Announcing the launch of my weekly podcast series “Attention Engineer”! The trailer is done done done, and submitting it for inclusion in all the big podcast directories this afternoon was quite thrilling. I’ll be updating the subscribe links on this page as and when they’re confirmed.
I’ve had “make a podcast” on my To Do list for at least six years, but I’m glad I waited. It’s taken me a while to develop the confidence in my interviewing and recording/editing/mixing abilities to the point where I felt I could ask some of the big names on my wishlist to take part, and I’m delighted and thankful so many people said yes before there was any evidence this was going to be a real thing!
I’ve recorded 12 conversations with some of my favourite artists and will be releasing them once a week from Wednesday 3rd June, then inviting more people to take part as we go along.
This is going to be FUN.
I’ve taken the decision not to court business sponsors for this podcast, because I love the idea of it being fan powered instead. If you’d like to support it please consider joining The Correspondent’s Club on a free or paid tier. Check out “Sponsor A Podcast” – you can choose which episode you’d like a shoutout in. Contact me if you’d like to discuss this further.
THANK YOU for visiting my website!
+ Get FREE music immediately by joining The Correspondent’s Club (free and paid tiers available).
+ New episodes of my music podcast “Attention Engineer”are released every Wednesday – visit this page to find out more and subscribe via your favourite podcast platform.
+ Get “Everything Looks Normal In The Sunshine” plus unreleased track “The Only Way Out Is Through” FREE when you join The Correspondent’s Club. + Download PWYW from Bandcamp. + Search for “Penfriend” on your music platform of choice.
Thanks for listening! Now, read on to find out how the song came about…
The jarring image of the best looking ice cream in the world and the face mask preventing me from enjoying it is a symbol intended to reflect the bizarre times we all find ourselves in…
I looked up from my notebook impatiently, tutted, sighed and stood up, striding the two paces from my desk to the studio door to slam it shut. This wasn’t working out too well.
My jokes about noise-cancelling headphones (a luxury beyond my means) were becoming less jovial. Between the concentration-stealing mood swings of the neighbourhood toddlers and the long, loud video meetings my husband had started attending from his home office next door, I was feeling trapped…and guilty – for feeling trapped when I was in a better position than many (a house with space for two plus a small garden, a happy relationship, my health).
In the week before the UK lockdown was announced, Tim and I had already decided to stay inside and were adjusting to being around each other all day. I limped through the last few lines of my Morning Pages and picked up my guitar. I felt frustrated and a little bit sulky foot-stampy childish – why did I have to be quiet, anyway? I’m a musician FFS!
I had already picked out a sentence from my morning’s writing and scrawled it across my whiteboard in blood red pen. “Everything looks normal in the sunshine” felt like the germ of something important, and was indeed the portal to a song that assembled itself in a swift and orderly fashion on bashed acoustic guitar with time to spare for me to overhear yet more meeting afterwards. YAY.
I demoed the song the following Monday and performed it live in front of Robin Ince, Josie Long and Jo Brand two days later. I’ve been working with brilliant remote drummer Max Saidi since we were introduced by a friend last spring, so once he sent over his parts I recorded the bass, guitars, synths and vocals here in The Launchpad and sent everything off to Dan Austin to be mixed.
I decided to make the most of my ability to do whatever the fuck I like as an independent artist and change my launch plans to make room for a different debut single, and so here we are.
A song like this needs some killer artwork, and I’m so pleased to have collaborated with one of my favourite Insta artists @genskiart on this.
The jarring image of the best looking ice cream in the world and the face mask preventing me from enjoying it is a symbol intended to reflect the bizarre times we all find ourselves in – everything looks normal in the sunshine, but in our myriad ways we’re navigating a terrifying situation that throws the normal, everyday idea of a simple ice cream on a sunny day into question.
When I wrote this song, UK supermarket shelves were being emptied by panic buyers, while other people seemed very slow to take the threat seriously. When I was working on the lyrics I pondered our disconnected lifestyles, picturing a scenario where someone who hadn’t previously bothered to greet their neighbours suddenly found themselves isolated, hoping their relative privilege would protect them – “your money won’t help you now”.
The artwork poses the questions I’ve been asking myself as I navigate this strange and unsettling time – with this global pandemic as a backdrop to all of our lives, what is important? What and who do we really miss? How should / could we be spending our time, now and in the future? What do we regret? What would we change if things could go back to “normal”, and if we’re still waiting, why are we waiting to make those changes?
We’re two months into a race with no clear end in sight, and it’s hard to pace ourselves. Surviving is more important than thriving at the moment, and I am in awe of our NHS workers, keyworkers of all kinds, parents home-schooling their kids while trying to work from home and you, too. I see you. This is tough.
I’m not alone in spending some of my lockdown feeling guilty that others are out there working, putting themselves at risk. But, as a wise osteopath once said to me, “Just because some people have lost their legs doesn’t mean your broken foot doesn’t hurt, Laura”. Acknowledging that there will always be something happening that is bigger and more important than a musician releasing a song, I wanted to share this track with you now because it is my interpretation of a very particular situation, a global moment in time that I hope against hope will be something we can move beyond.
It’s not fair that workers are being pressured into returning to jobs when there’s no vaccine yet. The current message from the Government is a shambles. It’s brutally unfair that BAME people are more at risk of getting the virus, and it breaks my heart that while NHS workers die for their efforts to save us, people throw street parties and form conga lines.
It’s time for us to acknowledge our various privileges and look out for each other like never before, but it’s also perfectly acceptable to feel sad about missing the people and things we care about. We can only look forward, now, and try to hope, but it’s ok to want an ice cream on a sunny day.
