So this is the first song I remember making that ever came to a feeling of being complete. Initially it wasn’t that way, I had plans for proper verses and better more perfect lyrics - a more perfect song. But every time I came back to it nothing much ‘new’ happened and over time I just sort of realised that this is what the song is now I guess. That’s why the structure is kind of weird. That’s also the way most of my songs have come about; I think I’m going to do way more, but don’t, and end up liking what I’m left with.
Anyway, this was probably 2016 or so when I first came up with this. The phrase “what can I say?” and the whole song, is just generally about a notion that I wanted to express - that it’s hard for me to say things. Like really hard. I wanted people to understand that I have a lot of things in my head I want to let out. But the struggle to do so makes me feel powerless and like there was nothing to say at all. It ends up being so impossible and I’m left with the feeling of, what can I say? What can I do? I can’t. I just can’t. And I’m aware of how it makes me feel and how it affects other people. Of what my silence leads people to think about me. But,, what can I say? :’) 
The song starts off by showing a simple picking pattern and building off of it. It also fades out like it fades in. The bit in the middle where it goes crazy and dissonant or whatever is intentional. It’s supposed to be building in intensity and chaos to feel like there’s no way out, until it collapses back into the peaceful outro. Just idk imagine it’s done well :’) with like, strings and shit.
To be perfectly honest the final line is slightly stolen from All For The Best by Miracle Legion - but I know the song from Thom Yorke’s version. Although in that song it’s “say you loved me” and I feel like like it’s trying to say something different to what I am. For me the ending is kind of like pleading with people,,, that they know? That they understand maybe? That I love them but struggle to show or say it. It’s part of a desperate fear I’ve always had that I’m apart from everything and nobody really likes me. I just want people to telepathically take initiative and overcome the fear for me and let me know that they do like me. Idk. When I really start trying to explain the feelings I have in this song and music in general it becomes clear how difficult it is to make sense :’)
This song is also about Lirio. And my huge crush on her in year 12/13. What can I say,, to tell you how I feel? Say you love me too… just like I’m in love with you. 
And…. The fact that she did love me back in the end. For a while. And now doesn’t. Even though I still do. The fact that it’s all partly because of the problems I’ve always had in communicating - the problems that I was expressing in music before we were even together and never did manage to overcome.
That’s all just,,, yeah. 
Heartbreaking.
But here’s the first song on the album.
It means a lot to me.

What Can I Say?

Lying is a corrosive act that destroys the soul.
I thought of that recently and wanted to put it here.

