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Emmett Tinley
 

New Album, “Attic Faith”, and Irish Tour

Emmett Tinley releases a new album, Attic Faith, on Independent Records on 15 April 2005. The release co-incides with an initial 5 date tour of Ireland.

Recorded for Atlantic Records (Emmett signed to the label after a development deal with Rick Rubin at American Recordings), Attic Faith was produced by Victor Van Vugt (Nick Cave, Beth Orton, PJ Harvey) in New York at the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The story of the album is a long and winding one involving a string of countries, various record labels and a host of musicians. It goes something like this….

Starting at the end of a Prayer Boat tour at the tail end of 1999 in Amsterdam, Attic Faith was written, honed, recorded and mixed over three and a half years in the US, Denmark, Ireland and the UK.

Coming straight out of 12 years as lynch-pin and frontman with The Prayer Boat Emmett was eager to try something different in his life and in his approach to music. After periods of living and writing in Amsterdam, Arhus (Denmark) and LA (interspersed with solo touring in the U.S. and Europe) Emmett settled in Denmark again in 2001 and began working with bassist Martin Spure, drummer Nikolaj Bundvig and pianist Allin Bang, all of whose backgrounds were in jazz. After a few months, the addition of Dutch guitarist Marijn Slager added another facet to the songs.

In the meantime producer Van Vugt had become part of the picture – “One of Victor’s great talents lies in his ability to create and maintain an atmosphere of creativity and positivity,” Emmett muses. “We knew beforehand that there would be a very limited amount of time in which to capture the sound we wanted and to this end Victor was the right man for the job.”

At the beginning of March 2003 recording began in New York. Most of the album was captured in a studio in Manhattan, although some finishing touches were added in Denmark and Dublin and a fourteen-piece string section along with Adam Peters’ Cello and Keyboard touches recorded in London.

Emmett Tinley plays the following Irish dates in April 2005:

Fri 15      Whelans, Dublin
Sun 17    Spirit Store, Dundalk
Tues 19   The Foyer, Cork
Thurs 21  Dolans (Upstairs), Limerick
Mon 25    Roisin Dubh,  Galway (TBC)

Attic Faith : track by track

Comfort Me: I started writing this song while living in LA. It was very mellow in the beginning, using a tuning borrowed from Joni Mitchell. But it needed to be tense and I only revisited it when I hooked up with the guys in Denmark. It’s a song born of too many distant relationships and the doubt and jealousy that comes with them.

Christmastreet: I began this song while walking home along the canals in Amsterdam just after Christmas. The streets were strewn with discarded Christmas trees, some still decorated. It immediately brought to mind Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of a small tree whose only wish is to grow tall enough to be cut down and decorated, but who in the end suffers the same cruel fate. A song about loss of innocence, disillusionment and coming of age.

Closer To Happy: I wrote this song at my parents’ house on my father’s piano. It was a sprawling instrumental piece at first with lyrical snapshots of times and places where I felt certain that I had something to give through my music. Most often those shots are very few on a long roll of uncertainty!

I Want You: This is probably the oldest song on the album and written during a time of rather carefree existence!

Two Years On: A love song which was also begun in LA but whose ‘70’s vibe I wanted to hang on to. I love the drums on this track but most especially the guitar solo!!

Heart Still Breaking: This song was recorded late one night in the studio overlooking Times Square in Manhattan. It is all a single take and during the recording I was very aware of the contrast between the fragility of the track and the chaos and noise of the streets outside. My favourite track on the album.

Killing The One I Love: A song about unwillingness to compromise which, even though the outcome may be sad or even tragic, is not always the wrong course - depending on what you are searching for. Great films don’t require happy endings!

Snow Dome: The idea behind this song was to try to evoke the inner turmoil of two people breaking up. It feels as though your turbulent life is contained in a ‘snow dome’ or ‘snow globe’, barely noticeable to others but the only world you can see. I saw her off at a train station, walking through virgin snow, and returned home through empty streets along the track left by her suitcase.

Come To Life: This is a fairly old song which I was encouraged to record again. The song came about through my tendency to be the last one awake at parties, where I would usually end up looking for Edith Piaf records and wishing I was elsewhere, at that moment and in life in general!

Amsterdam Weeps: Amsterdam has witnessed some great outpourings of grief in recent years. While I was still working on this song, the artist and singer Hermann Brood commited suicide. His passion and urgency was the essence of what I was trying to capture in what had initially been a poem. There are a few threads in this song and more seem to be added as time goes on.