Features
Track By Track: Caitlin Park
By Edward Sharp-Paul
Drunken singalongs, arrhythmic heart samples and field recordings of boats – Sydney’s CAITLIN PARK guides us through her debut album ‘Milk Annual’.
‘How’s Your Wife?’
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] I initially wrote this song for a composition competition for a new ABC drama, five years ago. I ended up liking it so much I never entered it. For this reason, I think the song never really began with any intentions or meanings, only when the dialogue samples were added and the arrangement became more complex (with the strings and roaming drum beats) did the song really embody the question, “How’s your wife?” But for me, I think the most important moment in the song is the apathetic response. This gives the song a history and a gender and a curiosity.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Caitlin Park - Milk Annual - 01 - How's Your Wife by BSR
‘Baby Teeth’
‘Baby Teeth’ was the last track written for the album, and it was the song I had the most trouble with. It is far from a love song, it’s a battle within yourself/myself, and the realisation that you have always happily handed out advice about relationships and love, but you never really followed it yourself. I wanted it to be a simple message, thus the music is minimalist and repeated, much like the lyrics. The chorus wraps this up with a somewhat grotesque idea of juvenile love, “Young meat, and baby teeth.”
This was a very hard song to mix together – don’t get me wrong, I wanted it to be as hectic sounding and cluttered as the heart gets in these kinds of situations – but Liam Judson [mixer] really saved it from becoming a mess. The handclap rhythm was originally just a click track for the guitar and drums [by Eliza Fawcett] – but it kind of ended up being the glue that tied it all together. It is predominantly a vocal piece, and hopefully for most people, ends with a bit of light.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Caitlin Park - Milk Annual - 02 - Baby Teeth by BSR
‘Would You Let Me Back In’
I really wanted this one to sound like someone left out in the cold, abandoned, maybe missing a shoe; someone that had stepped out of their home briefly to put the rubbish out and their lover just locked the door behind them. It is also a tired song, one that has been sung many times before. The backing vocals and the sleigh bells do the cold, icy climate and the doubled vocals give the “all been done before but I’ll-tell you again” feeling.
I got a group of friends together in my bedroom for the final verse to sing the drunken backing vocals, which assisted in a beautiful shanty-like sentiment. Finally, the old man at the end pulls the whole album altogether for me: “I’m no longer the age for this sort of activity,” effectively saying, “I’m old, I’m withered, and I have learnt new things every step of the way, but it doesn’t stop – you keep making mistakes and learning from them, always.” I take some comfort in this, but it also makes me feel very, very tired.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Caitlin Park - Milk Annual - 03 - Would You Let Me Back In by BSR
‘A Boat?’
Peter Broderick wrote the lyrics for this one and he is a very clever man. What initially drew me to his poem, was that it was actually shaped like a ship (like Haiku, or picture poetry) and I saw it as a challenge to try and recreate this sonically. I used some old field recordings of boats and general household things (bottles, sheets, the sink) to have the sound effects and samples travel as the lyrics travelled, from the top of the ship, to the bottom – into the water.
There are so many elements in the sea and ships that so clearly encapsulate them aurally – especially the wind (and the wind can sound oh so lonely) – so I worked with this, mostly with the vocals and the clarinet [by Emma Hunt]. I also listened to a lot of Peter Broderick’s records, and wanted to make the sound more true to records of his, like Home. As well as the song journeying visually-to-aurally, Peter’s songs often build from small to large, creating a visual journey for the listener, and I wanted the song to do this too.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Caitlin Park - Milk Annual - 04 - A Boat by BSR
‘Cauliflower Jack’
I wrote this song (well, the short lyrics) when I was in Spain travelling with my sister. It’s about our independence and closeness, and the sharp jolt parents have when they realise their kids have grown up. I think the initial shock is feeling like children have moved on, and the up-bringers are no longer needed. I wanted the song to be about memory and lamenting the past. This is introduced by the manipulated, repeated and reversed guitars.
This fraught sadness was captured so beautifully by Eirwen Skye on the melodica. I remember listening to her play it when we were recording for the first time on its own, and it almost made me cry. It was such an incredibly intuitive arrangement. And Liam made it sound a bit like a harmonium, which helped even more with the church-like send off. The dialogue sample was recorded by my friend [electronic artist] Benedict Carey on his cheap Nokia in the Cauliflower Hotel in Alexandria [NSW]. Ben found this old character, soaked in beer, rattling off stories about the HMAS Australia (hooray for technology). I always loved the recording, because his voice reminds me so much of the BFG – old, simple-minded and kind.