Hoo boy. So. Start of 2022. I was so wrapped up in so much sadness and stress. I was having so many thoughts and feelings I didn’t want to tell anybody. Everything that had built up the past few years and that still continued to build for the rest of that year. Even now it’s still the same thing. So sad so scared so consumed by obsessive thoughts I can’t let go. But I tried to lie. About everything. I always have. But it had gotten so bad at this point.
Nobody understands why I disappear or stop messaging or stop doing things I should. It’s because I hate myself. I get sad and things build up and I can’t get out of it. All I have is the thoughts, the thing hanging over me, whatever it is. I need to punish myself so I hide myself away. I’ve no idea if this stuff is even true anymore or what I think of myself or what anybody else experiences but I guess it’s how I feel.
The point is ‘detached’ was the feeling of it all; lying and hiding everything away. Given recent times I feel detached from everything in a different scarier way, again it’s weird to relate to my own songs with different experiences.
“Messages that I’ve been meaning to send” is in relation to not responding to people because I feel bad about myself, as well as covid and everything making the act of keeping in touch even harder. 
“Just a face now” is the facade I put on to keep everything hidden and not talk about what I’m feeling. As well as the “I smile you smile” it’s about how everyone does it too and it’s kind of derisive of the fact that all this ‘happiness’ doesn’t exist. Everyone’s just pretending and when you’re not looking they’re staring sadly into the void just like me. I really never have understood that good and bad things can exist at the same time :’). Or that good things don’t have to be diminished by bad things.
“Can’t stay can’t leave” is the feeling I have of needing to say something but not being able to. It’s also about the way I felt about suicide. I feel like I need a way out but I can’t do it; because of the people in my life and also I’m probably just not capable of doing anything to myself. Those two points might have shifted now which is scary.
“Eating things to thicken the blood” is a reference to my stress eating/addiction to snacks that I developed in covid to cope and try and feel happiness.
“Control the certain way you perceive me” I really liked because that’s definitely how it felt to lie and try and keep an image of myself to everyone. Or at least I felt like was doing that, the extent of everything was kinda stupid and in my head.
“Do it cos I want you to leave me” hurts. Not just Lirio but pushing everyone away. Guess what, she did leave you, Past-Me, you fucking idiot. The “any day now” before was a sarcastic one when in reference to getting better, as in I think it’ll never happen. But here it really was any day now, that she’ll leave me. It was all too much I’m sorry bun.
I could go on about every single line tbh. Probably in all my other songs too but maybe not to this extent. There’s a bit of Juice WRLD here too? Idk if that’s cringe to say, sorry :’). But that style of brutally honest feelings that rhyme with each other is vaguely what I’ve done here I guess.
The talking bit at the end is, idk :’). That’s just what I envisioned at the time and I still like the idea of it. It’s not supposed to be me. It’s supposed to be a bit of cool sounding candid audio that like, implies this situation of someone who’s isolating themself and someone is talking to them that doesn’t know what the problem is or seemingly doesn’t care and is insistent that everything will be fine if you just act normal and enjoy the party. Because they think that’s helping. It’s sarcastic and bitter I guess and I’m sorry about that. I just idk, I don’t understand things I guess.
And that’s pretty much the character limit for the description :’)
Wow.

Detached (Come Back To The Party)

So, songs for Lirio. Some covers as well as my own.

This would’ve been around year 12/13. I’d known the song for a good few years, shout outs to my mum for listening to Fade by Yo La Tengo - amazing album. But I guess the main thing here is the line about the kaleidoscope girl :’). I’d never properly thought that much about this song or the lyrics but suddenly it had so much meaning to me. The kaleidoscope girl. All colourful and wonderful and magical. In the doorway, the future I want to have. The future I can have, like maybe she’s holding her hand wanting to go with me. Like that bit at the end of Scott Pilgrim. She’s looking my way, at times
Plus, “when I’m staring into space, I’m looking for you” is such a beautiful way to describe thinking about someone. And for me it’s a romantic thought, about my crush on her. Like every time I’m thinking about stuff and not doing anything, staring into space, I’m not thinking about anything else, I’m daydreaming - about you ❤️ and how much I like you.
Also I’m pretty sure the chorus might be “pick up your fall” not pick up the phone :’) but whatever. 
In the end the phrase I’ll be around sort of describes how passive I am … which I guess, is part of the problem? I think of it as a nice thing but in the end people don’t really understand the way I love them. Or at least Lirio sure didn’t. And inaction generally has been such a plague for every aspect of my life. I wish I could have really been around for you, in a way that matters. Sigh…

In terms of the guitar, this is my own version I came up with years and years ago, listening to my mum playing it in the kitchen. Tbh it’s nowhere near close to what the song actually sounds like if you listen to it :’). That’s the way my covers are, it’s very much my own interpretation rather than trying to recreate exactly what it’s doing. Finding what’s easy for me to do, I just want a way to play the song :’). I’ve never liked playing things ‘properly’. Or people telling me “that’s not how it goes” - I don’t care :’). Again, I just want to play the song :’)
The soloey bit at the end in the actual song is improvised and more freeform. The thing that I’m doing is something I scrabbled together when I first tried to play the song, that developed over time but settled this way. I was trying to recreate something of what heard the song do while also keeping the bass part going with my thumb. The ending does the same thing four times but is supposed to build in volume and complexity each time, yes that sounds like a nice fancy way to put it :)

Overall it’s a beautiful song that’s very special to me. I like my version of it and I’ve played it a thousand times probably. Always thinking about Lirio when I do and about the way I felt about her in year 13. I never did play this or any of these in front of her or ‘for her’ in the way I wanted to. But here I am now I guess. Just trying to process my feelings and move forward.

