You Must Be Born Again Lyrics Hollis

Normally, we would position the lyrics of our called song at the tail-end of the blog, only today, we're turning that MO around by making them the entrée and focus of this piece.

"Westward Jump" is the 6th song out of the 9-track offering that is Marker Hollis' 1998 eponymous, and alas, only solo album.  Often overlooked in favour of the quirkier, more challenging wood & brass arrangement of "A Life" or the pianissimo perfection of "The colour of spring", this is a piece of tranquillity sublimity, an practice in infinite and tonality.  It is an Hollis master form in hitting the vocal at just the right moment against the under-stated musical backdrop of Dominic Miller's exquisite guitar playing.

"WESTWARD BOUND"  – (from the album "Mark HOLLIS", FEB 1998, POLYDOR)

"Opaline through her pilus
Born on an April tide
Glowing in the wonder of our first child

There my promise is

A spur
A rein

The globe upon my back
The force per unit area upon this earth

Drought's heir

Sown my money
Sold my shirt
Sown my money

Migrate
Job on the threshing line
Mute I walk
Idle basis
Westward bound"

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Lyrics: Mark David Hollis.

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The song opens with the madonna like image of a young adult female, flush with maternal awe, cradling her infant, combs of milk-glass decorating her hair.  The moon-white gems add to the prototype of birth, purity and innocence.

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"Born on an April tide" – a nod to his wife, born in April, who has been alluded to in previous Hollis compositions.  What would be interesting to know is when exactly this song was written??  Hollis' commencement child was born in 1987, so was this song penned when the couple were fresh in the after-glow of nascency, or was information technology written retrospectively, drawing from past starting time paw experiences.

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"In that location my promise is"

His promise as a husband, his hope equally a father; to protect, to nourish, to provide for…..is both "a spur" to button him on, and "a rein" keeping him in check; both motivator and deterrent.  He has committed to his family, now he must honour and fulfil.

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"The earth upon my dorsum
The pressure upon this earth

Drought'southward heir

Sown my money
Sold my shirt
Sown my coin"

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The weight of this brunt lies heavily on him, and, on the country, which must bear the fruit of his labour then as to provide for his family.  He sold the shirt off his back so to speak, to raise enough coin to purchase seed to plant, merely the ingather has failed to yield, due to drought.

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Crops failed, money gone, what choice is there for this man? …

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"Drift
Job on the threshing line
Mute I walk
Idle ground
Westward bound" .

… Little choice but to leave his family unit and the 'idle ground' behind.  To go away to observe work 'on the threshing line' – difficult labour, and, a world away from the homely image of the farmer working his small holding.  He walks in silence, "Westward bound" leaving behind what he loves.  It is at once a sad and lonely image, but yet one which shows forcefulness, determination, and backbone.  This man's deportment underline his delivery to honour the promise he made, just are higher up all, a confirmation of the depth of his devotion and love, equally both a husband and a begetter.

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" … at times, the voice is lilliputian more than a sparse parting of the air in the studio; the words are stretched out, torn apart, boiled down to consonant acoustics." ***

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The "Marking Hollis" anthology is another phase (I am loathe to utilize the give-and-take final) in the musical development of this lyrical and musical genius.  Everything almost the process of recording the album underpins Hollis' desire to create as natural a audio as possible.  There is no sound for sound'due south sake.  If anything, it is the contrary.  Music filled with deliberately long voids, allowing the chords to breathe, the notes to slowly exhale, sustaining the sound of the key, squeezing the final out of the vibration.

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The outset sound you lot hear on this track is not music, it is of Mark Hollis breathing – a long, deep, inhale, exhale.

" … the affair about that is … everything's simply recorded off this pair of mics at the front, vocally likewise … you've got the whole geography of sound within which all the instruments exist … If you heed hard enough, yous tin actually hear where my head'due south moving in position as I'm singing. Because it does exist in a real room space." ***

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This is exactly what Hollis wanted – unadulterated, raw sound.  The feeling that the musician is so close to you, he could nearly be in the room beside you.  Y'all tin hear him move, hear him breathe, only yet the vocal, so repose, so frangible, so fragile.

"… it is extremely quietly recorded ..(it) is without dubiousness the quietest I've ever done a vocal. I could barely fifty-fifty go a sound to come out. I really like instruments hit at low level, and like I say, given the point that everything is playing at that level, you've got to be in sympathy with it." *** And, the instrumental sound must be in sympathy with the delicate vocal, which could only exist accomplished past using acoustic instruments.  Anything electronic would have overpowered the song timbre and sentiment, although the option of acoustic was non just down to sonic suitability, there was too the desire to create music that couldn't be dated, that wouldn't historic period.

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 "The infinitesimal yous work with just acoustic instruments, past virtue of the fact that they've already existed for hundreds of years, they can't date." ***

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Hollis held house to the sentiments and values he had established and maintained during the processes of recording "Spirit of Eden" and "Laughing Stock" – attitude over aptitude, personality over persona.  Piece of work with a group of independent musicians, give them the liberty to be creative, to play as comes naturally to them, and then like a patchwork quilt, stitch all the pieces together, to form a coherently produced piece of lovingly crafted individual elements.

"The idea was to have carefully worked-out structures, within which the musicians would have a lot of freedom. I'd merely say to them, okay, we're here , we want to get there – now let's play. And I wanted there to be no more than four or five things happening at any one time. Over the course of the record, at that place are probably 20 musicians involved, just I wanted it to feel similar a small combo from start to finish."

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Such deeply thought out processes often yield the most effortless, natural-sounding, results, complex in their simplicity.

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Nosotros will go out you now with the words of Mark Hollis …

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"At that place are ways of listening rather than just hearing, if you're prepared to make the effort."

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And now, please DO brand the effort to listen to, rather than hear, this achingly cute song.

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Composed & Arranged by: Mark Hollis and Dominic Miller

*** Excerpts taken from a 1998 interview with Mark Hollis, by Rob Young for The Wire magazine.

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Source: https://dervswerve.wordpress.com/2015/07/26/there-my-promise-is-a-reflection-on-westward-bound-by-mark-hollis/

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