Album Notes

'In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo'
(Eliot)

We are each, in our own way, in a prison. Some are prisoner to our conscience, some prisoner to our body, some to our age, others to our past. Some are locked in loveless relationships, some chained to the wage and the daily news. The characters in all of these songs are prisoners – enslaved by lust, paranoia and awful deeds from their histories; by memory and loss, desire and longing, and the ghost of a person departed; by geo-political circumstance, poverty and terror; by grey mornings and the whiskey bottle.

The notebooks help – they make some sort of sense and sometimes, for a moment at least, let our souls fly free. These are my notebooks – the songs mostly are not about 'me' but they help: to be able speak through the voice of the devil (I am the Fuse) helps me tame and belittle the devils I face daily.

I need to dedicate these songs to all of our notebooks, all of your notebooks, that have not yet glimpsed the sunlight – may they all do soon.

'Any day now, any day now
I shall be released'
(Dylan)