I’ll Be Around (Yo La Tengo)

With this one and I’ll Be Around you can probably see where What Can I Say came from :’)

I remember this song from the Simon and Garfunkel greatest hits album, which my mum played a few times, as well as my Granny playing it a lot when we’d go visit. It’s just one of the greatest love songs ever written tbh. I really wanted to play it and became obsessed when I did, the guitar part was so addicting and satisfying to play and still is really.
There’s nothing specifically about Lirio really. Just the general tone and vibe of the song spoke so strongly to the way I feel about love and what I want love to be so I associated it with Lirio. Plus the general feeling of wanting to be with someone but not being able to. “There but for the grace of you, go I”. It spoke to how I felt in school, really liking her but also telling myself it would never happen. And now I guess I relate to differently yet again :’)
I guess at the time I also pictured serenading her with this :’)


I can’t believe what’s happened, and what I’ve done, and the way everything has gone.
God damn it.

Kathy’s Song (Simón de Garfüngel)

Sooo a bit of a weird one. Tbh, I’ve no idea what this song is about … Woodpigeon are like that :’)

But I have this one very specific and vivid memory. Of when I pretty much first started developing a crush on Lirio at the end of year 12 and we were in Manchester for Sids birthday at a Chinese restaurant. I just really wanted to sit next to Lirio. I wanted to talk to her and get to know her and let her know I felt and everything and blah blah blah. I did nothing of course :’) I was just awkwardly there as I always was and she had no clue. I sat across from her I think and I was really nervous just being around her. 
On the way home this song came into my head, and the words “oh I’ll miss you most, you’ll never know” suddenly meant a lot and I made that connection. I felt so sad about my feelings and not being able to express them, something which generally has reoccurred about a billion times. And I came home and played this by myself and cried. 
A lot of other lines found meaning in a similar vein. Especially the shadows where you’ll find a jagged line cuts through to you, to me (t’me t’you, come on Barry - sorry I thought this was necessary). It was such a cool line to me and still is. It speaks to like, maybe you don’t know or we just don’t say it but there’s an unspoken line between us that connects us. That I guess connected us for nearly six years :(
The phrase “kiss my throat” as well is so tender and intimate I love it. It captures the insane amount of sensitivity i have and that I feel. The intensity of emotion and embarrassment and nervousness at the idea of actually having that kind of intimacy with someone. The fact that it’s also “I won’t say no”. To say it’s this incredibly embarrassing intimate thing but I could actually see myself having that with you. Hm this got a bit weird maybe, but fuck you that’s what you get for reading my descriptions :’). It’s a personal therapeutic thing for me.

In terms of the song, I think maybe my voice doesn’t sound too bad here? Idk I don’t mind my voice not being great and just putting shit out there, but I think it ALmost has the right quality here. The interlude bit with the ahs and oos in the original song is an insanely beautiful arrangement with brass and strings and woodwind. I can’t do it any kind of justice here because I don’t even understand it :’) but this is kind of what it does at least. Woodpigeon are very underrated and unknown I think but their songs are really beautiful.

I just wanted to include it in my collection for Lirio for that specific memory and time in my life, that I never even told her about I don’t think. Comparing how I’m starting to feel now to how I felt back then and have continued to for the past seven years feels stupid. Like she said to me, I’m just too in my own head. I really wish I’d started becoming a more real person sooner.

And tbh? Physical contact and intimacy always meant so much more to me than it did to her. In the end, for me, I still have the feeling that I could be with you forever as long as I get to hold you. But I guess that’s just hindsight and jealousy talking. Ah well :(

Spirehouse (Woodpigeon)

So, it’s pretty much the same as the other take I uploaded :’). Things being imperfect and recording it on my phone is the whole thing I wanted to go for so idk why I really bothered to do different takes. I was just so excited back then at the prospect of actually being able to record something and see how I sound and also just upload it to SoundCloud straight away.

