an intimate history
Not only the last song on the EP, it was also the last one written, and its inclusion was a bit of a tack-on to what was already largely settled on. Recording was well underway, and the songs had long been decided upon, even if some of them were only in their preliminary stages; even the running order was firmly in place. Indirectly though, it felt like there was something missing. Not that I was pushing for another song or anything like that, there were plenty sitting in the cupboard ready to be brought out should the need arise, more that the idea of concluding the EP with ‘Allies’ didn’t feel quite right for some reason, and no obvious, suitable alternatives had sprung to mind. Then seemingly from nowhere, and with that lurking in my mind, ‘An Intimate History’ appeared as the obvious solution to this problem.
The song emerged in one of those strange and rare moments where an idea comes, and then immediately takes complete shape, almost as if it’s dictating itself. In the case of ‘An Intimate History’, I was actually on my way to the shower when the lazy bass part floated its way to the front of my mind. By the time I was out, the whole song had played its way around my head, fully formed, and I immediately set to work on putting down a rough demo to see if it would hold together as well in reality, and to try and capture the idea before it disappeared. In the end, the final recording matched up almost exactly with the original impression of the song, which is I think, also a fairly rare occurrence.
Lyrically, it’s probably the song I’m the most pleased with. Lyrics are something I would have liked to have developed more with some of the songs, and writing generally is something I take very seriously, but those of ‘An Intimate History’ were written in one go, and didn’t change much after that. In fact, I don’t think there was much in the way of editing at all, aside from a few scratch-outs and re-words immediately as they were put down. It has less words than any of the other songs, but also contains what I think is my favourite line on the whole EP; one that perfectly captures a core truth, and something that has been slowly shifting in the time around the writing and recording of these songs.
The title is a bit of a wink at my partner on the administrative side of things – it was something he came up with as a potential name for a record label we dreamt of starting eventually. It sounded good, but more than that, the name suggested the truth of our often shared personal history, one with ties and webs that extend beyond anything that could be understood outside of the people within them. Themes that were also found in many of the life events of the last two years plus. Originally, the song was called ‘Atom Bomb’ as a placeholder, but the more I thought about what it was about, the more it became obvious that it was a re-telling, or more, and examination of an actual intimate history. One that bookends the subject matter of the songs that precede it, and is a kind of final survey of a broad set of whys before moving on.
