Enchanted

Released : May 2003

 

Personnel

Peter Nuttall - Music/Lyrics/Vocals
Douglas Hunter - Lyrics/Vocals
Ian Forbes - Music/Bass guitar
Martin Craggs - Music/Guitar

It has been about six or seven months since we'd written anything new - we'd been trying to polish some old songs using our new 12-track studio desk.  Not only had we refreshed our approach to songwriting, we also had a few writing sessions with a new guitarist, Martin Craggs, which gave us a new perspective.  'Forbidden Fruit' and the beginnings of 'Uncle Jack' had already been written - Martin added the guitar solo and rhythm to the former and most of the instrumentation on the latter.  The song we wrote from scratch during those sessions was 'Dark of Day' and was probably the song that broke us out of our 'normal' pop song cycle.  It had mood changes, breaks and showcases.  The lyrics were also steeped in reality, raw and emotive.

'Fate Says' was written about a truly inspirational person I met who had been through so much in her life and was still one of the most optimistic people I'd ever met.  The line 'a light to outburn mine' was true testament to her and the chorus was trying to say 'whatever you do, you'll be where you're meant to be - Fate says so!'.  Using the new 12-track technology, I was able to layer three vocal lines on the last minute of the song and have them not sound hissy, muddy and incomprehensible.

'Uncle Jack' is about Jack Daniels of course and we've referenced that guy so many times in songs since!  'Love at first sight' was really just a demo that we couldn't be bothered to record properly so we just stuck the demo on the CD - Yeah, we'd started putting albums on CDs!  The 12-track desk allowed you to mix a project onto a stereo track which could be burned to CD.  

Older-Wiser was again entrenched in reality - a conversation with a younger version of myself - trying to work out if I was older and wiser or if i'd told myself then what I knew now, would I have done anything different?  'Vow Breaker' was one of those Doug lyrics where he weaves a story expertly in just a few verses and a chorus.  

'Never did, Never will' followed that 'anything I regret' theme and the 'fate says' thing - evaluating exactly where we were and why.  Brought Every Truth Home was a weak kind of ballad but we added it to the album anyway just because it was part of the sessions.  

'January Snow' was one of Doug's lyrics which I'm pretty sure was inspired by his walk home from my house on New Years Day.  Suitably refreshed from the New Year's Eve party, he made the decision to walk five miles home at 2am in the snow.  It was one of the first tracks we built using the 12-track desk's inbuilt drum machine and guitar effects processor.

'Voice mail' was something we jammed with 'World for our children' in mind.  We used the same PSS-90 as on the Transfection album, sequencing the drums and bass into three sections that we skipped between live whilst Doug added his first vocal performance since 1995's Bedrock.

- Peter