This started back in April last year. I probably did the bulk of the writing in July, and very slowly got it to final draft a few weeks ago, then started chipping away. It took a long time. A lot of hurt in that time, and a lot of want to write, or rather desire to write, but the drive not being there. Initially I thought the desire wasn’t there, but perhaps it was the drive. Anyway.

I’ve come back to this occasionally and felt like I couldn’t finish it off. Felt the task was far beyond me, quite monumental, but I got to it and finally finished a draft. Comparatively, editing took far less time.

This is the final draft before cutting down and rewriting. The final result took a lot of work and it got to a point where it could have been better, but was ready. I had to publish because if I didn’t, I’d keep cutting away. The draft is a mess and far too heavy for what I wanted to do. I ended up doing some rearranging and removing of parts that I couldn’t justify, and the final result reads much better.

The final version of this essay was published yesterday on From Somewhere out the Back. If you’ve been following my stuff here long enough, then you’ll recognise the name as the title for when I write about music releases in my music collection. I’d been intending to dedicate a space for those pieces for a while, and of course rather than hold to that, the space expanded to more than just music. The draft below is just to give an idea of progress. Please check out the final version.

I hope you enjoy.

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It started with my leaving home at around 8:10 p.m. I was heading over to Pleb City to pick up my friend, Andy.  Took some band photos for him before we were on the road. I wasn’t quite there, but I did my best. The band was happy with the shots, which is what mattered most.

A little detour through Enmore and then Andy and I were off to The Blue Mountains.

A lengthy, rambling conversation involving much of what I had been through filled the time before we reached where Andy lives. Andy commiserated and talked about his relationship issues, and we drifted away from the subject. There was only so much we could say before we were beating ourselves into the ground.

In the morning Andy made breakfast, More conversation about life, and stuff about King Crimson and the use of sax. Then I was off. The aim was to get to Bathurst and see Ewe and Anna. I never see them as much as I want and there was no special reason to be going, but I needed some time away from Sydney, and I wanted some distraction. I went to Katoomba to buy some bread, then continued on.

The drive was event-free, and the weather held up nicely. I saw some places that would’ve made for great photos. The rolling landscapes of varying vegetation, with just the right amount of cloud cover seemed idyllic. At the very least, their familiarity seemed a nice little distraction from my thoughts. Didn’t take any photos, however. Figured I’d do so on the way home instead.

I got to Ewe and Anna’s and gave Anna a big hug. Same with Ewe. Almost collapsed both times. I was feeling pretty overwhelmed by that point. These are two people I don’t get to see anywhere near as much as I’d like, and what with getting dumped… I think the week prior… everything was too much and not at all.

—

At some point Ewe and I went into his shed, though it’s not so much a shed but rather this miniature bar room. It’s part of the reason why Ewe bought the place. It’s this old space, partially frozen in time. There’s a bar, a couch, a bathroom, a record player and a good few records. It’s a dark space, though only due to the curtain being closed. When I drew it, the space gained this relaxing warmth of a sort.

I told Ewe everything as coherently as I could. He already knew details, but I felt the need to get it all out. It was a long retelling, though these things usually are. But there’s only so much that can be said before looking to move on, and we started playing music.

For Ewe and I, music is semi-ritualistic. There are plenty of times when we’ve just thrown something on, but often when we do it we’re spinning something to listen to and discuss. Specifically in this case, Radiohead’s Kid A because I guess the thing I needed most was to feel more miserable. Somewhere in it all we were talking about our top Radiohead songs. I think it was around “Optimistic” coming on, and I talked about my top three, which I said were “Optimistic”, “All I Need” and “Codex”. Ewe asked about “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”. Top four now.

It became a top five. Probably “Karma Police” or “Pyramid Song” or “Where I End…” or “…Punchup at a Wedding…”. Anyway.

Around “Optimistic” we paused the album and I put on Lianne La Havas’ cover of “Weird Fishes” due to talking about In Rainbows a little. I first heard “Weird Fishes / Arpeggi” as a live version back in… 2007? On YouTube, and it was “Weird Fishes / Arpeggi” is a song from Radiohead, and I remember hearing… I think a live version of it first, way back. Got In Rainbows when it came out, wasn’t the biggest fan. Certainly liked a good deal of it, but not all of it… but you know, I moved on eventually. But it’s an interesting song.

I heard La Havas’ version of the song in 2020, when I was living with my friend Fe. He was listening to it, I heard it, I asked what it was and enjoyed what I heard. I enjoyed it enough to get my hands on a copy of the album it was from – Lianne La Havas – so I could write about it, which I did.

Could the album be better? Yeah, sure, of course, but it’s a strong one. Has a lot of passion and energy running through it, knows what it is and what it’s trying to do… you get the idea. This isn’t about the album, however. This is about “Weird Fishes”.

—

“Weird Fishes” starts with rapid percussion before suddenly slowing down, and I like the idea but it plays its hand a little too much. I feels a bit like outwardly stating that the cover won’t be faithful, but the song does that well enough. It’s the only bit that feels like excess and it always sticks out to me, but even though it feels significant to me, it’s so minor it doesn’t feel right to hold it against the song. It just feels a bit obvious.

But anyway, it’s a relaxed, tight and snappy start. And it’s a good groove, too. And soon the silence around the percussion is broken with some wavering keys playing out their melody, and it’s not long after that when La Havas’ voice comes in, soft and husky, and firm. Carrying the words across with the firmness they need, not overdoing it, not underdoing it.

