Not Even My Closest Friends - sleeve notes – Swing

 

Dance a furry foxtrot 

In your puss in boots shoes 

Hobble as you hopscotch 

Now late Chelsea muse 

 

Saucy little swindle in 

Cigarette tight pants 

All of a giggle 

Out blowing the ranks 

 

Swing why dust she swing thee 

Swing thee round the house 

Bring why dust she bring thee 

Crashing to the ground 

 

Reflecting on a fortune 

Now in the looking glass 

Cream on the wrinkles 

Blur on the past 

 

Plotting every movement 

With glass headed pins 

Waiting for the moment 

Knowing when to give in 

 

Swing why dust she swing thee 

Swing thee round the house 

Bring why dust she bring thee 

Crashing to the ground

 

As with so many of the tracks “Swing” started life as a sequencer pattern, this time a ¾ tango type pattern which you can hear at the beginning of the track. Over this I quickly improvised a vibraphone and matching vocal line and the core of the song was there so to speak, bar the usual challenge of working out what if anything the song was about - filling in the gaps between the few phrases I had already mouthed. I usually do this by repeatedly singing the lyrics to myself as I walk along the road, stopping every now and then to scribble a new line down in a notebook.  

 

The scene is 1950s Chelsea – the model is perhaps Major Rupert Rutland-Smith from the film The League Of Gentleman. In the film Rutalnd-Smith’s wife makes little attempt to disguise her unfaithfulness talking to her lover on the phone whilst taking a bath with Smith in earshot. “The war’s been over a long time” - “Nothing’s rationed anymore, there’s plenty to go round” she says provocatively. This and a host of other B & W 1950s British films provided the role models for the different characters that pop in and out of the song. For a singer prone to sibilance the lyrics are almost a self-directed/inflicted challenge. 

 

Musically a top of the ¾ synth pattern I added various layers of tango type instrumentation albeit warped and morphed. So in the mix one has organ, brass, vibes, piano overly foregrounded drum all building to something of a New Orleans funeral march on the chorus. In all of this the original synth sequence got a little lost so on the final mix I poked its head through here and there.