off the record
As promised, Thawed, just for you, before the great unwashed have a chance to feast upon it. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen, I appreciate you immensely.
Ultimately this is a love song, but it’s pretty gut-wrenching. It’s begging to forever to stand still. It’s willing time to slow down. It’s love don’t leave me, please just see me, please. It’s a plea to stop listening to the incessant noise outside of us…
“Thawed, frozen snow, water on the floor.” sums it all up in a single line, a single image – just how quickly things can change. Time is short, another moment gone forever, and another, and another… Don’t waste a second on unnecessary pain, when it’s all so fucking hard anyway. Love is real, treasure it, please don’t die, don’t die, don’t die, don’t leave me all alone. Don’t leave me. Kinda screaming into the dark heart of it all. Animal wailing or as close to as I can manage in falsetto. It’s beautiful, but it’s pain.
Here’s a live performance of the complete song. No one trapped in a doomscroll loop is going to bother with the full track. It’s bloody lovely to have an opportunity to find people that want to experience my music in more than 15 second snippets…
This is literally the first time I played this song, before it was Thawed, before there were even written words (I saved it as “time is short – voicenote”). It was like 3am, my ex and I had had yet another horrendous and absurdly prolonged fight, throughout which I had protested my innocence for hours upon hours, upon hours. I was at borderline breaking point, again. I was at that point a hell of a lot, it has taken and continues to take a toll.
My go to in times of emotional stress is to make music. So, that’s what happened. In the moment, I played her a song, this song. It’s meandering and messy and raw and real and powerful. Listening to it now, it hurts in a very different way to when it originally fell out of me. That relationship ended and I thought this song was about my forever… Massive head-fuck, honestly. I’m sure you’ve had that experience of the meaning of a song changing with time, it’s a strange sensation when it’s one of your own, and when you were just SO CERTAIN. It really challenges that idea of the coherent “self” over time, because it’s like listening back to a different person entirely.
Original Written Lyrics
These were written a day or two after the voicenote, you can see I’ve already changed a few parts and quickly found the final structure. It was pretty much all there anyway, I just needed to cut out any meanderings and repetition, while keeping as much of the raw emotion intact as possible.
Final Release Lyrics
Thawed
Everybody else was a footnote
You were the intro, you were the beginning
Never end.
Keep telling stories that keep changing
Our campfire, bright embers
And time is short, and life is cold, but you melt me
Thawed, frozen snow, water on the floor
Time is short
You are calm, my serenity
You are wild, my ecstasy
Wrapped around my heart like your legs around my waist
Mouths pressed together hard, ‘til I can’t breathe
And time is short, and life is heavy
You’re my helium
High pitched squeals, 3am singing bowls
These are moments
These our moments
And time is short, and life is cold
But you melt me, but you melt me, but you melt me, life is heavy
And time is short, and life is cold, but you melt me
Thawed, frozen snow, water on the floor
Time is short
If you got this far, holy shit, thank you so much for those elusive eyes and ears of yours, I appreciate your attention, and I don’t want to be overly presumptuous, but I think we might just have found our people.
I promise I’ll keep sending you messages with more painfully honest music, or music adjacent bits and bobs. I want to genuinely, honestly connect with the people that truly care.
Please do get in touch, it would be lovely to get to know you better.