Homage To Catalonia

An anarchist being tempted by a demon in a land where the wolves roam freely - all this and more on my latest folk-rock outing. With an extra dash here and there of baroque-folk-rock…

Links to stream, download and purchase here.

This is an album that started off as an attempt at a quick EP - there were three songs that were asking to be recorded before I got started on my next album, which I had thought would be the follow-up to Beneath The Bark. These songs were Homage To Catalonia, Nothing Of Mine and A Song About Wolves. While working on the EP, four new songs also popped up, asking the same. Which led to a full length album…

Homage To Catalonia is one of the very first pieces of music that I ever wrote, way back in February 1981. I have a four-track cassette recording of the tune, under a different title, that I recorded in 1981 with a friend playing both the piano and the melody and the improvisational sections on a flugelhorn. The surviving recording is not in the best of shape, but with the recording and the original manuscript as a reference, I was able to reconstruct and re-record the tune, this time with a full band. I had never liked my original title for the tune; while working on the recording, I kept being reminded of a couple of trips to Barcelona as well as a re-reading of George Orwell's Homage To Catalonia, and it eventually dawned on me that I had a good title.

Nothing Of Mine was originally recorded in the early 2000s, at the same time as the songs that went on to make up the album Mind The Gap. Back then, my percussion resources were fairly limited, and I was never able to get a drum track that came close to what I heard in my head, and I abandoned the song. But it had always stayed in the back of my mind. Fast forward to now, and I was able to finally finish it. The bass, bouzouki and doumbek tracks are all from the original recordings, but everything else is new. The lyrics were almost completely rewritten for this recording, but I did keep the Now I know this is nothing of mine tag line.

A Song About Wolves started off as some lyrics I wrote somewhere around the year 2000, which was inspired by the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian word vukojebinje. I've lost the reference to the book where I read about the word, but here's what I wrote down about it, back when I wrote the lyrics:

The Krajina, in present day Croatia, was referred to as Vukojebinje, because it was so barren and desperate. Vukojebinje means “land where wolves f**k”.

I thought this word was evocative, descriptive, and quite a wonderful use of language, despite (or perhaps because of) the vulgarity contained within it. When I wrote the lyrics, I was imagining the entire world becoming vukojebinje, thanks to climate change, and other hubristic human behaviors. It didn't seem much like a song lyric, however, and it was filed away. But I never forgot about it. While I was working on finishing up Beneath The Bark, in an effort to procrastinate, I decided to work on turning this lyric into a song. It wasn't easy, as there isn't a chorus or a tag line - just a lot of stanzas. But I worked out an arrangement that I liked, and now you can hear the results. I decided to rename the song, so that I wouldn't have to constantly explain the word vukojebinje.

The opening section to the song also came about through Beneath The Bark procrastination - I was messing about with a string patch on my keyboard that I like, and I slowly stumbled into the melody. I wasn't sure what to do with it at first, but then I had the idea of using it as a prelude to the main song. The melody also worked out well as a guitar solo near the end of the song.

The walls in The Privilege Of The Walls may very well be the ones we are building to protect ourselves from vukojebinje. It may be the howling of wolves rather than the shofar horns that bring them down - either way, I don't think the walls will stand in the long run. Both Walking Past Bridges and What It Means To Be Gone seem to be about what is found beyond the walls - whether our own personal walls or our civilization's walls. For further elaboration, see the late great Michael Been's song The Walls Came Down.

Which leaves one last song - The Suits Cry Out In Fear. I think of it as a 21st century sequel to Roy Harper's I Hate The White Man which was on my favorite album of his, Flat Baroque & Berserk. To me, the lyrics are for the most part straightforward and clear; consequently, it might anger some people, if it had an audience. I don't like to anger people, but sometimes it is good to let everyone know where one stands. George Orwell got shot in the neck and almost died in Spain, where he went to fight Fascism - an excellent example of letting everyone know where one stands. Anyway, if you are a white man in a suit (which I have been, at times, when forced to wear a suit), please don't feel attacked - I am using white men and suits to stand in for something a little more abstract.

Written, performed and produced by Jim Powell.

Released 3 November 2023.

Lyrics.

Nothing Of Mine

Language torn from tongues by the wind -

Words are wasted. The sun inclines,

Shadows darken the day and our history.

Now I know this is nothing of mine

No words to resolve the struggle for parity -

Scraps of food and a crooked line

Forming, stretching deep into darkness.

Now I know this is nothing of mine

Stagnant pools and the crumbling towers -

No one speaks as the grand design

Returns to dust and a wordless dark memory.

Now I know this is nothing of mine

The wolves descend from the remnants of forests -

Bark and howl as the moon draws a line

Through the stars and the pitiless misery.