I had this guitar part for a while. I was really in love with it and liked playing it. And eventually I felt it could be my love song for Lirio once I developed feelings for her. I think my initial “heh, it works 😏” is a little too smarmy :’). It was supposed to be sincere but maybe it always would have come off as smarmy idk. That was the point, or the idea I had initially for this song. I was going to play this in front of people including her and she’d realise in the moment that it was about her. That’s what I had in mind with the first line, like an idealised situation where I was all cool and playing guitar and sharing my music in front of people. I’d look her in the eyes when I said it and she’d be like oh my gosh is he singing about me? I was also imagining in this situation, I guess, that I would have actually done things for her 😅? To be a great guy and get to know her and she’d realise like wow you did that stuff because you’re in love with me? Idk a fantasy I never acted on or anything. 
But the sad thing is that this fantasy is actually similar to something that happens in movie Lirio really likes? It has Oscar Isaac in it and he’s a famous musician who reveals that this song he made was for her all along, this girl he’d known for years, before he got famous. It’s a really romantic scene/story and Lirio told me about it at some point that she liked it and now I realise like well damn I guess I should’ve done that huh. The scale to which we both kind of wanted the same thing but I couldn’t do it because I’m in my own head and my crippling confidence issues and I never do anything is,,, staggering, and really sad.
The whole song is about that idea though. Of having a moment that builds into me revealing that I’m in love with her. That’s why I only finally say I love you right at the end, after the song has built up

I made this song around year 13 and it’s sort of stayed this way ever since. I’ve kind of always thought that maybe this song was like a masterpiece or something :’). In a way that I have at times for my music in general but especially this song. It’s just an egotistical thought I get carried away with because of the fantasy attached to it. In the end the song is okay :’) they’re all like, okay. It’s just representative of how stuff builds up in my head into something that doesn’t exist. I’ve struggled with stuff being ‘real’ for so long. I really am too in my head.

Overall, Lirio said that we just have different ideas about love and I guess I agree with her. But then again I’m not too sure. I feel like I did want to show I love her in the way she wanted me to and we did have the same ideas, I just didn’t have the confidence to do it. And I had no knowledge of how to get there and how to build myself up and really feel like I belong and like I can do the things I want to do. That’s been the story of my life for everything really. No confidence to do the thing and no idea how to get the confidence to do the thing. Meanwhile everything just slips by. Now Lirio has slipped by too.
Just, sad times. Truly. Ya hate to see it for ya boy ya really do

For Lirio

A second song for Lirio. Idk when from exactly, maybe 2018 or 19. I was messing around as I always am and stumbled onto making this chord sequence and idk I just thought maybe it could be another song for Lirio. It’s interesting that all my songs for Lirio tend to be in the key of D or be the D chord shape on different frets with a capo. I think I associate it with playing happy songs like Here Comes The Sun and stuff. Which is weird and hard to explain but but to me it definitely feels like a thing :’)
I don’t really like this song that much 😅. I’d forgotten about it pretty much until a few months ago when I started to really think about putting my music out there as actual songs and trying to express myself. A lot of things came flooding back.
The idea is to just generally or poetically describe some things about Lirio? The colours bound to change about her love of being colourful and changing her hair. A thousand drawings about like her sketchbooks and how talented she is at art. There was probably supposed to me more verses but this is what I had back then and this is how it stayed :’).
And then also to say how easy it is to fall in love with her because of how amazing and beautiful she is. Like it’s really easy to fall in love with her you’ve no idea. And she was with me for five and a half years and found it hard to love me 🤓 so again, sad times for ya boi. Ya hate to see it.

Idk if my whiny little voice trying to hold a note sounds any good :’) I think it might be grating but whatever this is the way I made the song. Also reverting to just saying her name “Lirio” over and over again is reminiscent of the gag in the Scott Pilgrim books, which I like :’). Which was then subsequently turned into a genuinely amazing song by Beck for the film. Maybe I’m trying to channel a bit of that, idk it feels like an insult to say. 

The sentiment of ‘she means the world’ is I guess genuinely how I felt and feel. I guess that’s part of the problem. Being too obsessed with someone. There’s more to life than Lirio. It’s terrible and ironic that not being as obsessed with her would’ve helped me have a better relationship with her.
I also just never understood what we were doing? Or what a relationship really is? I wanted to try again and understand things and get it right but I guess that never could or would have happened. Even if her feelings hadn’t left. 
And now it’s going to be so hard to find anything remotely like that again. Let alone anything, that compares to her.



