Recently Mark McCabe has been working on the follow up to his Debut Album "Is That How You Really Feel". Instead of rushing things and throwing everything he's written since into another Album; he's taken all his best material (including a sublime cover of The X-erts "Just Go Home") and whittled it down to his strongest 5 recordings. It would be tempting to tell you its not as good as the Album (that I recorded and produced) but I would be lying through my chompers. Instead what Mark has done has probably produced a mini master piece.
Mark's lyrics have always been the biggest draw for me but he's reinforced them with a maturity vacant from his previous material. The instrumentation is more stripped down and bare than the full on Folk-Punk he was trying to create. Instead his life experience of moving to Paris and the bare resources afforded to him have carved a troubadour out of him. The EPs two last tracks, tear jerker "Salt & Pepper" and the nostalgic bird song of "Trains", are ones that stick with me after listening and have me humming down the street.
On a rare visit to his native Scotland Mark asked me to quickly draft up some artwork for the EP. I was more than happy to. With the title of the EP and its nostalgic undertones, it seemed to be tailor made for my current work of Nostalgia and harks to childhood. So I asked Mark to bring me one photo of him as a child that would everything up. What it would say about him and his record and maybe even his childhood. He came back to me with him dressed in a crudely improvised BATMAN costume. The theme of playing dress up and pretending to be some one you don't want to be/pretending to be something you're not fascinated me. The trees and the rain for me symbolise every tree you've climbed as a child, but the rain also portrays every task or trouble you've had to face, maybe ones that would often have you looking back to those simpler times when you'd actually live for everyday, just to get out and climb those trees for fun and not for wealth or status.
Mark's EP has no set release date but look out for it in the future.
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