Musically, the album's beautifully crafted songs turn any notion of what a female songwriter should do on its head. From the aching celebration of life in the face of impending loss that is "Dartmouth Square" (one of the album's two hidden tracks) to the soaring, ether bound flight of "Lucky One", Gemma pushes ideas to an extreme, tapping into the deepest human emotions.
The album was produced by Gemma Hayes with David Odlum and Dave Fridmann (Sparklehorse, Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips,...), and mixed by Mark "Spike" Stent (Massive Attack, Bjork...). As a complete work "Night On My Side" is as assured a debut album as you're likely to hear. No doubt due to Gemma's definite vision of how she wants her music to sound.
Gemma Hayes is a strong woman. She seems like she wouldn¹t suffer fools gladly. She¹s articulate, opinionated and enthralled by music. And when Gemma Hayes talks about her music - she shines.
DAY ONE "I was going to call it "Slow Instrumental With Lyrics" because the song started off as an instrumental and I couldn't shut up when we were recording it. I ended up singing into the mic and came up with this. Basically it about needing to get from A to B, and you change everything about yourself to get there. And when you do get to B it's like 'fuck, I was really a nice person back there and I'm crap now'."
HANGING AROUND "It's kind of about wanting to be in love with this person, wanting a house, being really chilled, and how life would be rosy from then on. And you get there but everything you wanted just makes you feel bored. It's about that uneasy feeling of 'have everything here, but I'm still not fucking happy'." DARTMOUTH SQUARE (Hidden track) "My friend was bedridden and he had a little recording studio in his room. He was lying in the bed as I was recording this on the set up. It's just two acoustic guitars. There¹s this playschool next door and there was these kids playing in the garden, so we opened the window and stuck a mic out. So you can hear my friend in the bed shuffling about, then you've got these kids shouting and then there's these two acoustic guitars. It still gives me chills thinking about it. The song was literally made up there and then."
Which leads directly to…
I WANNA STAY "It's about a friend of mine who has just passed away in the last two months. It's one of those songs where I just said exactly how I felt. There's no great clever lyrics, its just literally 'I wanna stay out all night with you'. And it ended up sounding like a love song, but it wasn't meant to. It was just about wanting to stay sitting on the steps with him on Dartmouth Square, which is like a park in Dublin where his house was."
Protection - we do a lot of it these days. Sun cream for our skin, sunglasses for our eyes, condoms for you know where - but do you remember to protect your hearing?
Click to find all the information you need to look after your hearing now so you can enjoy music for years to come
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Gemma Hayes It All...and then some
