Song For Zula (BBC Radio Performance 2013)

Foreign Sea

Under My Skin

As heard in the #1 Netflix film, Love Hard. golda may covers "Read my Mind" by the Killers.

Read My Mind

Time Can Prove You Wrong

Tarifa

Una Noche Más

Depreshmode

Jon and Roy - The Road Ahead Is Golden (Official Video).mp3

the german word for despair is ‚verzweiflung‘ which has the word ‘zweifel’ (=doubt) at its core. this means that despair literally translates as ‘lost/entangled/caught up in doubts.’

etymologically, this can be explained by the loss of hope for improvement, i.e., doubt that something bad could turn out well in the foreseeable future.

one could philosophize at length about doubts. I guess this has already been done in heaps. especially since, beyond the torment of perceived hopelessness, doubts also have absolutely positive aspects. they are an essential part of intelligence and wisdom. just as their absence clearly indicates stupidity and arrogance (#dunning-kruger). so being smart always means agonizing over the question of whether you are actually smart.

apropos agonizing, a relatively tolerable form of despair undoubtedly goes hand in hand with the conflict between the desire for individual freedom and interpersonal bonds. can I translate that as the “have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too-dilemma”?

fortunately, I/we personally never had a problem with this, because I/we never experienced or felt our relationship as conflict of freedom and commitment. however, looking at the course of relationships in our son's generation, I get the feeling that there is a lot of turmoil at work. relationship stress and divorces all over the place. that fits with my album topic! 

here’s a song I wrote about 20 years ago with just the first line of the chorus and later released as a semi-instrumental on sc ages ago. now lyrics have been added (translation hopefully not too wordily phrased) – and with them vocals based on my guitar templates, where suno once again acted extremely annoying. the machine repeatedly tends to slip into hackneyed vocal patterns and that means having to start completely from scratch…

©music and lyrics by Hans-Michael Albers, instrumental cover & vocal performance by suno 5

I reach for your arms, but I dream of the sky
I ache for your touch, yet I can’t comply
You whisper ‘home,’ and I drift away
Each time I linger, I lose my way

My heart’s confined while my thoughts run free 
Two fractured souls coexist in me
One craves the flame, one longs for the breeze 
I’m love’s own patient, undone by its disease

As much I love you, I feel the blues
The more I hold you, the more I lose

It’s a holy war, a graceful crime
To beg for forever yet plead for time 
You’re my redemption, my sweet undoing 
Every path I take leads back to you

There’s no victory in a game like this
Where freedom and love can’t coexist 
To live is to lose, to stay is to die 
So, I fade to ash beneath your sky

As much I love you, I feel the blues
The more I hold you, the more I lose
As deep I feel you, I lose my ground
As near I find you, you can’t be found

As long I chase you, the more I fade
As much I trust you, the more I’m afraid
As much I need you, I pay the dues
As much I love you, I feel the blues

As much I love you

Knockin' On Heaven's Door

Hot Tears

Colder Heavens - EP

Lie Alone

Sometimes a song is more than just a song. Sometimes a song can be a mirror to the world, or to the hidden selves we are or want to be. 

Lily Kershaw's debut album, Midnight In The Garden, explores emotional landscapes and heart clutching melodies that say the unsaid things we struggle to say ourselves. The album takes root in the titans of folk music…those classic songsmiths who weave tapestries of sound with fingerpicking and tales of often unspoken truths. 

In song, Kershaw is an old soul, but in person, she's a kinetic 22 year-old, a "nearly life-long Los Angeleno," she says. She's ebullient and lively, quick with a joke and an infectious smile. Raised adjacent to the Hollywood machine, Kershaw offers an antidote to the long-mythologized Los Angeles glitz; she's authentic, and honest, self-effacing and, above all, she is herself. She may not tell you this, but she's conduit, a nexus of the experiences of the world around her. She feels the weight of the world, she says, but through song, she wears it as an emblem of who she is. Like the day-glow dreams of Los Angeles noir, she reveals the darkness that coexists with sunshine. 

"It's all about death," she laughs, while describing her music. "I’d love to say most of my music isn't about death or heartbreak but, well, it is."

It comes as no surprise then, that in 2012, her single "As It Seems" provided the backdrop to the long-running CBS drama series, Criminal Minds. Her voice lilts and flows, as the guitar leans gently into minor keys, and she sings: 

Well I knew what I didn't want to know, 
and I saw where I didn't want to go, 
So I took the path less travelled on, 
And I’ll let my stories be whispered when I'm gone. 

The song caught fire, broadcast around the world. "People wrote to me saying, 'This is the song I want to play at my funeral,' it was unsettling at first," she says, "but it felt good to know that my song connects with people." 

Almost a year later, her song "Ashes Like Snow" appeared on the show with similar effect, wrapping audiences up in the meandering piano and her skyward arcing vocals. It was a song born from serendipity, nearly ten years in the making. "One day when I was at my parents house," she says "I found this poem that I had written right at the time of the September 11 attacks, when I was just a young kid. I took some of those words and added the perspective from where we are today, in the long aftermath of war and struggle, looking back." 

Kershaw is a compulsive creator, she jots down melodies and lyrics as she's wandering through her days. She sings melodies into her phone while sitting in traffic or secretly hums a tune into a voice recorder while out at shows, capturing any inspiration that she can channel back into her music. Her debut layers lush instrumentation over the stark skeleton of her sketches, sauntering between swaying somberness and playful uplifting anthems. Like the subtle beauty of a black rose, Kershaw's music shores melancholy with a sense of hope and catharsis. And like she sings, her stories -- her songs -- are whispers or echoes, messages in bottles, cast out into the world. 

Midnight In The Garden is set for release in September 2013 via Nettwerk Records. 

Depreshmode

Lily Kershaw

Recent comments

Chris Pellnat

Related tracks