Seeing Red

Another shade of purple heralds the new day
A tinge of ultra-violet lights you on your way
But you can't avoid the burning glow inside
Stirring up the embers of your wounded pride

Walk out into the sun
Walk out and never run
The arena frames the fight
Where you argue black is white

Shining light on argument and obviated facts
Display the world anew again and dispense with the tact
Strawmen totter backwards as you put them to the sword
But every crushing victory delivers scant reward

You never see reality - it's filtered to your taste
And may repent at leisure when you scatter fire in haste
Driving down the level of debate to win the war
No-one loves a winner who's a zero keeping score

And you wonder why the world gets in your way
Take the arguments and lock them all away
Don't you know it's time to take a step outside
But please set down your guns and cross the false divide

Yet, I see, in your mind colours may not flow
Well, that's a shame - we could be people we both know

I know you're hurting
And I see the good inside!

There's only so much time we have, there is no more to come
When all is black and white and colours cannot run
If only you'd stop shouting you might hear a little more
Learn the worth of nuance to repair your fatal flaw

Where we let rainbows in our minds
We learn to breathe
Where we view differences as light
We learn to see
Where we let purple rule in time
In time we learn
We learn to be

Walk out into the sun
Walk out into the sun
Into the sun

"...lyrics are funny things for they mean different things to different people, and one of the lyricists skills, I feel, should be to write in such a way that you don't necessarily prescribe exactly to the listener what they should be feeling. What I was thinking about when I wrote the lyrics to Seeing Red, is the tendency of some of us these days, including myself at the very least in the past tense, to live our lives too much online. In discussion forums we sometimes argue about things in a way that we would never do if we were just sitting with a bunch of people down the pub. This can become obsessive and so focused that we stop being able to see the bigger picture."

"It's also self-referential though - an injunction to myself to get back out into the world of writing and performing original material. I normally write lyrics longhand, but this one flowed out so fast, I had to go to the computer and type it straight out! The direct inspiration was a song I wrote a long time ago, asking 'Are the many shades of purple only me?'".

Rich Harding

 

Oud En Nieuw

It's the turn of the year and we're taking stock
Of life behind
The promises of times to come
Play-Pause-Rewind
Thoughts of roughest diamond
Break the daily grind
Shining out a challenge that can
Strike you blind
Spinning out of balance they can
Strike you blind

Set them free
Let them go
See what they find
Set them free
Let them go
And they hypnotise

Setting them free
Letting them go
Seeing what you'll find
Setting them free
Letting them go
They crystallise

Lighter than air they drift away
On silent glides
And who can know the currents on which
They may ride
Feel the heart ascending as we
Watch them climb
All bound to fall back down to earth
In their good time

Each a fragment of a greater whole
Like Chinese lanterns without our control
Sail away into the atmosphere
Who can trace the course of coming years?
Who can sway the thoughts of the coming years?

Now spiralling down
To flicker and die
But deep in your soul
The fire's still alive

"Oud En Nieuw refers to a habit I have of walking around the streets of my home town Bristol, towards the end of the year. I'm thinking about the things that have happened during the year: where did I come from and where I'm going. If there's Christmas music on - and there usually is - I also have a habit of twisting the lyrics of John Lennon's famous anti-war song to 'So this is Bristol, and what have you done?'. I'm a great believer in always having a plan, but always being flexible with it. You need to start walking to get anywhere, and sometimes where you get isn't where you intended to be, but you have to start the journey all the same."

"Specifically it recalls sitting in Utrecht (The Netherlands) with my girlfriend Sarah on what the English would call New Year's Eve, watching Chinese lanterns floating over the city, and realizing that the wind direction meant they would have been launched from near where I used to live. If I'd not unexpectedly and suddenly stopped living there, I wouldn't have been with Sarah in Utrecht watching them. So Oud En Nieuw is a much better title than, for instance, New Year's Eve because it sums the whole song up far more comprehensively. That's languages for you - direct translations don't always cut the mustard."

Rich Harding

 

Reality Cheque

i. Fool's Gold

Wake in the morning
Kick-start your body for another day
Life leaves you yawning
Feel you deserve a chance at another way

You have a talent you can share
A soul that you so long to bare
And all the dreams of who you are
All the mirages of superstars

Into the city
Past all the money-men with stolen lives
The lights are pretty
But there's a secret behind their disguise

And you see them everywhere you turn
Projecting menaces with cash to burn
Yet still you want to play their game
To go from nobody to household name

And the humdrum love to see you cry
The fickle, fake and fawning pay to watch you die

You didn't go to the right school
So you're opened up to ridicule
And no matter how hard you protest
You're shedding feathers to another's nest

ii. Dead Reckoning

It's alright until reality kicks in
It's alright until reality kicks in
It's alright until reality kicks in and you
Find out that you're left with nothing in the end

Everything is filtered through the eyes of money and
Payback time and due dates call you to account

We don't find belief inside a carbon copy
The formula stacks up but so too does the price

Go on, hedge your bets with someone else's future and
Bailout as the card-house comes down to the crunch

Hope is the one thing we've got on our side
Hope can be salvaged when all else has died *

It's alright until reality kicks in

Everything is filtered through the eyes of money and
Payback time and due dates call you to account

iii. Rainbows End

I'll have a shower
And then phone my brother up
Within the hour
I'll smash another cup **

How are we to scope the impossible
If it can't be you don't understand
We only see plain misdirection
As the elephant struts through the room
Eyes of the world are upon you
Burning holes as they focus the sun
Blurring the lens of perception
And the camera lies on its side
Twisting our dreams into nightmares
'Til you wake in the cold sweat of dawn
Bearing our soul to the monsters
You will fight them with all of your might
Hoping to prove we are stronger
Pick it up, look at it, and then throw
Bounce from the nine to the constant
As the story turns back on itself
Hold on to your inspiration
It inspires your heart and your soul
Feel it burn brightly inside you
And the lantern sails into the night
Guard it and sell it to no-one
Once it's lost it can never return
It opens windows to breathe through
With the voyage an end in itself
Never to lend or to borrow
Be yourself, be yourself, be yourself
Or to mortgage your soul to tomorrow

(Reprise:)

Wake in the morning
Kick-start your body
Leaves you yawning
Feel you deserve
Everything filtered through money
Only see plain misdirection
Never lend, never borrow
Or mortgage your soul to tomorrow

Check...
Check...
Check...
Mate

(With thanks for the inspiration - and lyric snippets - to Hazel O'Connor * and the late, great Billy Mackenzie **.)

"There are lots of things going on lyrically in that song! I enjoy writing songs that have two - sometimes more- threads going through them. From my point of view, the threads in Reality Cheque are about the illusions of fame and the perils of living on borrowed goods and money, both personally and as a country."

Rich Harding