'We Could Have, We Should Have, We Didn't'

Reposting this here as it has words.

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'We Could Have, We Should Have, We Didn't' from 2008. Perhaps my sixth album, recorded in Southampton, Brighton, Bristol and County Cork over one rather chaotic but very productive summer with many friends. Several of the songs were written with @k_mcclement and she played beautiful guitar and piano and of course sang wonderfully on everything. Lawry @birdengine sang on anything I could get him on around this time, @samagramsam played signature electric guitar, at Penflick in Brighton Lewis Shaw played drums and Daniel Clark brought the fuzzy bass along too. Later at home in Ireland I put this physical thing together and included in each copy one crow feather from my growing collection. I washed dozens in the bath and the scent of dusty, musty strangeness has somehow never left me. Last summer at a falconry display near Stuttgart a large northern raven flew low above my head and there it was again. I asked the falconer about the particular and peculiar smell of crows and he replied with the explanation that they weren’t like us. True enough. ‘We Could Have, We Should Have, We Didn’t’ is an excessive messy collection but I like the looseness. 14 songs, covers of @lizgreenmusic and @sonsofnoelandadrian , long things with lots of guitar solos, backwards vocals, slow drums, birdsong everywhere and much bravado. But listening to it by chance today I was surprised how it kind of clomps along and I'm fond of the momentum and the naive energy of the thing. I didn’t really know how to put it all together so I put it all together and moved to Berlin. #thegreatpark #woodlandrecordings #wecouldhaveweshouldhavewedidnt #kristinmcclement #homerecording #tractor #diylabel

A post shared by The Great Park (@thegreatpark) on Oct 8, 2020 at 9:13am PDT