annika hammer

Annika Hammer

This is my dear friend Annika Hammer, (Nika), who I was in university with many years back. We don’t see each other very often, but when we do, we invariably end up at a piano at some point. She’s one of the few people I’ll fire off demos of new songs to and be comfortable knowing that I’ll get really constructive feedback from her, and her musical sense is one that I trust.

Although we studied classical piano together, she was very much steeped in Swedish folk music, and has been in a few different Swedish folk groups since, as well as maintaining her classical and solo pop stuff too.

Before Christmas, she uploaded some demos of her own songs and some gorgeous cover versions, which I’ve been completely addicted to ever since. I’d heard her doing a cover of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” the last time she visited me here in Ireland, and I absolutely adored her take on the song, so I was glad to see that she’d posted that on Soundcloud too:

However, perhaps my favourite of the covers is a Swedish song that I didn’t know of before hearing her sing it, but it seems to be quite well known. “Utan dina andetag” written by Joakim Berg, from the band Kent, and seems to have been a B-side, according to what wikipedia tells me. Another Swedish singer Carolina Wallin Pérez did a lovely stripped back version of it in 2010.

But, I’m a complete sucker for Annika’s voice and her piano playing, and I’m loving her version of this song. Even if you don’t understand a word of Swedish, the melody of this song is undeniably gorgeous. Beautifully written.

This one is her own, and she’d previously sent me this and another track to lend an ear to, and this one was my instant favourite and still is:

You can hear more from Annika over on her own Soundcloud page where you’ll find two more original songs, and some gorgeous Swedish folk songs too.
Over on her MySpace page she still has a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Conversation” up, which was recorded on the piano downstairs here, and she also has a recording of her classical side, playing a Mozart piano sonata. (There’s nothing this woman cannot do.)

The Swedish trad band she is in also, Sheik, are on Soundcloud too (I recommend their youtube too, as the band are all beautiful.) And her gorgeous piano & flute folk duo, JONI are only on Myspace from what I can see, but trust me, you want to hear those tunes. Just flute and piano, and gorgeous.

Inspiration: Joni Mitchell

This is one of my favourite Joni Mitchell songs, and I stumbled across this live version from 1970 on youtube today while searching out more performances from this BBC In Concert series.

The entire concert is collected here, if you fancy losing yourself to some wonderful live solo performances from a talented songwriter on the cusp of the greatest period of her career. This would have been in the period just after Ladies Of The Canyon, while writing songs that would appear on Blue.

There’s a great early version of “All I Want” in that show too, while it was still being written, which I recommend checking out, if only to compare it to the version that is so well known and loved on the album. In fact, that song was the reason for a spur of the moment road trip across the country one year for me. My ex was visiting, and we went for a hangover breakfast with a friend, and afterwards, this song came on in my CD player in the car, and we decided that my ex wouldn’t get a bus back to Cork, but that we’d all just keep on driving and listening to my Joni CDs and sing along. Now, every time I hear that riff starting on the dulcimer, I think of the road to Cork, and it makes me smile a lot.

four live songs from limerick

Here’s a four song video from that little set I did in Limerick recently at a songwriters session down there.

Set list in the video:

  1. The Bliss Returns [Starts at 0:08min]
  2. Water Phoenix [Starts at 3:40min]
  3. Is This What They Call Romance? [Starts at 9:45min]
  4. The Best Of Me [Starts at 13:38min]

The Guinness was good there, that’s all I’m gonna say, and thanks to the guys behind the Limerick SongWriters night for recording the video!

My First True Love (demo)

This song was written at the same time as Helen (don’t make a sound) back in 2007 sometime. Both songs were inspired by novels I’d read or recently read at the time. I’ve noted previously that I tend to work on songs in batches of two or three at the same time. Sometimes an idea splits in three, sometimes I’ve loads of little ideas that start to link together resulting in some different songs. With this one, I was working with a really basic straight-forward chord progression, and I was trying to write something that was musically quite simple and direct. Perhaps because the other song I was working on at the same time was the opposite of that.

I’ve never been so sure of this song, but I like some parts of it. I guess I’ve been playing it so long that I’m just used to it. One of my old housemates surprised me one day by saying it was her favourite of my songs. I think I have a music-snob idea that because it’s simple it’s not as good as some of the more musically complex songs. I’ve managed to completely over complicate the piano line as a result though, and I definitely fuck it up in this demo. I’d go fix it up before posting it, but my piano has been out on loan all weekend, and when it comes back I’m gonna finish off the new demo I start for “is this what they call romance?” instead.

my first true love [demo]
my first true love [demo] by misterebby

(lyrics after the jump)
Read More

Caoineadh (demo)

I’m not a fluent Irish speaker. I didn’t learn Irish very well in school either. Any Irish I do have came from the fact that I was friends with Irish speakers, and joined a youth theatre group at An Taibhdhearc, the National Irish Language Theatre of Ireland, based here in Galway. Thus I will apologise if the lyrics of this little song are examples of terrible Irish. :)

It is one of two songs that I have written that have Irish language lyrics – the other one just has one section of the song in Irish, and the rest of it is in English. Interestingly, I never set out to “write a song in Irish”, it just seemed to happen both times.

This one was written when I was working as a barman in Club Áras na nGael (the Irish language bar here in Galway) and obviously being surrounded by Irish on a daily basis had some kind of an impact. It is one of the things I love most about Galway – it’s the only city I’ve been in in Ireland where I’ve heard people casually using Irish in day-to-day situations, e.g. queuing for the banklink, or sitting at a table in a café, or talking to their kids walking down the street. As much as the language can appear to be integrated in a tokenistic manner in some parts of the country, here it doesn’t feel like that at all. It really does feel like it is a part of the city – a small part, sure, but a definite one.

It’s only a wee little song, and I never finished off the lyrics or really figured out in my head where it’s going, but I demo’d it again there in the last few weeks to get it on record so I could sit with it and really hear what I want to do to the song. So, I guess it’s a work in progress at the moment and we’ll see what happens with it.

In terms of writing it – the melody came first, and the words kinda slotted into place at one point when I was playing it at the piano. The song was written at the same time as Maria, and both started life as piano instrumentals. I may yet record instrumental versions of both songs, as I’ve half a notion to release a little record of just piano instrumentals.

Caoineadh [demo] by misterebby

1 2 3