There’sAGirlThatNeverGoesOut

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As seen on RollingStone Magazine, Polaroid, Music She Blogged, Il Mucchio, Music Letter, Sentireascoltare, Tweenindie, Cinnamon Songs, RockIt, The Breakfast Jumpers.

And so it came. The album that I waited for so long:“There’s A Girl That Never Goes Out”. It’s basically a silly love songs work, but the writing of these songs did cast some kind of magic spell on me, and I was the first to head for the Moon for this little project. The creature having his revenge on the master!

“There’s A Girl That Never Goes Out”… where it all started from?

Just like in a fashion collection: it was fall-winter 2010-2011. Aimed with the intention of writing a shoegaze love song, I came with this tune called “Come Along Pond”, helped by the almighty guitar of Jonathan Lee Hart, from Leeds. Same week I ended the first demo of another surreal love song, called “A Diamond For Marina”, dedicated to Marina from Marina and The Diamonds. It was quite clear they both were some good songs, and when Rimauli Dindani from Annemarie pointed out that I SHOULD have made an “impossible love EP”, I replied:”Why not an album?”

And so the album was done, written and recorded during my winter vacation. Songs were basically dealing with my all time favourite chanteuses, characters from vintage comics and science fiction, excuses and excuses to find masks to put on my thin feelings. I also planned a song on Oilvia (and its reprise “Bolivia”), but it didn’t make it at last. Recording voices in a real studio and mixing’em (thanks Marco) took double of the time I spent in writing and recording the songs. But I’m happy with it. And that’s what you got.

First time in my life I also had a professional video, and I have to thanks Stefano Poletti for that. And Simona for having been my Amy Pond! It was an honour to have worked with the same director of Baustelle and 3 Allegri Ragazzi Morti music videos. It was a great experience.

Here’s further details on the tracks…

1.THINKING ‘BOUT YUKA

I always thought that the most sensual songs on pop music were written by Yuka Honda, from Cibo Matto. I discovered band’s first album “W La Woman” thanks to a review in a music page of an Italian newspaper called “La Repubblica”. A year later I was in Dublin visiting Virgin Mega Store. A friend of mine – very well aware of my odd musical tastes – came to me with their CD, linking forever the perception I had of that strange trip-hop album with my second permanence in Dublin. I used to listen to “W LA WOMAN” late at my Dublin night with a borrowed CD player. It was magic. Later “Stereo Type A” was never the less, and as for “Marina and The Diamonds” I’m so happy ’bout this strange coincidence having both the artist back as “There’s a Girl…” is being released. By the way! Those days me and my friend where both in love with a Japanese girl called Mika as well! Some parts of the songs are dealing with that experience too. I think that no chanteuse has ever written sexier songs than “Theme”, “King of Silence” and “Clouds”. Possibly “Seaguls Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her”, but in a less romantic way and without any mystical ingredient. The song – and therefore the album – starts with some “number station” clips. It’s a tribute to the TV Serie Fringe and it want to introduce the sci-fi alt-love element of the album. “It wasn’t mant to be like this…”. And that’s it! Second part is pure Bowie “Earthling” era. I also found interesting battling with the “YOU” vs “ME” theme with the names YUka and MIka. Wasn’t that a brilliant one? Though my favourite quote from album and song is:“Music be the food of love. Play on”. Even Yuka’s fan loved it!

2.HATHERLEY

I didn’t need to fake that much writing a love song about Charlotte Hatherley. Me think she was the only singer that pushed me to move my ass from my bedroom to go and see her in another stage. Glasgow was the way! Funny thing it’s that while I was in Glasgow… I “met” (let’s say I was “friended by”) another girl. Just the evening before seing Charlotte’s show. Ah Glasgow, mother of all the unrequited loves! Just like “Yuka” the song blends two different experiences together, while the second part is about getting in touch with that girl on another indie live show after a year spent in finding ourselves stumbling in the same venues without saying a word if not  in socials. Charlotte show was true magic. She had a look at the stage from inside a corridor and she had a quick cleaver (and a bit worried!) gaze at the crowd. She had to play alone a very difficult album with just a drummer and a bass player. Her sight came back to an empty point in the space, pondering, and than she said:”I CAN DO IT”. I watched the show at the King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut form the first line. The sight of her wide blue eyes was really something to see.

