listen
“Universe becomes a chorus
Let the world try to ignore us
Distant galaxies explore us
We’re the world in song”
Jukebox Selections
This little song, which felt like Tim Hardin to me, found pole position as the first song on Self-Titled, and I think the half time bridge is one of the most beautiful things I’ve recorded, thanks to the strings of Daniel Felsenfeld and the gentle dreamy production. It’s probably the least true song on the record, in the sense that it’s only metaphor and nothing else: it’s all about addiction and self-sacrifice.
Written walking around Greenpoint, Brooklyn, thinking about the complicated and beautiful poems of John Donne; and then finished in CvS’ studio in San Francisco where he added the chords to the bridge and we recorded (more or less the moment it was written) the entire song in the demo version that can now be heard of the reissue of The Man With No Shadow. Mammoth were very excited for this to be the first single form that record, and there were high hopes for it: then the shoe dropped.
This was a leftover from Self-Titled, as you can tell, and every word of it is true, but the wonder of this particular recording is that when we started playing it The Jayhawks had never heard it, and the demo was in a very inchoate state for one of my usually chordy songs. We recorded seven entire versions, but we kept coming back to this, the second one: it was by far the best. Everything you hear, besides my voice and guitar (and perhaps some small overdubs by Gary Louris on guitar) was played live in the moment as I sang a guide vocal over the headphones. It was heaven. The Hastings Pier lives on, after this fire, but I call it the IKEA Pier now, because, though lovely, it looks a little too Scandinavian in design, a design which won lots of awards. The pier is opposite the White Rock Theatre, where we had my mother’s memorial concert in October 2019.
I rarely write piano ballads - and only partly because I can’t play the piano - but the old place in Brooklyn came with a piano in the front window, and I wrote most of Who Was Changed there. I can’t remember where the phrase “daylight ghosts” came from but it was something to do with T S Eliot. I just tried to look it up and find that there is now a Craig Taborn album from 2016 with the same title: perhaps he can tell me where I got it. Perhaps we got it from the same place. Of course I didn’t play the piano on the actual recording; I left that to a professional.
The Wall of Sound for the World in Song, with the Decemberists thundering through the most sign-posted key change of all time, and some tubular bells! The lyrics were all to do with the harmony of the spheres, the ancient philosophical concept of the Musica Universalis, mixed up with some idea I had of the big bang being primarily musical ("universe becomes a chorus") but also intimate and personal, as though your life depends on the wonder of the song you’re listening to: which sometimes it feels like it does. I guess putting this last on The Sound of His Own Voice didn’t help feature it, but what a way to end a record.