Bass comes in and fills out the melodic flow It keeps things straightforward and gives a lot to the shape, and so do the additional vocals when they come in. And so everyone plays with La Havas, doing what they feel is necessary; there’s no room for flourishes, and among it all La Havas also uses her guitar for what is necessary. Everyone sounds locked in; everyone feels locked in. And it’s all tight, and that tightness carries the calmness of the first part well. It’s a loudly quiet moment, not quite calm, not quite energised. And much like La Havas’ voice, it’s building up. And drops away, leaving only the voice, or at least multiple versions of it, harmonising. A moment of space emptied and the voice remains, and it floats on low, and it feels like you could almost feel the breathing between words.

Much like how it started, the second part of “Weird Fishes” kicks off in full with percussion, but this time with guitar working a new melody; one of a greater emotional thrust; of a release, and soon more instrumentation comes in, and the melody develops and fills out, and it starts to overwhelm. It pulls out the emotions, releases the heart… you know. It just seems to get more and more intense and just massive, and La Havas hits this peak and either howls or yells, and it feels just really visceral, and everything becomes quieter. Only a few sounds left, and the vocals are fragile, restrained again. Soft, yearning, and the song ends.

So what is “Weird Fishes”? What is it about? It’s about sound and closeness, and carries a certain intimacy; a closeness that’s difficult to replicate. Sure, recording techniques make it close, but there’s something in La Havas’ voice and how she uses it that carries that intimacy through the song naturally. She doesn’t whisper, but may as well, seems gentle, and slowly builds. Finds plateaus, moves past them, and lets loose in a controlled manner. Builds and gets louder, and escapes, or longs for it. Dreams of it. Hopes. It’s difficult to tell. But I’m getting distracted, and maybe that’s okay, because the original is ambiguously specific, and so is La Havas’ version, but hers feels so much more openly introspective and less distant. Maybe it’s the slower form of the song; maybe it has a lot to do with her voice as whilst the instrumentation is incredibly important, its her voice and the way she uses it among the other sounds that elevates this to something more than just a cool cover.

—

So that cover is what got me into Lianne La Havas, and maybe that’s a bit unfair to her. I don’t know. There was something about it back then that spoke to me. The way the sounds layer and coalesce; the way it builds, the desire that I seem to get from it that indicates a desire to be free of something, to gain a sense of being alive… I don’t know. There’s always a lot that one can pull from a song, but early on it was mostly the sound and the way it travelled, and the qualities in Lianne La Havas’ voice that she was so effortful, yet effortlessly getting across. Natural and genuine. Somewhere from the heart and the gut. Heavy.

And somewhere in there is what I was starting to get from that playing it to Ewe, after a long time of not hearing it, and it was something that he liked and there was something in it that was speaking to me. Something raw, refined. Something that became an emotional gut-punch when I listened to it on the drive back to Sydney, and the drive back to home where I proceeded to have a small breakdown and bawled my eyes out to my ex.

We listened to how it built and moved, and the light tearing at the emotions and strength in vulnerability and all those things, and there was something in it that made me feel something, if only for a moment. Ewe thought it was good.

We went back to Kid A.

—

The sound of “Weird Fishes” has a way of building and changing whilst remaining the same, and it’s similar to the original, whilst also completely different. That sound builds and doesn’t, and starts relaxed – deceptively so. It changes in the second half, becomes bigger, more massive, dramatic in flight. It overwhelms and crashes around, a slow burn that rushes, powerful, gargantuan… you get the idea. It feels so emotionally heavy and it just wrecks me hard. It’s the song that I thought “Gigantium” would be; the one that makes you go “Fucking hell…” and stare off, because you’ve been hit by this massive weight of relation that you’re pulling from something, and it floors you. You’re not sure if there’s anything else that can hit you with everything at once in a moment that seems to last forever but is contained within a few brief minutes of life, and there’s always so much more to go through but this, THIS is where you’re struck and that connection means everything. It’s almost whole. It’s THE song.

So I felt something coming on when I played it to Ewe, and I felt something more gripping me on that drive back, where I only stopped off at one landscape location and got photos that weren’t the ones I was after, but still photos good enough for me.

That drive back was rough too. A lot of darkness. A lot of weighted thoughts. I broke down when I got home. The pressure of everything got to me. Having to find another work contract was already tough; to then have to deal with possibly becoming homeless whilst needing to navigate my relationship ending but not being able to was too much, and I sobbed and howled in ways I hadn’t in decades. A lucky run through life, really.

Since then, I’ve listened to “Weird Fishes” a lot. Just let it consume me, repeatedly. I don’t know if it’s the best song in the world. In my view, Lianne La Havas, with her band, made it her own. It speaks to me in a way that I’m not sure is what was intended. I don’t know if Lianne La Havas was looking to rip open her heart and bear all, and I don’t think it does that, but that’s what I get from it, and it’s just a great song. It was a great song before getting dumped and it’s a great song now, and it’ll be a great song down the track, too.

Since all of that, life has gotten better, but “Weird Fishes” remains a gripping affair. It still hurts and it still hits hard. I can’t deny that my view is heavily shaped and skewed by my life last year, but I thought it was great before and I still think it’s great.