Now I know this is nothing of mine

The Privilege Of The Walls

Exhausted silent stories line these brooding walls;

Climbing through the rubble, a lonesome soldier calls

Above the din of traffic, below the sights of guns

That aim at all the passing reasons dying in the sun.

Guard us all from reason that reasons this is right

Who would defend privilege when privilege defends might

The walls upon foundations that slowly sink with time;

A web of cracks and broken bones that slow and steady climb

To top the twisting blackness that spirals down below -

Where no one walks, no one speaks, and no one ever goes.

Left to one’s devices, escape would seem the best;

But no one has the energy when no one tries to rest

Before the bones return into the bodies they employ

To carry them away from the walls they would destroy.

A fortress full of emptiness will crumble from within;

The desert winds will scatter sand and muffle cries. The din

Of traffic tearing blindly at the surface of the road

That leads an endless circle ‘round these walls that will implode.

Walking Past Bridges

Once I walked by bridges

That spanned a river. Steep

The canyon plunging, currents

Carve through the rock so deep.

I never thought to cross one.

A border left resolves

Into another country,

And the track behind dissolves

Into the foreign. Falling,

The rain begins to flood

The canyon, tearing bridges,

Collapsing into mud.

Left behind, the waters

Are rushing to the sea.

Lost inside a country,

No more I’ll ever be.

Walking past the bridges

Rebuilt by fortune, fast.

The riches turn to anger,

The borders sealed. The past

Dissolves into the currents

And flows into the sea.

The waves, the tides exhausting

All that’s left to be.

The Suits Cry Out In Fear

There’s a time for reflection,

There’s a time for a fight.

Never wise to be drinking

When the norms turn to shite.

But the halls echo loudly

With the stomping of boots,

With the fluttering flags,

And the voices from suits.

Crying out in their grievance

Lashing out in their fear

The time of the white man is ending

And the plastic excuse

Flat, baroque and below

In a prism of lies

Where there’s nothing to know.

So, it’s wrong to scorn fascists?

And corruption success?

The black man a racist,

And the white man oppressed?

There’s a base line of suffering

Every human must bear.

Of course, all lives matter

And, of course, we all share

In the fear of the living,

In the cold of the grave.

But the time of the white man

Washed away in a wave.

From a deep, open wound

From the cold, angry sea,

The color of blood.

The temptation to flee

Away from the tide

That submerges our breath,

Drowning the sins

Unresolved with our death.

What It Means To Be Gone

What does it mean to be out on the road

With the wind at your back and a heavy load?

The mountains before you and the sea behind.

No clouds in the sky - nowhere to unwind.

The tangle of tales that have formed in your head

Lull you to sleep and then fill up your bed

With feverish dreams that wake up the ghost,

Hungry and lusting for the opposite coast.

I don’t know what it means to be forgiven

To sense the sun’s not going down

On a futile form of inspiration

I don’t know what it means to be gone

The sounds of a storm signal signs of relief.

The doves in the trees mourning songs full of grief.

A footfall is heard but the wind whips the sound

Like the smoke of a fire burning there on the ground.

All of the warmth lost where the sky has been torn,

A hole where the stars look so lonely and worn.

And the branches of trees claw the cold winter sky,

The seasons confused and the ghost starts to cry.

Cry for the time lost to walking the road,

With a ghost on your back and a reason to goad

The tales. Full of anger, the eyes of regret

Blinded to reason, and the weeping begets

A river that flows to the valley below.

A season of flood fills a vessel of woe.

What does it mean to drink deep from that glass?

What does it mean for a lifetime to pass?

A Song About Wolves

Make haste mortal peasant,

For the dreams of death come awake,

And walking haunts the homes

Where hidden sleep your children.

The fear of starvation

Has become the torment

Of plenty. The wagons, carts,

Now spew the violent fumes,

The combustion of the earth’s blood,

The angry chatter fouling lungs

And melting stone. Vukojebinje

Becomes our backyards.

The green fields and parks

Stripped, raped and poisoned,

The water gone, the soil dead.

The wolves, sated with flesh,

Making dens in backseats

Of cars abandoned, rusted through.

Nearby, bodies uneaten,

Rotting, then bleached by the sun,

Where slowly they become

Black blood of the earth.

Who will pump the blood

Eons from now and wonder

What life was lost and why?

Will the excess be apparent?

Will the scars have healed?

Or will wolves still pace

And mate and sleep and howl

And devour our carrion.

Our legacy, the bare rock

Over the green and pleasant land

We thought was Jerusalem.

Make haste mortal peasant,

For the dreams of death come awake.

'Homage To Catalonia' album front cover art.

Nothing_Of_Mine

The_Privilege_Of_The_Walls

Walking_Past_Bridges

The_Suits_Cry_Out_In_Fear

What_It_Means_To_Be_Gone

A_Song_About_Wolves