Words Falling Slow – So They Say

Words Falling Slow is a twice weekly blog series written by Michael Timmins in which he writes about the writing, recording, history and inspiration behind some of the songs included in the Notes Falling Slow box set. You can pre-order Notes Falling Slow here. You can listen to a new recording from the box set here.

One of the things that has always intrigued me, bedeviled me, fascinated me and therefore inspired me, is the way that couples communicate, or more accurately, miss-communicate; the way that one person says one thing and the other hears something completely different; the way that my interpretation of an event is completely different from your interpretation of the exact same event. We use language to define and share our perception of the world around us, but that perception is so often warped by the words we use or, more importantly, by how the listener interprets those words. William Burroughs famously said that “language is a virus from outer space”… I think anyone that has ever been in a long-term, committed relationship would agree.

This song was originally written during the making of At The End Of Paths Taken, but we never found the right groove for it and it also didn’t fit the albums overarching theme as tightly as we would have liked. For Notes Falling Slow we pulled it out again and immediately locked in to a deep, mid-tempo groove, which allowed Margo to find her way in to the song. Joby Baker added some, as usual, tasty piano and organ to the song. Joby played a huge part in creating At The End Of Paths Taken, adding some crucial production ideas and mixing about half of the songs on the album.