Every cloud has a silver lining

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "Every cloud has a silver lining"

Alan Day
5 years ago
Views:

Every cloud has a silver lining Silver Linings is the fourth studio album from Milow. There are ten songs and it was recorded at Fairfax, Los Angeles. This the story behind it, in Milow s own words.

1 Every cloud has a silver lining Silver Linings is the fourth studio album from Milow. There are ten songs and it was recorded at Fairfax, Los Angeles. This the story behind it, in Milow s own words. ABOUT LOS ANGELES At the end of 2011, after five years of non-stop touring, I was both physically and mentally exhausted. On a whim, I took a plane to Los Angeles. I have a bit of history with California; I lived there for a year, many of my friends including my booking agent live there too. ABOUT REJUVENATION There are a few things that I do well: singing, writing songs, playing live, and telling stories. But I can only do those things well if I m feeling good. That s an insight that I acquired in the last few years. I started to wonder what would become of my songs if I wasn t able to play them well. There s not a great deal to fall back on; I don t have a wall of sound to hide behind. ABOUT NEW BEGINNINGS As soon as I felt re-energized, I started writing songs again. I was able to be curious again, listen to new things and create music again with other singer-songwriters. Not just, Let s jam, but sitting down and writing songs in an afternoon. It puts you right back into that group vibe that I had missed. I wasn t working towards anything in particular, I didn t give myself any deadlines, I just wanted to enjoy myself. ABOUT PLAYING SOLO AGAIN At the start of my time in California, I opened for a few local singersongwriters in the US. It really felt like being on a holiday. I could drive along in the main act s van, had nothing to promote, so no pressure whatsoever. I d play for half an hour for an audience I didn t know. Back in Europe the crowd has expectations about playing some of my older songs, but over there I tried out new songs every night, because I really believe that these new songs are among the best I ve ever written. It was great to hear my English lyrics falling on the ears of native speakers too and after the gigs I d usually go out and grab a beer with the audience. I d almost forgotten how much I used to enjoy that. The acoustic tours were, more

2 than I d like to admit actually, crucial in creating the album. It all took me back to thinking about how a good song should always be able to stand alone, without any arrangement. ABOUT TIME I really took my time to make this album. Some might say, Yes, but you kept touring. And they d be right, but then again fifty concerts is my idea of a year off. I don t want to lose touch with the audience; it s the only way I can frame my songs in authenticity. Otherwise I would lose my path. ABOUT WRITING I ve never considered myself a prolific writer. For each of my albums I usually wrote fifteen songs and ten of them ended up on the record. Every note and every word honed to perfection. Now that I actually had the time to write, it came as a relief. Once I had written about forty songs I started to record them. It's such a different feeling. A lot of the songs on North and South were written backstage in concert halls, with me in a near permanent state of fatigue. But in all these new songs you might sense a lot more space and even a mental rest, since I d really taken the time to slow things down in my life. ABOUT KEVIN AUGUNAS I was at the Troubadour in Los Angeles; I d gone to a Jessie Baylin gig. After the show I bought her album and I loved the retro sound of it. The producer turned out to be Kevin Augunas, a producer with a promising résumé. He has his own label, Fairfax Recordings, releasing music for Gotye and Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. He s mixed The Lumineers and worked with Valerie June and The Black Keys; he also took over the famous Sound City Studios. The first time we spoke we hit it off talking about recording an album inspired by Rodriguez. ABOUT THE ROLE OF THE PRODUCER The essence of the collaboration with Kevin was the way he energized me. I need someone who pushes me and, even it s a mere theoretical concept, it s something I consciously need from someone. I wanted to impress him with my work. I wanted to blow him away. ABOUT THE MUSICIANS Kevin put together a fantastic team around me with musicians who had music history in their DNA; they d played with Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen and James Taylor, and it was refreshing for me that they didn t know my background. None of them knew You Don t Know or any of my