:(

Colours

Shout outs to Jacob for putting this in the Mystery music den channel :)

I remember sitting on our bed in our shared house in Leeds learning this song. I mean it’s just a great song :’). This is one of many covers I have where it’s like a true cover version. Not just learning a song that’s already like, an acoustic guitar song. I do it a lot. It’s how I’ve spent a lot of my time tbh. Really liking a song and then wanting to play it on guitar and finding a way that’s specific to me and easy for me to do. Not caring to much about what the song actually does. 
I just love the lyrics and the imagery and everything. It’s so fun and Pop-y. She’s happy like my birthday. She’s the drummer in my metal band. I love all of the verses it’s really good. Especially “she’s the squash in me water”, it feels really British which is funny :’), but I also actually do love squash or cordial so it speaks to me specifically :’)). 
And I just loved thinking all these things and applying them to Lirio. She’s the squash in me water. This song always made me think of her. The happiness and vibe of the song fits how I see her and how I feel about her. She also, she loves ice cream :’) so it all sort of fit
The chorusy bit of don’t look up also reminds me of the nervousness I felt around her and the general vibe of back in school; seeing her and needing to talk to her but not wanting to let my feelings show. “I’ve got to do this” is also the sentiment that I guess I wanted to have and knew that I needed to have but didn’t. Again, not a lot of confidence in ol’ Peter here. Especially not teenager Peter.
The point is obviously that it starts quiet and slowly more stuff gets added to the way I’m playing to give a nice journey. I guess it goes from being more shy and understated to being more present and enjoyable. To me at least. I also liked doing the two solo instrumental bits differently, one where I sing it and one where I play it on guitar. It just felt like the best way to do it compositionally or whatever :’) 
But I really love playing this song and I include in my collection for Lirio because it feels right I guess.

Salted Caramel Ice Cream (Metronomy)

I wrote this in like a hour or two. 
I couldn’t sleep and it was the summer time so it gets light really early. Would’ve been like 3 or 4 am and I went downstairs came up with this quietly on my unplugged electric guitar. 
The impetus was a conversation me and Lirio had had recently while walking around Sale Water Park. Somehow we came up with this idea of what if a guy ran into some girl in the woods and he genuinely thought she was like magic or a sprite or something and they fell in love. Or something like that. Anyway I said that could be a song and she was off-handedly like, yeah you should do that. And well, here it is :’).

The story is pretty much as follows:
A boy is walking through a bit of woods near his house - idk probably like Priory Woods for those in the know :’)
And then a girl who’s playing make believe as a forest dweller runs into him. She knows stuff about nature and survival because she’s into that stuff and her parents teach her about it, but the boy gets swept away with her wackiness and doesn’t really ask questions and thinks maybe she dies just live here by herself or something 
The “birds and the bees” bit I just thought was a funny sort of punchline ending to a verse :’) and maybe it’s a slightly different story. But I like to imagine these are kids/preteens, so I think if that line as their first kiss. Because to them, that is the birds and the bees, that’s the furthest it goes as far as they’re aware. It’s the beginnings of them understanding what having feelings for each other is.
But again the boy, didn’t ask any questions and the girl was enigmatic so he genuinely thinks maybe she lives there or she’s a spirit or something. When he can’t find her again he decides that’s it.
But he just runs into her again :’). But in a regular setting. She lives close to the same woods and maybe just goes to a slightly different school.
From there they actually become friends and find out where each other lives and eventually I guess fall in love? Live happily ever after? Have weird and funny romantic story to tell people of how they first met :’)

The film ‘Moonrise Kingdom’ is pretty much what I thought about with this song.

