BRIAN CROOK
Interview | Lyrics
How has your first musical memory influenced you?
My first musical memory is of my mother singing to me in bed, I didn't think anything of it until I heard Neil Young do Four Strong Winds and remembered that that was one of the songs she sang. We had no real music in the house until my younger brother started playing the guitar. He was only 10, but got himself a little band with a friend who played accordian
- they even supported Suzanne Prentice at one stage . I realized I was jealous, so I started moving towards learning and writing.
What got you started writing songs?
My first attempt at writing a song was before that, I used to play bands with my brothers: Graeme on cake tins and Stuart, the younger, pretended to play keyboards. I'd have either a tennis racket or a plastic- bolted-together-meccano-type guitar. Writing this I see that the desire to get into a band and write songs was always there - I would have been 8-9; it was a direct copy of a radio song and I substituted key words. I just assumed you had to have your own songs to be in a band, although I don't know where that idea came from, especially in Hawkes Bay, where I can't remember ever seeing an original band. Later on I started to write in a more organized fashioned, 15+, but I didn't write anything I liked until 25 (although by then I had filled 3-4 books with weird and spastic attempts).
Over the years how has your approach to songwriting developed?
In the earliest songs I was happiest with I'd go into a near trance-like state where I could free associate, and just go with whatever surfaced, then craft the thing a bit later. Often I'd have a bit of a tune. I've found I have to work a lot harder and the results are less intriguing to myself if I have a tune worked out first. I do write that way for conscious variety sometimes. I went through a period at the start of The Renderers where I was trying to control my writing to see if I could teach myself to write styles but I ditched that before Dogs Head came out. On Surface of Jupiter I tried to recreate my writing state from Max Block in songs like Death Race - that freed me up and I found I was writing a lot so I started the Bathysphere album, to clear some old ideas and get stuff out that neither of the bands were doing.
With the solo albums you have to imagine you’re listening to them at least 2-3 years before the release date because I'm so slow at finishing up. The new Anti-Clockwise album has been finished for ages but I haven't got around to finally mastering it.
I have always resisted getting too complicated in my writing. For a long time I thought it was essential to write in a conversational tone. I laugh at the notion of lyrics being considered poetry; although there are people who do write more poetically than others, I feel that you can do the song a disservice if you get too deliberately clever or wordy. Having said that sometimes what comes to you is a vague or esoteric image and you go with it.
What songs are you most proud of?
I like the first 5-6 songs I wrote for Max Block a lot; they took me by surprise with their colour and intensity: It Came in a Can, Incubator, Different Air (unreleased) - Dark Continent is also from then. And then I have to wait until Thin Atmosphere and Dimmer Waters. The personal intensity of Dimmer Waters was something new for me; it was originally going to be on Bathysphere but I did a thing Peter Stapleton does sometimes and swapped the projects over to greater effect. Best Room in the House is such a torrent of drugged emotions and visuals that it still amazes me. Pitch black and Baby Doll really stand out as quieter peaks, although I'm also very fond of Shrunken Heads.
How does a song develop through writing, rehearsing, performance and recording?
I never stare at a blank page. I don't write anything unless something has started the process. I used to collect phrases and things - I guess I still do but not as earnestly. But once I have an idea I'll go back and look at some phrases or incomplete songs to see if I can broaden a concept or introduce an off-the-wall idea; sometimes I'll add a totally different chorus from an old song just for the hell of it. I do re-write songs and, when I’m rehearsing, if a more natural word arrangement comes up I’ll change. Occasionally, when I’ve come to record a song, I’ve surprised myself how much the lyrics have changed since they were written. I enjoy writing and I haven't been doing nearly enough lately.
As far as choosing what to keep: there is a fair bit of intuition or luck; sometimes you have to use something you've just written and it's really hard to decide quickly if you think it's good enough. Often band performance decides this for you - you introduce a song on a hunch and it really turns into something, then you have to run off and re-write to bring it up to scratch. Maryrose has a song called Safe in the Dark we used to do 12 years ago - that came from nowhere and turned into a monster rocker - but we haven't pursued it because she didn't get round to re-writing it for the new format. Occasionally you'll record a song at home and it'll sound much better than you were expecting, but it doesn't record well later in the studio, so you have to decide whether to use the demo or just forget it. It's a new thing for us to have the luxury to record several versions of a song to get it right. Also with experience you learn to hear if a thing isn't working.
Lyrics
Baby Doll (Brian Crook)
the heat is just fantastic oppressive in the dusk
your clothes can barely hold you enflame the latent lust
the evening light still falling there is no place for trust
it's all become so weird
baby doll
I know where you are now he's there with you upstairs
you seem so agitated and there's liquor down your dress
I can hear you through the screen door like your father's whisper says
it's come too far now
baby doll
there's night birds in the trees calling us by name
the smell of napthalene and the wind it carries flame
In the agar we seethe on a sultry saturday
it's all become so weird
baby doll
these feelings just plain weird
baby doll
Baby Doll [mp3 : 4.8 MB]
Mercury (Brian Crook)
blind and battered instinct is the drunken navigator
under stars too weird to chart, defying equation
as elusive as mercury as lethal as its vapour
in a world of easy poisons whichever thirst
is greater
under extreme magnification we meet and turn away
dark tornados suck any air out of the day
as elusive as mercury as lethal as its vapour
strange salves and ancient ointments offer no
medication
body snatchers in the silence, chemical burns
forgotten profanities, things I just can't learn
as elusive as mercury as lethal as its vapour
attraction that is trouble by
its very nature
Thin Atmosphere (Brian Crook)
rain streaking the window glass
rain burning in the car headlights
some strange kid hunched at the wheel
some strange kid nameless in hell
out in some thin atmosphere
a simple voice in a silent mind
breathing hard and loud inside
living's just mechanical
your chemistry's all shot to hell
out in some thin atmosphere
rain streaking the window glass
nothing is going to stop this car
your prescription it's just a one way ride
a molten heart and a pureed mind
out in some thin atmosphere
Thin Atmosphere [mp3 : 4.5 MB]
©Brian Crook 2004
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