Love Span A Web - Artificial Light, 2008

There are a couple of songs on Artificial Light that are heavily influenced by music I was listening to at the time. Ocean Floor was written soon after I got my hands on a copy of Sigur Ros' 'Takk' album, and I did my best to lift the etheral massiveness of their sound whilst keeping it within my own bounderies. This was written a couple of summers back when I was listening to Jimmy Eat World's 'Clarity' album and as much Mineral as I could get my hands on. It was an emo summer.

Love Span A Web was written in the middle of recording, and I was in the process of sinking headfirst into Neutral Milk Hotel's beautiful 'In The Aeroplane Over The Sea' album. I didn't so much fall in love with that album as I was pushed while my back was turned.

Listen to it.

There's a feeling that album gives you, like you're being thrown weightless around on a rough ocean, or like you're standing in front of a yellow light so bright it threatens to drown you. Drowning is the common factor here, clearly.

It's difficult to describe, but I wanted to write something of my own which captured some of the emotion in the Neutral Milk Hotel album, and I came out with this track, Love Span A Web.

When I listen to the song I can hear the influence in the melody mostly - it isn't a melody I would have written left to my own devices. It flows in a way that doesn't come naturally to me, but I really loved it. I think that might actually be the very reason I like it so much; I feel like it isn't a song I was meant to write, so I can listen to it and detach myself from it.

Because that song was written towards the end of the recording session, I was starting to come out of my depression and this was the first song to cover that. It's probably the song that captures it best, the feeling of coming home, of starting hesistantly to step blinking into the sunlight.

Actually, I want to put the lyrics here.

Come inside, it's warmer in here
Now I keep the fire burning.
This can be your home,
Stay as long as you want,
Not just for the season.

Because I've been away for a while
In the mountains above this town.
I trusted my shadow,
Got lost in the shallows and smoke.
Oh god...

Stay for Christmas and I'll make it up to you.
No excuses, I'll sit here and talk to you
For as long as you want me to.

'Cause I miss how easily love span a web around
Everything I thought I knew about
And everyone I thought I cared about.

Come inside, it's warmer in here
Now I keep the fire burning.

Everything about that says 'hope' to me. And the reason it's so short is because it was such a scary song to write. I wrote one verse, one chorus, and realised there wasn't much else to write. It was the first positive song I'd written in a long, long time, and I didn't know what to do with it. So I just stopped writing.

(I just realised that I nicked that 'oh god' at the end of the verse from a Sufjan Stevens song. I have no shame, but then it feels sort of understandable.)

The only thing is, I can't play it live. I feel like the production itself is as much a part of the song as the music and lyrics. We wanted it to sound rough as hell, as it was always going to follow the hyper-producedness of Ocean Floor. What we did was set a mic up at one end of the room, then sat me at the other end where I played through the song live. Then we put the mic as far away from the desk-speakers as possible, hit Play and recorded the playback from across the room.

We did that a few times, layered it up, and managed to get this really effective sense of depth and distance. Which, now I think about it, is suitable. The song isn't about stepping out of the dark, it's just about realising that's where you're headed. So the singer isn't meant to be on a stage or a few inches from a microphone, he's meant to be miles and miles away, but at least he's heading in the right direction.

The song was written in the summertime (if I remember correctly), so the references to Christmas are a bit odd. I think that's just down to what Christmas represents to me: warm reds and oranges from a fire, friendship, family, that sort of thing.

The way I see it, there might be a couple of different people talking in Love Span A Web, although I'm not sure about it yet. It could be read as two people having a conversation over a great distance, the first part of the verse and the first part of the chorus as someone who is waiting, the second parts from someone who is on their way home. I quite like that, a sort of call and response, although I know that isn't the only way to read it. And strangely, when you look at it like that, the song seems a lot shorter; a stunted, awkward invitation rather than a passionate plea. Odd.

A final little bit of trivia. Originally, when Artificial Light was hitting the 16 tracks long mark (eep), the album was going to be designed sort of like a tape. It would start with the sound of a tape being put in a machine and the Play button being hit, and then go into the first track. When it reached the middle of the album, the seventh or eighth track would end abruptly to the sound of a tape hitting the end of a reel. Then a lengthy pause, where we'd hear the listener get up off his/her couch, walk over to the stereo, eject the tape and flip it over. The next track would start from there. That was always going to be the segue Ocean Floor and Love Span A Web.

I always liked that idea of the tape, and I can't quite remember why it didn't happen. Maybe we just got bogged down in everything else. Regardless, I'd like to put it on the next album or the one after. Tapes, with their two sides, gave the listener a break mid-album. I think that's essential a lot of the time, and it helps people digest the album. Plus, you get to have a favourite side. I know that's a redundant concept that can't be rectified with some mock-analogue sound effects, but I miss it. I miss my old walkman.

Actually, I think the reason the Tape thing didn't happen is because Artificial Light wasn't right for it. It needs to be on an album that's looking back, rather than one that's focussed on the future or on the inside. My next album, I hope, will be a little more sentimental, and a healthy goodbye to a part of my life I'm doomed to romanticise for the rest of my life. 16-22.