3 older stuff. I had to get myself into the kind of mental state where I felt I could win them over in just one performance. And I was there alone; no manager, no entourage. But that was important; it made it clear to them that I was just there to create great music. ABOUT THE SUM AND THE PARTS I don t play all the instruments myself and make records entirely on my own, I depend on a team. I ve always loved that the sum is greater than the individual parts. ABOUT RECORDING - I Some of my favorite songs of all time were recorded in just a couple of days. That s how it was back in the 70s when they put together an amazing band of musicians. That was my reference point. We sat in the same room, I played the songs to them, they listened, we tried it out a few times together and then the tape (!) would start rolling. That s exactly what we did; I d written over forty songs and offered twenty of them up to the group. It was quick; we recorded two or three each day. They needed to go down well right away or I would just move on to the next one. We did some work on the details, but ultimately the basics stayed in place. To me this was a different way of working compared to my earlier albums, which I recorded in just a couple of days. This time I got to spend two weeks in the studio one in June 2013 and one in September ABOUT RECORDING - II I didn t want there to be a huge difference between the way I wrote the songs and how they were recorded. I only went into the studio once the songs were written and I recorded them live. In many of the songs on the albums you can hear the first vocals take. Because the first take is magic. ABOUT THE SETTING After the first recording session in June 2013 I spent the rest of the summer writing. Every Friday I would play a couple of new songs to Kevin at Fairfax, and it felt like doing an audition. The studio is his office and I ve be through a lot in that huge recording space of his. It was a wonderful experience; it s where classics like Fleetwood Mac by Fleetwood Mac or After The Goldrush by Neil Young were made. Sometimes Kevin wasn t convinced; sometimes he d like my new songs. It was so invigorating to be spoken to in that way, like any other musician working on songs and with no need for it to have to go anywhere. If I had a bad day, I d just carry on the next day, just like I did when I was starting out. I was living in LA and I

4 commuted. I never could have made this album if I d been stuck in some LA motel. ABOUT THE STRINGS My favourite recording day was the session with the string section. I d worked with a quartet before, back in 2005, but this time there were thirteen musicians. The trigger for this may have partly been the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in 2012 in Oslo. It was the first time that I d played live with a symphony orchestra. It was unbelievable to hear You Don t Know come to life that way; it s as if your songs take on a more classical and sustainable nature. Rodriguez also was an inspiration for this; his recordings have a particular half-arranged feel to tit. The basis is his live versions, to which horns and strings are added. I wanted to do something similar; get into a room with musicians and capture the moment with all of its magic. It was good to get that imprint again, to not just keep doing things over and over, but to just try and record a beautiful version of a song. A song might benefit by sounding a bit raw and imperfect sometimes. ABOUT KEVIN AND JO The inspiration and creation are American, the finish is Belgian. Kevin Augunas was important in the song writing phase and in putting together a group of musicians; but it was Jo Francken who helped me to nail the final versions of the arrangements. ABOUT THE TITLE I wanted a timeless title, preferably one word, like Rumours. I m not a massive fan of album titles that are also song titles, so that option went out the window. For North and South I had come up with the title in advance; the concept, the extremes, was also in the songs. Now I was faced with an emotion that I couldn t quite put my finger on. Silver Linings is a line from Wind Me Up : she was the queen of silvers linings. The person is someone who always saw the best in everything, an optimist, but who has now gone past that point and is struggling with life. The image of that stayed with me and I felt it really suited the feel of the record, which is at its core a case study about the concept of hope. Silver Linings strikes a good balance between sorrow and joy; the two always go hand in hand. When you are feeling bad you can sometimes cheer yourself up by listening to a sad song. It doesn t add up, but it works. It s what makes the image of Silver Linings so right; the fact that happiness and darkness are so closely entwined, that you sometimes need one in order to compel the other. The outcome is positive. In my concerts I take a journey that encompasses sorrow, but the outcome is always a warm and hopeful feeling. That s the case also with

