Lamb

Each spring is a gift, each breath is revenge

This is the story of an album.

I don’t really know where to begin.

There isn’t a concrete starting point for this album. There are some songs/verses on here that I wrote all the way back when I was thirteen/fourteen. 

Above is the first verse of what is now the final song of the album, written Lorde knows how long ago in one of my oldest note/songbooks. The song now wears a different, less adolescent title (of which you’ll learn soon enough). There are scraps of words and ideas that have been kicking about in my brain for nearly ten years now, waiting for this moment to be released. I have carved them from metal, strings, keys, tears and flesh. It’s surreal to be looking at it all now.

This is the genesis of Lamb.

Following Cotton Ribs, I barrelled straight into the making of this album, as I do each project. At this point in time, my creativity shirks rest and repose. During the making of one project, I’m already thinking about the next; songs are being written and recorded whilst I’m in the throes of releasing another project, and from there, the time stretches. I spent years, as you now know, tinkering and chiseling away at sounds and mixes until they are as close to perfect and my soul will allow. In all honesty, I would have held onto this album for another year if my friends and family hadn’t urged me to release it now. That, and I’ve already had the urges to move on, to explore new territory; there is something else on the horizon, cloudy and wet, and I badly want to run pied nu towards it. I can no longer be waiting for other people.

The songs are begging to born.

Summer of 2022, Australian winter (English summer). ‘The Man in the Sun’ was born, shortly after came ‘Dog Breath’, the name of which I came up with after we walked past a bar in the Brisbane suburbs called ‘Dog Tap’ which I thought sounded like a sick name for a band, or a song. 

To be honest, the making of this album is a blur of days and evenings sitting with my laptop, recording, editing and playing around with sounds and textures, laying down vocals, getting sick of a song, almost canning it, then adding something new and falling back in love with it.

The eleven songs that make up the project didn’t really do a lot of changing; they have stayed a constant fixture, a series of pillars through which I have weaved these stories that have occurred across the last three to ten years.

I will write a letter for each of these songs. They each warrant their own story being told beyond their musical entity.

I wanted this album to best encapsulate me: this is an introduction to who I am as an artist and a human. So much of me is composed of my environment and connection to nature, which, by now, I am sure you are well aware of. I have been obsessed with ideas of birth, vulnerability, and the fragility of life and youth.

Thus comes the image of the Lamb. 

Spring is such a vital time for me, it often comes as a saviour. The sun warms, not too hot, colour blooms back into vision, and one day, seemingly all of a sudden, the leaves all uncurl in their emerald glory, and saturation and vibrancy are restored. I live in such a rural, agricultural area that this time of year is also met with the sound of bleating lambs, running around, unsteady on their legs but full of newborn zeal. 

Beyond birth, the lamb is also a striking image of death; of sacrifice, of fragility and purity. St Agnes. The mysterious figure in the Gawain Poet’s masterpiece ‘Pearl’. 

This album is a birth of sorts; so much life, lust, zeal and enthusiasm. Yet, at the same time, there is a lot of death and darkness. I lost my dog, Mia, who had accompanied me from my earliest memories all the way to midway through my University years. She was a sibling. She was, and is angel. Not a day goes by where I don’t think of her.

A few months later I lost my Grandad, back in Aus, whom we had visited only months prior. I had never experienced grief in such close proximity to another loss, but also, contrastingly, a grief of such painful distance. When you lose someone that you only saw once every eight or so years, someone who lives on the other side of the globe, it is quite a strange feeling. A phantom loss. Prior to these very real losses, I was also healing from a pretty severe broken heart I had received only a few weeks into my first year of University. 

So much of myself had been torn apart, and I was now doing my best, through music, to put it back together again. It is a work in progress, and I think it always will be, to certain degrees. 

I never really enter a project with a certain sound. My approach is to follow my instincts to honor a feeling, either in guitar, piano, drums or synths, or all three.

All I can say is, this album is both loud and tender. 

A mix of the extremes.

Raw emotion, raw sound.

This is me.

Lamb is a grazed, bloody palm.

Lamb is crying to a sunset. 

Lamb is dancing in the rain.

Lamb is the smell of cut grass.

Lamb is sitting in the long grass.

Lamb is walking through sheep shit. 

Lamb is dancing alone, anywhere, manic. 

Lamb is walking to your favourite songs.

Lamb is a summer playlist. 

Lamb is the feeling of being completely vulnerable.

I closed Cotton Ribs with the lines 

Thrown in feet first

Already hurt

Bruised bones and an open heart

And I open Lamb with 

The fields open up my veins 

The sun cleaved into my head 

I found myself again 

Arose from the pools of blood

And tested my fawnish limbs

Meters could become miles again

I offer you everything.

Take me. 

Have me.

I’m giving myself to you.

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

All images taken by the Man in the Sun, Josh Osman.