The best thing about recording this song for me was singing it with Holly Throsby. Holly and I have been friends for many years, and she was such a big part of my growing up. She, more than most, would know what the songs on this album are about and what was happening in my life when they were written. I always wanted Holly to sing on my album, and this was perfect. It is short and concise, but the lyrics are the most loaded of any on the album, and they are sung with pride.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Caitlin Park - Milk Annual - 05 - Cauliflower Jack by BSR
‘Match. Wrist. Bird’
I wrote this one as a bit of an experiment – lighting a match really close to a microphone was never a very clever idea. I had to huddle under a desk to get this recording perfect and I was so happy with how long the entire match took to ignite I had to use it for something. I’ve always wanted to sing a song a cappella, especially like songs sung in church in the 1910s, 1920s, where everyone stood around a person, closed their eyes and clapped along. This song is all about the rhythm, the samples, and triads.
There is a nice church reverb Liam put on the vocals, which threw me off at first, I always wanted the vocals to be nice and close – but it needed to be done to make the song pop at the end. We wanted to douse the drums in reverb to make them huge, because Miles Nicholas played them so well and it was the only way to do them justice on this track.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Caitlin Park - Milk Annual - 06 - Match, Wrist, Bird by BSR
‘With No Strength To Defend, Be A Ghost’
This one is about a rabbit that was abandoned by everything – his sight, the sun and himself – the only thing left was his bitterness. That old chestnut. This is the only song on the album that relies solely on the lyrics and I needed a bare-bones accompaniment to really let them be the focus. This is how most of my songs begin, and the arrangements come later, so I really wanted a song on the album that stripped everything right back. The flute and tremolo string sample at the beginning sounds like the opening credits of an old film, and as old films were great storytellers, I wanted to use it here.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Caitlin Park - Milk Annual - 07 - With No Strength To Defend, Be A Ghost by BSR
‘Warriors With Wild Hearts’
‘Warriors’ is really a song based on layers of rhythms – even the vocal parts are deliberately rhythmic so that they build on the main sampled loop. I wrote this song in my parents’ lounge room, when they were away, and ended up recording the demo in the same evening. I released this song earlier in the year as the album’s first single (with a bunch of b-sides), but for the album I wanted to make it a little more extravagant, so I wrote an extended version. I recorded the Annandale Public school youth orchestra for the main sample and the soundbites scattered throughout – along with the bandmaster, my friend Ben Colmer. This was the biggest recording for the album, or perhaps just the one with the most people in one room. The kids had their own dance moves by the end of the recording session, like extras from The Karate Kid.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Caitlin Park - Milk Annual - 08 - Warriors With Wild Hearts by BSR
‘Tic Tac Language’
This song was planned to be much more complex than the end result would suggest. With the initial idea to get as many people speaking as many different languages as possible, I wanted to create a patchwork melody out of dialogue. This would have been so much fun; there is nothing I love more than cutting up soundbites, and if you throw dialogue into the mix it becomes even more exciting. However, the dialogue spoken (as whole sentences) was so beautiful and hard to extract, so I left the sentences as they were and created a patchwork story instead.
Most people spoke of love, including Keiko Joy Minami, who made the statement used in the opening of ‘Baby Teeth’ in Japanese: “Before the world ends I want to love somebody.” These songs are actually quite connected, using the same man’s voice as a dialogue sample taken from an old vinyl recording. (An irregular heartbeat from this recording is used as the backbeat to this track.) Finally, I wanted the sung vocals to be almost untranslatable, and to leave the dialogue samples as the main lyrical content. I was left with: “Love is often like a galloping horse, I love that idea.”
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Caitlin Park - Milk Annual - 09 - Language Song by BSR
‘Jack, Where You At’
This song is very important to me, a song I don’t think I will ever get tired of singing. This song is about my grandparents and their partnership; their time together, and their time apart, and finally their memories. [Belles Will Ring’s] Aidan Roberts is a very dear friend of mine and I was honoured to have him sing this song with me. The best part of recording this song was drinking wine and talking about a lot of things. We recorded about ten takes signing together with one microphone just hovering about us. But finally, he overdubbed on an earlier recording and absolutely nailed it in one take. Aidan wrote the harmony himself – and I think this song means as much to him as it does to me.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Caitlin Park - Milk Annual - 10 - Jack, Where You At by BSR
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