Roots-Rock, Americana, Blues
Album by singer songwriter Tim Gerard
‘Right from the start’ is the new album by singer songwriter Tim Gerard, recorded and produced together with Archie Sylvester (Ferris & Sylvester). The album is out on the 1st of April on all digital platforms. The album consists of autobiographical poetic songs about life, love and loss, through metaphoric imagery. Some songs stress on political deeper meaning, sometimes satirical as well as touching on the romantic side of life and love.
Together Archie and Tim created sonic layers – using all live instrumentation with the guitar as the main voice of the album. The songs were recorded without a click to capture the live performance and rawness of the songs. It was Archie’s idea to use the techniques of recording to tape – limiting the song to 16 tracks. By setting limits to recording instruments and parts, gives the song its live feel and captures the performance rather than forcing anything. The drums were performed by Ross Gordon, and Issy Ferris and Archie Sylvester (Ferris & Sylvester) on backing vocals.
The lyrics on the album were written together with author Gordon Torr (Kill Yourself and Count To 10). The interesting side of this writing duo is that their perspective on life has a broad reach, from deep, young and romantic to acceptant, cutting, witty and wise. A great combination of light and heavy topics all at the same time.
Each painting is named after the song title on the album, symbolising a lyric in each of the eleven tracks on the record. ‘London Oh London’ is a blues rock song, which was inspired by Gerard’s experience gigging around London, painting the city as a conglomerate money trap with a killer hook – “You’ve got the prettiest face and the dirtiest mind”. Gerard depicts this with a painting of a serpent wrapping itself around a London Underground sign. “You can ride and you can fly, you can run and you can hide, but what you think you gotta keep is what you gotta leave behind” – The song ‘Pretenders’ is poetically auto-biographical about the ups and downs of journey as a full time musician from living in the US to paying his dues in London as a full time musician. Along with the song pretenders Tim painted a statue of ‘Paul Revere’ with his Fender Stratocaster guitar, referencing his time in the States as a musician. The explosive song ‘Who Said’ carries a sociological and political message of gossip, rumour and fake news through multiple stories in each verse regarding false rumour captured together with a painting of a megaphone blowing soap bubbles. ‘Blue Skies’ is a satirical blues, rock n roll song about the end of the world, escaping the sadness and cynicism of one’s life. For this song Gerard’s visualized a blue Hawaii cocktail containing a tropical island on a windowsill as the perfect metaphor. Darker songs such as ‘As The Crow Flies’ lyrically dives into a deeper subject on humanity and a higher perspective; the crow, mid-flight carrying a pocket watch captures it perfectly. As well as songs, that are fuelled with heavy, political and sociological undertones. There are some beautiful ballads on the album.
Songs such as ‘Rotterdam’ a song about breakup and reflection; ’You were a sailboat and I was the breeze’ depicted with a melancholy watercolour of a sailboat floating past an old dutch windmill.
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