Thank you for listening to my new song. Love, Laura xxxx
THANK YOU for visiting my website!
+ Get FREE music immediately by joining The Correspondent’s Club (free and paid tiers available).
+ New episodes of my music podcast “Attention Engineer”are released every Wednesday – visit this page to find out more and subscribe via your favourite podcast platform.
Release date: 15th May 2020 Label: My Big Sister Recordings
GET THE SONG
+ Get all Penfriend singles PLUS unreleased track “Cancel Your Hopes” FREE when you join The Correspondent’s Club. + Download PWYW from Bandcamp. + Search for “Penfriend” on your music platform of choice.
Debut Penfriend single “Everything Looks Normal In The Sunshine” was born as the horror of Coronavirus overtook the news. Shocked by the way life in her local neighbourhood seemed to carry on regardless – lawns were mowed, sparrows chirped and Laura’s dogs always need their walks – her heartfelt response was, naturally, a song.
Written in a morning coffee break while her husband took a Skype work meeting in the next room, the song was recorded entirely in her home attic studio The Launch Pad, except for live drums which were beamed in remotely by Max Saidi.
“Everything Looks Normal In The Sunshine” is a technicolour reflection of these unprecedented times, offering hope and solidarity amidst the fear, an explosive sugarbuzz pop banger that at once recalls the heady strut of Dream Wife and Dinosaur Pile Up whilst nodding quietly to Blue Album-era Weezer and Nirvana circa Nevermind.
“Take heart there’ll be time to celebrate” Laura urges as her widescreen, powerhouse guitars enter the fray. Right now, hope is what we all really need.
LYRICS
Keep calm, stay remote Write your troubles on a Post-It note School’s out, last orders at the bar
I’m not pleased to see you Don’t stand so close to me There’s trouble in the supermarket But everything looks normal
Take heart, there’ll be time to celebrate Don’t second guess humanity away Stand tall and we’ll all take the weight Cos everything looks normal in the sunshine, sunshine
Lights out, kids up early Not ready for a life inside It’s gonna be a quiet night but everything looks normal…
Wake up, don’t be stupid Your money won’t help you now It’s too late to get your friends and neighbours round
Take heart, there’ll be time to celebrate Don’t second guess humanity away Stand tall and we’ll all take the weight Cos everything looks normal in the sunshine, sunshine, sunshine
Take heart, there’ll be time to celebrate Don’t second guess humanity away Stand tall and we’ll all take the weight Cos everything looks normal, even though it’s terrifying
Take heart, there’ll be time to celebrate Don’t wanna trust my future to fate So I’ll cut my own hair while I wait Cos everything looks normal in the sunshine, sunshine, sunshine
+ New episodes of my music podcast “Attention Engineer” are released every Wednesday – visit this page to find out more and subscribe via your favourite podcast platform.
25/3/20 – Stay At Home Fest with Robin Ince, Josie Long, Jo Brand and Luke Wright Starts 44:39 – I played “Out Of The Blue” + “Everything Looks Normal In The Sunshine”
4/5/20 – Stay At Home Fest with Robin Ince, Josie Long and Bruce Hood Starts 26:57 – I played “The Only Way Out Is Through” and talked about The Correspondent’s Club.
5/5/20 – Vitriola Music with Robin Ince, Michael Legge, Robyn Hitchcock and Owen Parker Starts 37:15 – I played “Seashaken” and talked about community and music making in a global pandemic.
Thanks so much to Robin for inviting me on all these great shows! There’s really nothing like playing a two day old song live on the internet while watching Jo Brand nodding her head along out of the corner of your eye. Phew!
Thanks to Keven Law for the photo.
THANK YOU for visiting my website!
+ Get FREE music immediately by joining The Correspondent’s Club (free and paid tiers available).
+ New episodes of my music podcast “Attention Engineer”are released every Wednesday – visit this page to find out more and subscribe via your favourite podcast platform.
When I was a little girl, one of my favourite possessions was a shoebox that I filled up with bits of paper, envelopes and leaflets gathered from wherever I could find them. I called it my Post Office, and every now and then I’d take the box from under the bed and pour my treasure out on the floor. I’m hazy on the details, but I remember loving to “play Post Office”, which I imagine meant sorting the assorted paper into different piles and then putting them back in the box.
Later, somehow, I ended up writing letters to children I’d never met, who lived far away – Svetlana in Belarus and Alastair in Derbyshire. It was utterly magical to send my closely written pages to people I would never talk to in person, carefully copying the unfamiliar Russian words onto Svet’s envelopes well enough for her to receive my missives.
It was to Alastair I first proudly declared my aim to be a songwriter when I grew up, having never written a single song, and knowing nothing whatsoever about how to do so. Letter writing predated those heady days when I started to discover my favourite bands by some years, but both activities were a youthful statement of independent thought at an age where actions were dictated by adults.
As I grew older I gathered more people to write to. My family moved every three years, so there were always friends left behind, and in my early teens I wrote to kids I met on school trips, boys at other schools, even friends at the same school as me. We challenged each other to fill up more and more pages and somehow still had enough left to say to talk on the phone for hours in the evening. The freedom I found to express myself in letters is one of my fondest memories of childhood.
On my journey into adulthood, switching to email and blogging and Twitter felt intuitive, but my love for words written by hand on paper never left me. As I released music over the years, getting to “play Post Office” more and more regularly, my role as the maker and sender of things became clear. Writing songs and dispatching them into the world, in whatever format, is a natural progression from the innate desire I had to connect with others from a young age.
I’m delighted to invite you to watch this short video. See you on the other side x
+ New episodes of my music podcast “Attention Engineer”are released every Wednesday – visit this page to find out more and subscribe via your favourite podcast platform.
