lifeblood: songs: backgrounds: mystery

1994-xx-xx: swamp ophelia, epic press release:

"an inexplicable attraction between two seemingly opposite people. jane siberry was perfect to sing on that track - her work is so mysterious to me. that's her in the third verse, that siren sound...you're not really sure it's a human voice."

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1994-02-18: (unknown source):

interviewer: speaking of that, what you said about recording and what you bring to it, like the quirkiness or different things that came into play. when you write a song, how do - do you see where it's going to go or do you sort of just let it breathe and go? how do you come to the final conclusion that that song is there, that it's done, it's right, it's on on the album?

amy ray: well - in the history of our writing songs, we spent - we normally had spent a long time playing them and they would develop themselves onstage, very spontaneously. so a lead break might be two measures and it might turn into eight measures by the end of the tour. so we would record it that way. and with this album, you know, obviously, we don't have time to do that, so there's only a few songs that we had really worked on and jammed on, i guess. so, it just depends on the song. some songs, you know, we might have written and been thinking about what instruments we might want or, you know, what kind of harmonies and those kind of things. and then, there's other songs that we wrote so recently that when we got into the studio, the song developed itself, you know, just out of the air, kind of. "touch me fall" did that. i hadn't even finished that one, really.

emily saliers: "mystery"

amy ray: "mystery." one of emily's. "mystery, " we really wrote my part while we were rehearsing during preproduction, which is really unusual.

emily saliers: yup.

amy ray: we hate doing that. but it worked out for the best. it's challenging and it - it fit into the scope of all the rest of the songs because of the time that we did it in.

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1995-xx-xx: (interview transcription), interview by kirsti reeve:

k: right.. emily.. a bit about your imagery..things like the pirate and the girl.. and the old dogs and the magician... is that you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

e: oh totally.. it's pretty obvious isn't it? yeah...

k: it took some thought. but like the pirate and the girl verse coming in the middle of mystery... was that..

e: which part now? the..

k: the pirate gets the ship and the girl? (e: oh yeah yeah..yeah) at the end of mystery?

a: that's good.

e: yeah.. that song is about a love that, like two people come from totally different parts of the spectrum, or however you want to voice it, and i was trying to create tension with that verse. and i was trying to juxtapose the brutality of a pirate, and that strength and force and masculinity or whatever it was, with the sort of subdued quality, or listening ear of the person who's taken in by that and how it all meshes together.. i was just sort of trying to mix those images together.

a: what is all the old dogs..

e: from.. uhh.. wood song

a: ahh.. i knew there was a dog somewhere

k: oh there's dogs all over that album!

a: yeah.. everybody kept saying that, and i was trying to..

k: barking in the back..

e: (laughs).. yeah right..

a: i was trying to think of where they all were.