Don’t ask me why I made everything rhyme with ‘E’s 😅. It was early and again I wrote in like an hour or two. I think came back to it the next day and added bits. I might be exaggerating how quickly I came up with this to impress people :’)
‘Lily’ is the English translation of Lirio and it fit with the whole E sounds thing so that’s why she’s called that. And a T-shirt, denim dungarees and liking ice cream is basically Lirio :’). As well as her childhood being a nature-child spending all her time at Sale Water Park. The place where we were when we had the idea and the place I’m sort of picturing in this song. 

I’ve no idea about this song? I sort of love it I sort of hate it. But it is actually a very complete song that I made for Lirio so, here it is🤷‍♂️

Woodland Girl

Lirio introduced me to Over the Garden Wall because she knew I’d like it and I did. It was partially a way for me to get in on her love for Halloween, which evidently I should have tried harder to do. 
The actual song has a different section first but I like the second bit so that’s what I learned :). Unlike most of this stuff in this album she did actually know that I learnt this, but again I never really said that it was for her in a way that mattered or play it for her in a way that wanted to. Again, never understood anything, everything’s all in my head, blah blah blah. 

It’s just beautiful 🤷‍♂️. Beautiful series, beautiful soundtrack. 
Again my nasally little voice probably isn’t the best for this :’) but I am getting the tiniest little hint of vibrato in there if you listen. Obviously nowhere close to the actual guy (Jack Jones?) who’s just a god apparently. 

Sigh, I really did love that Wirt costume… And Halloween and dressing up in general. And I loved how much you loved it. I wanted to join in so much more, I guess I just had mental blocks in the way. Some social anxiety thing or misplaced childhood thoughts. Now I don’t even know how much of it is true. How much is me and how much is you. What do I actually want to do? Have the mental blocks even gone?

Idk I did love it.
I wanted to go as Luigi this year… 
I would have loved that 
I guess I still should 
But the feeling of wanting to do that stuff is so cruel now.

Again fuck if you don’t like my descriptions :’) I’ve decided this partly therapy for me.

Oh and the little ‘pling!’ At the end is Greg putting the rock back :)

Into the Unknown (Over the Garden Wall)

So there it is. My collection for Lirio

This one is from a few weeks or so after she broke up with me. The sentiment is that I guess I’ll miss you still, despite anything. I’ll always want to be with you in a way that won’t go away. It also could be like, ‘love you still’. No matter what. Because that’s what I’ve talked myself into I guess :’). Something I’ve inception’d myself with. What are feelings anyway :’)

I’ve realised now that what I’m channelling with this is Tessa Violet? With like Crush and Baby I’m Not Over You. I think at least, that’s probably a weird thing to say sorry.
Oh and I don’t actually listen to the radio :’). I just wanted it to sound more Pop Songish I guess. I’m not sure I like it :’)

Theeee bit at the end? Is genuinely how I felt. And so … again :’) ya hate to see it :’) for ya boi 😂 Pierre, you really do. He’s down bad 😂. Idk why I’m choosing to phrase my feelings about disappointment and getting things wrong in this way but it’s funny to me :’). 
I really did have a lot of feelings of this is it I can do it. I’ve messed up so badly but I really can be the person I wanted to be. And be with her again in the process. I know she’d say good, be the person you want to be, be happy. But I always make things much more complicated and painful for my self :’). Things just are more complicated for me I guess. And always the doubt creeping in at the end… can change but never will.

In the end, if you’re reading this bub. If you’ve listened to this stuff and read this stuff. Then um,,, hi :’)
It is for you. it’s something to show you I love you. I get that this love have for you isn’t what you want. Or if it ever was, that time has passed.
Just know, I’d be with you again in a heartbeat. Even though I know it’s dumb and we don’t work. I’ll always feel like it could work if we just talked properly. And I’ll always have that ridiculously huge crush on you from high school. Because that’s just what true love is to me. That’s the feeling and the belief I’ve decided to burden myself with. It’s why it’s so hard to let you go.

Because what this whole thing actually is? - is for me. To maybe process things for once. To have perspective for once. To finally let stuff out instead of staying in my head all the time.

Love you bun x

Miss You Still

Deeply personal. Bit odd.
If you like something then that’d be nice to hear. If you have any constructive criticism then that’s fine too :’)

What Can I Say?

Peter Sherratt