Features
Track By Track: Caitlin Park
Contributions by Caitlin Park
Original page credit: Mess+Noise
Guest singers, global samples and powerful messages drive along ‘The Sleeper’, the triumphant second album from Sydney’s CAITLIN PARK.
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
‘Wake Up in a Whirr’
One of the first songs written for this album. It was also the first song recorded for the album (at Damien Gerard Sound Studios), and was therefore recorded differently to most tracks. The song is about two of my friends in a very damaging relationship, a partnership I watched in all its sweet and dark natures. I suppose the lyrics cast a certain projection of my own; one steps away from the romance for their own good. It’s about bowing out with dignity.
The layers in this track are incredibly complex – the samples are all taken from different times and cities (Time Square in New York, Punting on the River in Cambridge, my back garden in Camperdown) – the drumbeats are made out of wooden wine boxes, big circus-style bass drums and electronic beats.
The title of this song pays homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. We all get a little crazy in love from time to time, but disguising the truth is not the answer.
‘Hold Your Gaze’
This song is a call to battle! With big drums and a big chorus, I wanted it to sound like soldiers standing in a line ready to strike. Conceptually, the song is about turning your lover into a partner and convincing someone to be brave and make a strong commitment. I originally wanted to call this song ‘Cold Heart’ – when I was writing this song, my bitterness held my gaze – but in the end I thought that was casting too much negative light. The end result of the song is supposed to be very positive and triumphant.
This is one of the only songs on the album that doesn’t have dialogue samples in it, and I used percussion arrangements to make this song sound a little more unique.
‘Not the Light’
‘Not the Light’ begun as an a cappella song that I wrote on tour with Holly Throsby. As the song was written like this, it came together in bits and pieces but was always all about the melody. It is loosely inspired by Paul Simon’s Graceland, an album I grew up with – the powerful call-and-response arrangements of Ladysmith Black Mambazo has always left me with my chin on the ground. Sam Brumby (engineer of The Sleeper) and I had a lot of fun recording this song – I found a plastic container (originally used to make homebrew) and filled it with all the silver I could find in the house (mostly cutlery) and shook it into the microphone, and banged on it with a mallet, and when we put it altogether we came up with a pretty strong drumbeat.
The sample of the woman singing is taken from a recording I did in New York at an Occupy sit-in – the way she sung ‘Power to the People’ reminded me of a cartoon chicken for some reason, and I had to use it in the song.
The song is about your peers assuming you think you’re better than them, or that your ego has surpassed them – an individual recognising that no one is better than another.
‘Hunt for the Young’
The simplest song on the album – a folk song without diamonds and jewels, just vocals and guitar and some ornamental horn drones (played by Aidan Roberts). This was the first song written for the album, and I suppose set the mood for a lot of the tracks on the album. I wanted to sing this song with my very dear friend Aidan – we have a very strong musical respect for one another and sing duets together often.
The song is about fighting for someone you love – when you’ve stepped in the wrong direction and you anxiously grab at what you know you’re about to lose – but let’s face it, you’re being excessively complimentary because you’re guilty.
‘Lemonade’
One of the hardest songs I’ve put together. It was written over a couple of days, but the arrangements were extremely intricate and I was at my most pedantic. I wanted to write something that was uplifting, as a homage to those in my life that had spent time to teach that you could always be herself, to not be afraid of anything. We are constantly learning from one another – despite our age and knowledge – and I wanted to pay my respects to this.
The three characters in the song represent people in our lives that inspire and teach us. With a big chorus that builds to the end, the song is about personal freedom, and as the song carries on the layers become more complex.
I wrote some of the parts of the track according to the strengths of the guest singers on the album. Kira Puru, Aidan Roberts, Emma Russack and Shanna Watson (all songwriters) all leant their vocals to this song and each have unique vocal tones and strengths. Songs by Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye were big inspirations for this songwriting process – and while we were recording the album, these records were always on between takes.
‘This Hand You Lent Me’
I wrote this track the day that we recorded it. Emma Russack and I have been friends for a long time now and I’ve always enjoyed singing with her – so I wanted to write a song that we shared. Emma travelled to the Blue Mountains (where we recorded the album) from Melbourne, and the song was written and finished only moments before she arrived.
It is ‘chain gang’-inspired, with many sound effects recorded in the house in the mountains and other samples from street recordings of overseas travels – bells, guitar amps crashing, silver pieces dropping onto concrete and a gong we found hanging on the wall all make an appearance on this track. Emma and I recorded more than 15 vocal tracks each for this song, so the song’s focus is all about the way our voices work together.
The track ends with a soundscape outro of a street performer from the subway in New York. The very special element of this piece is how it fades out, which was Lee Groves’ (mixer of the album) masterpiece – a sonic 3D technique, most likely missed by the untrained ear.
‘The Sleeper’
The title track of the record sums up the album’s concept lyrically, pointing to the light and darkness of time and describing sleep as a beast of sorts. With its deep, minimalist bass line, reverberant handclaps and banjo solos, it reminds me of a baptism – and in a way this song is about cleansing yourself (however I am not religious).
Everybody has different methods and approaches to help them drift to sleep, and one that I have always been drawn to (to the surprise of others) is listening to Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians – I wanted to utilise the minimalist repetition of this piece and recreate this trance-like technique. The repeated line “Can’t dream of life without you babe” is supposed to capture this cyclical mood.
‘The Sleeper (Instrumental)’
I am very fond of this track and really wanted to have an instrumental song on the album. The approach to writing this song was nostalgic of my first album Milk Annual, built on loops and layers. The dialogue samples are taken from interviews I carried out with Emma Russack and Kira Puru while recording the album – I asked them to tell interesting stories and sing strangely into the microphone so I had a little library of interesting bits and pieces to arrange.
However, the most important voice on this track is my friend Anthony Stephens, who was my favourite customer in a café I once worked in. By invitation, Tony came to my house and for hours he told me about his life as a journalist in the ’50s-’60s, how his mother used to sing to him, his wife and stories of his grandchildren. With the intention of shaping a dream-like soundscape, there are also sound effects I recorded over many years, including sounds of birds recorded in London and preachers recorded in New York.
‘One Another Love’
Sometime in 2012, Tim Shiel and I got together to write and record some music together. We met in a church space in Camperdown, Sydney, where we could set up lots of electronics and recording gear and not be disturbed. Above all of the windows in one of the rooms, there were little lyrical day-to-day reflections (most likely for Sunday school kids) including the line, “Love One Another.” This stuck with me because I liked the way the words sounded when spoken out loud.
When we recorded this song, the piano parts were laid down first to a click – we had to retune all the instruments on this track later, realising that the piano was actually out of tune. Paul Derricott (who played all the drums on the album) performed the parts on this song in one take.
‘Where I Slept’
This track is the most sonically unique of the album, I believe. It’s about a relationship falling apart and being left by your partner in your house that you share, with all the things that you share (specifically, waking up and seeing all of your partner’s clothes still hanging on the rack). I actually got very drunk when we recorded the vocals for this track, which made it quite an emotional session – the song has a powerful message and I thought singing this drenched in alcohol might enhance the performance. Paul played a lot of junk percussion for this track, which really added to the strength of the song.
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