Iain's song by song guide....

Since the outset I've been describing Crazy Bird as an album of 'little performances'. That is exactly what it is in the sense that each song was captured (thanks to the experience and sensitivity of RIB, the producers) in the most natural way possible.
The recording environment, whether or not it comes across on records, is more often than not sanitised and generally fragmented - not a lot of it happened the way you end up hearing it (unless of course you listen, quite wisely, to 'old' records). Our approach to this record was quite the antithesis, with every song being a live and free performance that only happened that way once.
The reason I choose to explain this is because, when I listen to a record, it's important to me how it feels. I find the music and subject matter a great deal easier to absorb when I can sense a natural vibe and ease in the recording, and I think in a way we managed to get somewhere near achieving that. So with some idea of the 'air' of the record here's my thoughts on the songs...

Sinking Like a Stone
Everyone gets stuck. The problem with stuck for me is not so much being unable to budge, that too, but moreso that it's all too easy to helplessly and unwittingly move in the totally wrong direction - down - to sink. This song is I suppose a recognition of a vital choice in direction but also a wish to forget it, or for things to just be different, without all the hard work. "How I wish this life was a photograph, one frozen moment echoing from the past, or a ghost train that moves a little jagged and tense, but where terrors come and go without consequence."

Promises Promises
There are two instrumental guitar pieces on this album and this is one. I want to leave it very much open to interpretation, a little ambiguity never hurt anybody. But suffice it to say the title evolved out of wanting to call the tune 'Promises Blessed Promises' as a bit of a piss take of the band and my producers 'Lies Damned Lies'. I did however really warm to the more sincere qualities of the current title and it means anything you need it to (as all good art does).

Magical
A celebration. A song of appreciation of what it is to be involved in another's life and the privilege of that. It's about catching glimpses of things, the potential, and being thrilled by it in the face of mystery and inevitable hardship. This song wanders, meanders, goes its own way just like we should.

Crazy Bird
It's always intrigued me as to how title tracks get to be title tracks. This got to be title track because...
It sounds cool.
I am (not cool, stupid, I mean a crazy bird and not in the female sense smart ass, I just mean I'm often in the clouds)
Maybe the song itself gives some impression of the album as a whole.
It's all about struggle and I guess that's a pretty heavy theme throughout the album.

Frequently as a song's taking shape in the writing process something happens, the only way I can describe it is that I have to learn what it's about. Colonel Stockman introduced me briefly, as he often does, to what seems to be a very unique insight into art in the form of a book by Madeleine L'Engle 'Walking On Water' where she writes: "But when the words mean even more than the writer knew they meant, then the writer has been listening. And sometimes when we listen we are led to places we do not expect, into adventures we do not always understand." And so this song taught me about myself on two consecutive levels both in my human and my spiritual relationships of how I can't always dictate the path of life to myself but must also listen to it.

Flat Earth
Do you ever really wonder, I mean really think about what it would be like to be someone else? Do you ever entertain an idea like, maybe the colours that you see aren't the same colours that I see, and if you do, do you consider whether yours would be worse or better, duller or more vibrant than mine?
We all see out of different eyes, but when we gain a full understanding of that, we're left with no excuse for ignoring or degrading other people's view points. This song deals on a very broad plain, with the endless frustration and struggle with inescapable subjectivity, which is a dead weight around our necks that, paradoxically we must, yet never truly can, shake off.
It terrifies me sometimes to think of what islands we all really are, all of us trying to express and communicate some understanding of ourselves to others. We are all isolated messengers with only scribbled little notes from our hearts to give. But, saving our loss and anchoring us somewhere vast and wonderfully common to us all, is a strong thread of spirituality... sometimes it's just too thin to see.

Working Up A Storm
Possibility strikes it's untamed bolt and illuminates our lives with the light of what could be, in the briefest of glances down a dazzled track that we're not sure whether we actually saw or not. But in the words of a well respected fictional investigator of the paranormal, "I want to believe".

All That You Are
It's a hard thing to accept that just because a person seems great to you doesn't always mean they feel that way about themselves. And on top of that, no amount of persuading from you is likely to change that. But I don't think that means we stop, and so this song was written in the knowledge that it probably wouldn't make a significant dent in their troubles, but, even if, for even the briefest of moments, they catch sight of something of what they are, well it's a helpful tip toe in the right direction.

Hedgehopping
I'd written the jist of this, the second of the instrumentals on the album, quite some time ago but had never thought of doing anything with it 'cos it was always just for fun. It was inspired primarily by the playing of Bruce Cockburn; both an incredible songwriter and an exceptional guitarist.
With our approach to the album being what it was, it seemed right to include some incidental things that I'd always thought would remain personal to me. Of course, I'd never given the little tune a name. A suggestion came and was approved by all parties present (although, I was a tad indecisive), that I should call it "Pants On Fire" for various reasons both obvious and inobvious.
Anyway, it ended up that I changed the name, I think because I didn't feel enough affinity with it. Which leads me to hedgehopping, something of which I have a great deal of affinity with believe it or not. For me the tune is nostalgia of rogueish nights leaping, ducking and diving, sometimes setting the pace and sometimes trying to keep up.

Moon On Tuesday
Ballyholme Beach is just over there on the east side of Bangor. That's where I grew up for over half my childhood. Needless to say, the sea's become a huge part of me and I think being near it affects some of us more than we know. I've experienced and expressed all sorts of feelings there and somehow been left with the sensation that the great expanse of water before me knows, and carries all of that with it.
I wrote this song whilst in England imagining being by that beach on a full-moonlit night and, just as I'd done so many times before, laying down the thoughts, fears and regrets that were bearing down on me. It is a particularly idyllic account of a place and time that probably wouldn't mean too much to some others not prone to dreaming, but there's a magic there for me that I can't escape nor could I help expressing.
"For she's the tears of thousands who've come to see her just like me, To lay their tales of sadness at her feet."

Ancient Drums
Hhmm... this one's been around for a while, in fact this is the third album it's been on (answers on a postcard of what the other two were for toptastic prizes!). Hence how it's turned out to be a bit of a tangent on the record. You get to a stage with songs, and one or two other things to boot, that if you don't do something different with them you're going to have to kiss them goodbye. This one was sent off with a rather boistrous kiss.
I love old things. Not old in the way some stuff becomes staid and unhelpful with age but with a sense of respect and wonder at what has gone before, can never be retrieved, and now all we're left with are those old things as reminders.

Aching Hearted
Sore.

(This review taken from Steve Stockman's Rhythms of Redemption website)