3.SHORT STORIES ‘BOUT NINA

And I’m totally sure I had some strange dream about Nina when “Life” album was released. “Carnival” was a hit and its video came out from Nina’s blue eyes on MTV like a blasting supernova. I was on a theatre club when I got into Cardigans and I remember me and some of its members going to a nearby town by the sea dubbing an interactive DVD game on a Machintosh point shop. At night, while it was closed. A strange and unforgettable experience. “Life” album is totally out of time, and I remember its song being played on those late hours while Goofy was running around the Mac’s screens on those mesmerizing Afterdarks screensavers. The owner of the shop passed me a copy on tape, and I had to wait to earn my first consistent amount of money to buy the whole band’s discography and get to know the titles of the songs!

Same period I was writing a book with a girl I never met. We wrote one or two chapters of the story each, saving the whole thing on a Floppy disk and sending it along with snail mail, as an attachment to a real hadwritten sheet. My friend introduced in the story that band, one of the characters was a hudge fan of. I really thought it was fictional, but just a year after the band had an impressive hit with a song called “50 Special”, and I was really surprised on discovering A) That they were real B) My friend had discovered a great talent before anyone could see it. I did quite the opposite! The main character I introduced was an afecionados of this little indie venue. They held fictional shows on sunday evenings, but nobody ever came to see the bands. One day it was time for a blond girl with amazing blue eyes from Sweden to play. Guess my dear friend will never know that her name was Nina

The song was played with Simona Rovida. She’s quite the Nina Persson type, plus she’s got an impressive voice too. I think the best part of the song it’s the dichotomy between my parts singing about this boy writing about Nina and Simona’s acting like her character is really leaving her situations without being aware of her writer. Marco did an impressive recording and editing job on that.

4.COME ALONG POND

And it all started from the good ol’ Amy Pond, Doctor Who‘s companion portrayed by the Scottish talented and marvellous actress Karen Gillan. That’s because a dear friend of mine (Kaypea Porsch, DJ from Cambridge’s Dandelion Insanity Radio for a show called Protozoa) challenged myself to write a love song in a shoegaze style. I asked  THE BEST ONE for help me on that task, that is Jonathan Hart, a friend of mine who used to play guitar for a band in Leed called Kiara Elles. I just closed my eyes and pretended to have Karen (don’t know HOW) in my bed. It wasn’t hard at all! I was surprised when I passed the first demo to Jonny and I listened to the complete version with his guitars. Just few second and I was jawdropped and totally knocked out. It was like having Mick Ronson playing a forgotten hit from Ziggy Stardust in my headphones!

“And now? What we’re gonna do with that? Do you realize that it’s a hit?”. “What do you think we’ll do in these days? We’ll let it free on the web…” So now me and Jonny are working on “Hit #2″. It was my “Hatherley” saying the nicest thing about that one. She was watching Breaking Bad when she thought the song was part of the show! That made my day!

5.A DIAMOND FOR MARINA

Some of the facts that made Μαρίνα-Λαμπρινή Διαμάντη my heroine was that she actually made an hit album using fundraising sites and bandgarage and she’s synaesthetic. Just like John Lennon I’m just dyslexic instead, so I thought that inverting the parts and coming out with a song called “A Diamond for Marina” was simply a genius idea! This song is to be counted on those who haunted my head for days slowly softly growing in my imagination just like heavenly plum cakes. Each part of the song was so clear in my head that everything came right into place when I it was time to recorded it. Except when it was time to record the “Brian Wilson Sequence” two months later in the studio, finding myself in the difficult position of having forgot some parts of the puzzle of what I was meant to sing! The other thing I like of this song apart of having done an unbeatable job with the lyrics and its catchyness is that you can really find a lot of influences from singers that really meant a lot for me during the years. I have to tell you: in my opinion it’s the best song I’ve ever dun! I’m really proud of it. Not so much about some references on a certain “Italian Trash Song” in the lyrics during the “B.W. Sequence”. Sorry Marina and listeners, but I just HAD to do that! Just like it happened for the song, its video it’s really growing on me as well. But it’s too expansive, guess I’ll never have the chance to do that.

