Once I started writing grandfather, one of the first Winters songs, I realised there were two other characters who could be looked at from different angles. We wound up writing three linked songs. Niall(writes the music) and I started things at a conceptual level, so ideas or stories spanning several songs was a natural direction for us.

The general story was a dude went to war at sea, died and left behind a wife and child living in a small coastal village. The three songs are ‘Grandfather’, ‘Grandmother’ and ‘A ghost a shadow’.

Grandfather, tells the story from the context of a story passed down generations. I wanted there to be an element of distortion in regards to the narrator(throughout the trilogy). So depending on who you are you may read the lyrics as “a man went to war and got shot dead” or “a man went to sea and fell in love with a kelpie”. Massive jump of perspective I suppose, but I wanted to throw a shout out to Tideland & Pans Labyrinth both films deal with horrific themes distorted into fantastical dreams in the minds of children who’s subconscious takes over as guardian.

Grandmother tells the story of the wife left behind. This is from the perspective of the child left behind. I am a big fan of The Great Gatsby and this song is a bit of a shout out to that. The son tells the story of his mothers decline into loneliness as she stares out to sea longing for an ideal that never will happen. She grows old, lost in the horizon disconnected from reality.

A ghost a shadow is the child left behind perceiving himself for the first time in the whole narrative. He realises that he had the emotional support of an orphan since his father had gone. Not only that but he knew that for all those years his mother had seen only a painful reminder of what she had lost. He would move away from the sea, as it had nothing for him but hurt. The song goes from first person to third person, yet in my mind it is still told by the same person… to symbolise that self realisation, walking outside yourself to perceive yourself within a story.

That is my ramble pretty much over. Creation is always subjective if you have listened to any of these songs and have a different view of them, you are entitled to that! We see things our own ways for our own reasons.

I’m going to a football match.

For those who are unaware,

I know nothing about the sport.

Expect a confused review later.

Imagine we lived in a world where governments and big companies told individuals what they can and cannot do to their own bodies.

Yet governments and big companies could not be told by individuals what they can and cannot do to the home they share with the only collection of living organisms we’ve found in the universe.

That shit would just be crazy.