thephotoalbum

The Photo Album - Track 8/20: Bright Eyes - “We Are Nowhere and It’s Now”

This is one of the tracks that I was having a lot of trouble with. I wasn’t sure what to do with it and I was on the verge of just taking a random sparse landscape which would of been a shame, as I’m not really into that.

I had a week off work and was visiting by the seaside. While I was there I wasn’t sleeping, and when I did I was having horrible dreams that were too vivid when I woke up, and too horrible to talk about.
Anyway, the lack of sleep and the miserable weather left me sitting indoors with headphones and a guitar. I sat playing this song on my guitar and suddenly inspiration hit.

“and all day it seems that we’re inbetween a past and a future town”

“i’ve been sleeping so strange at night, side affects they don’t advertise”

Whatever has been going on with me lately, I don’t feel the same way about where I used to live. When I’m there I’ve a longing to leave, and it’s only really family that keeps me going back. So the idea of an image that ties in with the past few days and the feeling of escaping led to me recruiting my sister to venture to a freezing beach to battle cold winds, sweeping sand, and no shoes (I owe you big time m’n’m).

I like this one. Hope you do to.
Until next time…

The Photo Album: Track 7/20 - Bob Dylan’s ‘Just Like A Woman’

A lilting pop song from one of my favourite artists of all time. He’s recognising a girl as a woman, and still seeing within her whatever it is that keeps the spirit of the ‘girl’ alive.

My friend Amy was very generous with her time and came along to help me out with this. As you already know, she is incredibly beautiful, and is absolutely perfect for the playful lusting that Dylan’s singing about. edit: i had a change of heart about the picture used for this one. it’s from the same shoot but think this one is, personally, better suited.

The Photo Album 6/20: Idlewild - In Remote Part / Scottish Fiction.

Watch&Listen

A bit of a more personal interpretation this time, rather than looking at the broader concept of the song it’s a bit more to do with what the song means to me.

Whenever I’m away from home for any length of time, I long for certain things; places, sounds, sights, tastes. Idlewild are one of the bands that I always turn to alleviate some of these things. The three albums that culminated with The Remote Part are some of my favourites, and this song in particular.

At Connect festival a few years ago Idlewild finished their headline set with this song, leaving the stage to a wall of feedback and edwin morgan reciting ‘scottish fiction’. It was a pretty epic moment, particularly in the surroundings.

This picture is of one of my favourite places in Scotland, or anywhere else for that. It’s looking down Loch Leven from a view point where I camped with some friends a few years ago. It seemed apt that I should use an image of one of my favourite Scottish places to coincide with the song that takes me home wherever I am.

Part 5/20 of The Photo Album: Frightened Rabbit - Keep Yourself Warm.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qZr1uHiwsY

A bit of a tenuous link so stick with me. If you’ve listened to or know the song it’ll be pretty clear that it’s about a culture of casual sex and its misgivings: “you won’t find love in a hole, it takes more than f***ing someone to keep yourself warm”.

Now this wasn’t a song that was picked for ease of shooting, rather just because I love the song. I considered the options for a literal look at the songs meanings and decided against the obvious choice of taking pictures of someone I don’t know to keep warm!

Instead I’ve gone for another way many people choose to fill themselves with warmth, one however that I don’t really see eye to eye with, in much the same way that FR don’t see eye to eye with the Friday night love affairs.

Whenever I’m home I pass this church with a neon cross visible from the road and it’s always bothered me. I’m not a religious person, although I’m more than happy for people to practice whatever faith they choose. I don’t like having someone elses faith pushed upon me and when that does happen I tend to argue it down as something that only exists to diminish the fear of the prospect of nothing after death. At times of desperation or loss people turn to their respective god for help, advice and solace. If this works for an individual then I would never dream of denying them that right. I, however, see it purely as a way of keeping yourself warm in the cold days and nights when your own person isn’t enough.

I hope this doesn’t antagonise as that really isn’t the intention. Merely making my opinions felt in a more appropriate way than a literal interpretation of the song would have allowed.

Part 4/20 of The Photo Album: Aereogramme - Barriers.

Please go and listen to the song

“I thought the fight was over All battles won I thought you lit your blind folds And watched them burn I thought that I could show you All that I’ve found But these barriers dictate all sight and all sound”

Walls that we build ourselves are the hardest to break down.

As much as you might long for a glimpse of the other side, it’s often hard, if not impossible, to repair the damage that barriers can do.

Big thanks to Iain for helping out with this one.

The third addition to my photo album project. This photo was taken for the song ‘Brick’ by Ben Folds. You can hear it on the album ‘Whatever and Amen’.

I knew this song for a while before somebody told me about the meaning behind the song. The specifics are quite (very) morbid and upsetting so I won’t go into it in detail. If you’ve listened or know the song, you’ll know that the general theme is a feeling of hopelessness, isolation, loneliness and desperation.

The ‘Brick’ of the title is the a weight on him causing these emotions. It’s an extremely poignant song and probably the one that I’ve been most uncertain of how to tackle. I was out in Glasgow with my camera last week when I spotted this broken window down an alleyway. It immediately struck me as an interesting subject for a photograph. I think the sombre nature of the scene matches the lyrical theme of the song.

Justboy

Track 2 of my ‘Photo Album’ project is the song Justboy by Biffy Clyro. Biffy are (although I hate using the term) my favourite band. I love them. I’ve seen them play countless times and still listen to their music all the time (I even really like the new stuff, so there!!). This is the first Biffy song I heard, played by Steve Lamaq back when Radio 1 was good. I loved it then, I love it now.

On an only semi-related note, whenever I fly (I hate flying) I listen to the first three tracks from Blackened Sky on repeat until the plane is up in the air crusing, with Justboy being the third of those three songs.

If you haven’t heard it

My mind tends to wander when it doesn’t have something to focus on. The wandering process can sometimes be quite interesting in itself but recently it’s been wandering to places that I don’t particularly want to visit.

To get around my inability to control the direction of my thoughts, I’ve come up with a bit of a photography project to keep myself busy(like I don’t have enough on!). Lately my photography has been wandering about aimlessly hoping that something pops out at me screaming “look at me, look at me, i’m photogenic, take my picture”. More often than not, this doesn’t happen, so the solution…

The Photo Album (pun stolen blatantly from Death Cab, in case you wanted to pull me up on it). I’ve made a mix CD of twenty of my favourite songs, and I’m going to try and come up with an accompanying image for each track. I’ll post them up here as I get through them, probably with a bit of an explanation about why I’ve chosen the track, and if it’s not obvious, how the picture relates to the track.

Track 1 - 4th April 2010

Bob Marley - Three Little Birds

I started off with a pretty easy one, nothing abstract about the image. I’ve been trying to simplify a lot of my photography recently. A friend named Matt who I met last year is a stunning photographer, and a lot of his work is very minimalistic. I think it can be quite difficult to pull it off, not sure if I’ve really managed here but I like the image.

The song is one I remember from being young, again, it’s very minimalist, straightforward and a fantastic melody. It translates really well in so many situations and is an eternally optimistic song. Without going in to the politics of it (which would be to move away from the reasons behind my love for it) it has a great power to make people smile. I challenge you to find someone that doesn’t like this song. It’s a demonstration of what I love about music; the ability to transcend peoples differences and give some common ground.

“don’t worry about a thing, cos every little thing gonna be alright”