Sleeve Notes: [Fight for Love]

 

This album isn’t about writing new songs. It’s about returning to old ones—songs I’ve lived with for years, sometimes decades—and seeing what happens when I give them another chance. Some came out radically different, others just a little sharper, but all of them surprised me. They’re not frozen in the versions I first recorded; they’ve changed shape, just as I have.

Fight for Love
This one started life in Cornish (Lutar pelo Amor) for a “Eurovision” project. I loved it enough to try an English version, but it never really worked. Here I aimed for a late ’60s shimmer, but it drifted into late ’80s/early ’90s indie instead—jangly, hazy, almost shoegazey. Very unlike the original, but it works.

Echoes of Youth
The original was synth-based, dreamlike. This version strips away the electronics and drops the song into a ’90s indie soundscape. It feels more human this way, like nostalgia sung not at a distance but right up close.

Bedsit Morning
Definitely one of my weirder lyrics. It comes from my first years in London, living in a bedsit. One night I left the balcony doors open and woke up with snow drifting inside the room. That image stayed with me. The new recording leans into the oddness—strange, cold, but strangely beautiful.

Horizons of the Heart
This is me remembering the first few weeks of my first love. I was a late starter. For a while, it was brilliant. Then my girlfriend left me for my best friend, and reality hit. This new version captures both sides of that story—the thrill and the crash.

Leeches of my Soul
Here’s one I didn’t really understand until I re-recorded it. I was never sold on the original, but now I like its energy. The combination of acoustic guitar, bass, and rhythm just clicks. The vocals turned out well too. I’m properly chuffed with it.

Melt the Ice
This goes right back to the 1980s. I hadn’t been in love yet, so it’s basically me guessing what it might be like. Most of it was wrong, of course. But it’s interesting to revisit now, with the benefit of actually knowing what love is (and isn’t).

Playdough
Part true, part not. Yes, I really did sleep next to Jayne; no, I didn’t sleep with Jayne. We definitely didn’t dance, wild or free. And I’ve no idea what the “ball park” line means! Still, I like the slightly avant-garde feel of this one. A bit mysterious, a bit playful.

So that’s the album: old ghosts revisited, familiar places seen in new light. The originals will always exist, but these versions feel like the ones that finally show the songs as they really are—or maybe just as I hear them now. Either way, it’s been worth the journey.

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