MICHELE
STODART
ECCO
IL VIDEO DI “AIN’T NO WOMAN” IL NUOVO SINGOLO DALL’ALBUM “PIECES” IN USCITA
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“It’s a song about someone who’s finally standing up for herself and
putting her foot down. There’s a strength and determination in it, a
self-respect that the character is almost taunting her lover with: “Oh honey,
there’s no other woman like yours”.”
Michele
Stodart (la voce dei The Magic Numbers)
si prende
una pausa dalla band (di cui è titolare con il fratello Romeo) e presenta il
suo secondo album solista “Pieces” in uscita l’8 Luglio per One Little Indian /
Audioglobe
Over a decade since The Magic Numbers landed in the
top ten with their double-platinum-selling debut album, Michele Stodart has
taken temporary leave of the band she formed with her brother Romeo, to release
her second solo album ‘Pieces’ on July 8.
Released four years after her solo debut, ‘Wide-Eyed
Crossing’, the nine songs that comprise ‘Pieces’ confirm that, almost by
stealth, Michele has turned into an artist whose work bears strong comparison
to some of the touchstone songwriters that helped shape her outlook.
“With your first album,” explains Michele, “It’s
very much a matter of planting your flag in the ground, assembling the best
songs you’ve got, and saying, ‘Here I am.’ With this one though, I could start
thinking about something more narrated and focus on the storytelling a bit
more.” For Michele, it was a matter of getting tone and texture right. One of
the earliest songs to take shape on the record was ‘Something About You’, which
set the emotional temperature for much of what followed. It’s impossible to
miss the aching intensity in Michele’s delivery, as she tells her younger self
that “life waits for no girl/ Who fears the dance of letting go” over a
breathtakingly ornate string arrangement.
The bedrock of Michele’s writing is a reliance on
rock-solid melodies that always stop short of outstaying their welcome. Keen to
ensure that the tunes earned their place on the record, Michele wrote most of
the songs on ‘Pieces’ away from her guitar – only setting them to chord
sequences when they refused to leave her head.
Having experienced toxic relationships and intensely
loving ones, Michele feels well placed to hold forth on both scenarios. ‘When
Is It Over?’ parlays sentiments that will be immediately recognisable to many
people who have ended an abusive relationship only to realise that the
underlying insecurities which propelled them there in the first place are
harder to shake. "I used to seek out darkness, perhaps thinking that I
would write better songs as a result of it. But really, you don’t have to
seek it. It’s all around us.”
‘Ain't No
Woman’ then, is Michele’s take on those
classic country songs like ‘Stand by your Man’ or Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’.
But it takes the opposite point of view, explains Michele. “It’s a song about
someone who’s finally standing up for herself and putting her foot
down. There’s a strength and determination in it, a self-respect
that the character is almost taunting her lover with: “Oh honey, there’s no
other woman like yours”.”
Then there is the “trade off” to which Michele refers
when describing one of the songs on ‘Pieces’ which concern loving
relationships: the more precious the love you find, the greater the fear and
awareness of the forces that conspire to take it away. ‘Just Anyone Won’t Do’,
the song in question, is another example of the increasingly assured narrative
voice that Michele is bringing to her songs these days. In this tenderly turned
study of loss, we’re reminded that the longer and more loving the relationship
is, then the greater the grief that follows it: “There’s a place to the left
of you/Still cold and unlaid in/The bed’s all made up,” she sings. Even if
she makes it to the chorus in one piece, you may fare less well.
“There was never a plan to start making solo records,”
says Michele. “But then something happens. The songs you’ve been writing just
for yourself, whilst playing in a completely different band, take on a life of
their own. Before you know it, you’re walking onto a stage where there’s just
one mic stand, one monitor and no drums. And you’ve no clear recollection of
what got you there!”
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