5 Silver Linings, which touches on some very painful things but in the end there is catharsis. Another thing I love about Silver Linings is that you don t have to be able to translate the words or the image to understand what it means. ABOUT LYRICS I talked a lot about my lyrics with the people I worked with and I loved that; it was something I was craving. During concerts outside of Belgium I often get many more responses about my the lyrical content - maybe it s partly because in between songs at concerts I talk to my audience in English apart from in the Netherlands and France. That lack of appreciation has been a mild frustration to me for quite some time. ABOUT THE MOMENTUM I can release this record now; I have a certain momentum. It feels like I m a bigger priority for Universal Records than ever before and it would be a terrible waste if I wasn t able to make use of that to make an album that is a bit of a departure for me. Silver Linings combines some of the best elements from the past with an updated new sound and brand new colors. ABOUT EXPECTATIONS AFTER SELLING 1 MILLION ALBUMS I do of course feel a certain pressure, but I ve always been pretty good in dealing with that. But despite, or maybe because of the success I ve had over the years, I have also managed to create the freedom for myself to keep other people s expectations at bay. No one ever flew over from Europe to listen to it, I didn t allow any outsiders into the creative process and I was able to do that because I m still my own boss. I was able to make Silver Linings on my own and that gave me the peace of mind I was so sorely in need of. ABOUT POSSIBILITIES In terms of how Silver Linings will be received, I find it hard to make predictions; but no matter what happens next, it will always be the essential record that sums up the past two years of my life and it gives me endless options for what comes next. The entire spectrum of music is now open to me. If this record reaches an audience, then I ll be able to do whatever I want even more. ABOUT AMERICA I didn t make this record for the American market, but I do hope it will be my first real American release.

6 ABOUT DOING SOMETHING DIFFERENT As soon as I have finished one thing, I always want to move on to the next. Whether it s about a place I ve performed or something artistic, I just want to move forward. Not huge departures, rather more subtle differences. It s only in the long term that I will be able to see whether I have been able to make a difference. ABOUT DEBUT ALBUMS Whenever I make a record I try to think, This is for someone who has never heard of me before. Because I always end up playing places I ve never been to before, it always creates a fresh impression. It s the first they have ever heard of me. I want to carry on making debut albums. ABOUT THE ALBUM People who say that the concept of a full album is almost dead, clearly aren t songwriters. My story has moved forward via a number of big singles, but I can t get to those songs other than through other songs. You start something, leave it for a while and then come back to it. It s how you come up with a variety of songs, some of which are more memorable than others. It s a knock-out competition that you can t predict the outcome of. The ten songs on Silver Linings are the result of a careful selections process from a group of forty songs. In a few years from know I know that it s possible that only two or three (hopefully more) will have stood the test of time and so you could argue that I should have just recorded a few songs, instead of a full album. But you d be missing the point; I can t imagine a situation where I would only work on one song for three months. I would lose myself in the process and over rationalize everything. Plus, you mustn t forget, I m a sucker for narratives Silver Linings (28 March 2014) Label Homerun Records / Universal Music Production Kevin Augunas and Jo Francken

7 Recording and mix Clif Norell (Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M., Tom Petty, Jeff Buckley, Weezer ) Notable musicians Larry Goldings - keyboards (James Taylor, Norah Jones, Maceo Parker, Tracy Chapman ) Matt Chamberlain - drums (Fiona Apple, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, Kanye West, Regina Spektor, Frank Ocean ) Tom Vanstiphout bass, guitars Val McCallum - guitars (Jackson Browne, Harry Nilsson, Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt ) Courtney Marie Andrews - backing vocals Studio Fairfax Recordings, Los Angeles

On the eve of the Neil Young and Crazy Horse Australian tour, he spoke with Undercover's Paul Cashmere.

On the eve of the Neil Young and Crazy Horse Australian tour, he spoke with Undercover's Paul Cashmere. Undercover Greendale (interview with poncho) Sometime in the 90's Neil Young was christened the Godfather of Grunge but the title really belonged to his band Crazy Horse. While Young has jumped through