heaven?” This is the most uplifting piece of music we’ve heard so far, going into another big instrumental outtro, offering what feels like a tiny glimmer of hope for the New Year.