6.PEYNET LOVERS

There was a time, not so long ago indeed, when feelings had still a very important meaning in people’s life. Love, respect and romanticism were still values and not fictional stereotypes. I’m still living like I’m in some Byron’s or Tennison’s poem or in a comic book, but girls don’t wanna be considered like that anymore. One of the greatest portrayer of these values was the French artist Raymond Peynet. But look at his lovers on paper’s hearts. What do they have become in the end? Yet another worldwide business franchise. What a shame. Another opportunity wasted for the predominance of feelings above cynicism and greediness. Welcome to modern days. I’m particularly proud about this one again expectantly for two reasons: it was one of my turning points on my songwriter skills (in my opinion) and the fact that… it really looks like a Damon Albarn production! The song features my old Casio PT-80, appeared out of the blue from some obscure dark closed after YEARS of missing hiatus.

7.Katsuragi, it’s me…

Me and the forever lost other half of my soul where really in love with Misato Katsuragi, a character from Evengelion. Telling the truth we actually met because of that character, since that girl pretended to be her and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I discovered that my heroine from the other side of a computer line was living near my town. Misato wasn’t very lucky in love. Infact her lover turned out to be a spy and he was killed just after they get back in touch after so many years and they discovered the flame enlivening their hearts was still alive. The song is about the last message Mistao’s lover leaves to her answer machine before dying. Being very conscious of that chance was seriously gonna happen while talking. I’m not dead, happy enough. Still our stories and that kind of connection between us had many things in common with my personal story, especially leaving some kind of answer-machine message in song after eight years of radio silence. Think I’m dead to her anyway. Live went on cowboys, there are other worlds to see after that, we’ll be both cats in another life and sad stuff like that.

8.When Gary Met Putih

The coolest thing on working with Rimauli Dindani from Annemarie (a sweet indie pop band from Indonesia) is that she’s always so enthusiastic on following me in everything I do no matter how ahead or crazy my ideas may seem. I do know that, and that’s why each time we do something together I take advantage of those chances planning impossible lyrics and parts to act and sing. That’s why I came with this crazy idea of blending Italian historical traditions from 1800 and Indonesian fairly tales writing this post modern Seekers-like song on our national hero Giuseppe Garibaldi meeting the far east version of Cinderella having him to cross worldwide oceans not for revolutionary acts, but just for love! Beside harmonica I think I used any possible instrument I’m able to play on this one. I think it turned out to be a nice catchy pastiche.

9.Rachel Green

Let’s just admitt it. I really love Jennifer Aniston, but I’d never wondered I would have written a love song on her. Fact is back in wintertime 2010-2011 seasonal sale period, I was still sure I’d have had to play in Cambridge during Springtime, and I had wrote an acoustic song about Jesus Green, the evocative park with the wide swimming pool inside the student village. The festival never happened to be. But the song stayed! Changing it turning Jesus into Rachel to fit the album theme seemed a nice idea, and hope that no one got offended in Nazareth. Singing that one was really inspiring and challenging.  I did my best on the studio, but first version was really laughable (once again, many thanks to Marco). This song is from the same period (December/January) I wrote the words for three songs in a day for my friend Anthony Rochester. Most of ‘em had a strange melancholic and nostalgic feeling, and I guess part of it had some part on driving the song in those delicate and surreal grounds.

10.Blinded By The Pop Stars

Another ungrateful task for my very busy friend Kaypea Porsch is to bare my heart’s trials whenever I come back from a show in love with a new girl whose only fault is to singing in a band.  “Mark, you’re so blinded by the pop stars” I heard her say one day. “Wait a minute! That’s brilliant! It’s gonan be a song!”, was clearly reply! Since Rimauli suggested that the name of the album should have been epic and a clear reference to the indie culture, at this point of the writing/recording process I had already decided that the name of the album should have been “There’s A Girl That Never Goes Out”. It was clear that at least a song should have been Smiths oriented, so I made “Blinded” the one. Lyrics are a sort of album manifesto, while it’s up to you cracking whose behind all those girls’ names and what the title of the song is hinting at. I really like the harmonica on that. Hope you like it too.