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For those who have followed the progress of 'God Help The Girl' since the call for singers on iMeem in 2007 - here is some information about the first release from the record:

‘Come Monday Night,’ an orchestrated pop song from the pen of Stuart Murdoch, is the first single release from the ‘God Help The Girl’ album, to be released on 22nd June 2009.

‘God Help The Girl’ is a story set to music, which Murdoch has been working on intermittently for the last five years and his first new music since Belle and Sebastian’s seventh album, ‘The Life Pursuit’ in 2006.

"I was out for a run and I got this tune in my head,” says Stuart of the album. “It occurred to me that it wasn't a Belle & Sebastian song. I could hear female voices and strings, I could hear the whole thing, but I just couldn’t envisage myself singing it with the group.”

Both of these elements feature on what is one of the standout tracks on the album. The singer is Catherine Ireton, a native of Limerick who now lives in Edinburgh, discovered via a friend of a friend, and who has also previously appeared on Belle and Sebastian record sleeves.

After auditioning early in the process, she ended up taking the majority of lead vocals on the album. In Catherine, Stuart has found a rare talent - her clear, lilting vocals bringing to life the characters in Stuart’s head and making for an ambitious and engrossing musical journey.

‘Come Monday Night’ also features an orchestra conducted by Rick Wentworth as well as Stuart, Stevie, Bob and Richard from Belle and Sebastian. The b-side is the sublimely titled ‘Howard Jones Is My Mozart.’

So this morning I reached as far as I am going to reach in my attempt to become organised. The ‘free world’ has a new leader, and I have a new sock drawer.

My socks haven’t been paired for about 6 years. Consequently, I just keep buying socks, making the problem worse. This is my last task on the road to domestication, so I go at it blindly, almost drunkenly.

I invent a mythology for myself to makes things go easier. A sock mythology. As I try to pair, and I find many socks bereft of a partner, I come up with a union which I call The Single Sock Alliance. They plead for socks fallen on hard times, and try to save them from destruction as a single sock. One of the lines I hear used in a sock’s defense is

“He’s basically a Good Sock!”

It’s when I hear this line in my head, I realise that domestication isn’t everything. I have to get out. Lewis and Tolkein got a lot of mileage from anthropomorphic trees and animals, but socks ain’t gonna do it.

How about I get back to records and stuff.


Records and Stuff

Matthew
Question
god help the girl. an update of progress please stuart?

Ok, Matthew, glad you asked. The record’s going to come out in late spring. That’s the LP God Help The Girl. 12 Songs, unless I get annoyed with one of them and boot them off. Very late spring, shall we say?

Before that I think we’ll have a single or two. No queing up in Woolie’s anymore! No, you’ll have to look even harder!.. To your local independent stockist (at least for the vinyl). Or you could just download with the flick of a digit.

I think the first single is going to called Come Monday Night. It’s sung by Eve with a bit of Cass. It’s basically a lullaby for an overworked boy. My notes for the relevent scene say

Cass and Eve annoy James at work. They borrow his keys, and promise to have a song written by the time he’s finished work. When he gets home, they have rifled his stuff and are watching a porn vid.

James retreats to the pub. Eve and Cass drink James’s booze and talk about lactating and laundry. When James comes home the worse for drink, they sit him down and surprise him with their song, “Come Monday Night”. He is quietly enraptured.

I need to make a video for this track. I’m looking for an attic bedsit in Glasgow to film it in, preferably one with a sink and slopey ceilings. Bad carpets, a lumpy bed, and an alcove with cuttings depicting your favourite recording star. Serious, if you’ve got a place, or if you know of a place, get in touch and we’ll come and have a look. It’ll save us decorating. (The alcove is optional..)

Listen..

Right now I’m listening to The Woodentops, to Sandy Posey and to Jimmy Cliff ‘The Harder They Come’. I know because I just checked my ‘recently played’. But I also been digging some new stuff. I got a copy of the upcoming Butcher Boy long player, ‘React or Die’, and it’s a great listen, a real classy record from start to finish. I’ve been listening also to my two favourite tracks from last year. They are ‘Brand New Start’ by Little Joy, and ‘Hitten’ by Those Dancing Days. In fact, the Dancing Days one is a bootleg from their concert; it starts real slow and then winds up to hit single speed. Very nice.

Marisa and I went to see Dancing Days when they played in Glasgow at the end of last year. I had arranged to meet the group because I had a track that I thought they might want to record.

As you might imagine it was a bit akward at first, believe me. I’ve been there, I’ve been in the group when some music biz type comes in with a proposition... If it was Belle and Sebastian, we’d be sitting there in our little gang, waiting to be impressed, but ready to dismiss..

So there they were, gathered round a cosy bar table. I was one box of chalk short of feeling like a school teacher. Marisa and I had anticipated the awkwardness. We decided that the best way to combat awkwardness was to make it more awkward. I don’t know how we figured that one out.

The idea was, that if my words were met with stony silence, then I was to awkwardly mention an ‘achievement’ of mine, then Marisa would respond with a chorus of ‘Hercules! Hercules!’

For example
Me: “I have a Brit Award, you know.”
Marisa: “Hercules! Hercules!”

Me: “I’ve met Prince Charles, you know.”
Marisa: “Hercules! Hercules!”

We were sitting in a bar called The Captain’s Rest. There was an ugly statue of an old sea captain above our heads. Another facet to our plan was that any time I mentioned the name of the bar, Marisa would stand up, salute, and shout

“Aye Aye Sir!”

It’s almost a pity that we never got to try that one out.. The girls were very nice and accommodating. Our conversation was quite constructive; we decided we would get together sometime in the New Year to try something out.

Hi folks

Are you still there? I feel kind of funny, because I don’t think I’ve ever really awarded a prize before, at least one that was anticipated. I remember getting butterflies waiting to see how I did at music festivals and the like when I was young, and it’s strange to think that I’m on the other side this time. I apologise if the wait has been on the long side!

Boys, at this moment we are going to postpone your result until the New Year. We need to devote ourselves to the ladies at present. We will have a better idea where the males fit in, in the New Year.

As I’ve said before, the competition was of a very high standard. Crucially, there was also a wide range of interpretations of the songs. Now, we didn’t know exactly what we wanted before the competition started (hence the competition!) but I think we came closer to knowing at the listening stage, and the decision was influenced by that.

Just to clarify our intentions; we are going to have two singers over to Glasgow for five days or so. They will practice with the group, and go on to record demos of some the film songs in our studio. This is part of the ongoing process to prepare the songs for final recording.

In the meantime, we will have a great chance to see what the singers are made of, and judge their abilities and talents, with a view to further participation.

Like I said before, I think the way the ‘God Help The Girl’ Forum took off was terrific. I hope the involvement doesn’t end here. By putting your voice and your personality up on line, you’ve become a pool that we will look to during this long process. I just wished you lived around the corner! That would be easier.

Already I’ve been in touch with a few of you to do some ‘reading’. It’s possible at a later stage that we might have a few more people over to Glasgow to follow up on that as the drama aspect of the project comes to light.

But at the minute, there is the music! With around 240 female entries (including video), if you were invited to sing again by myself or John, you were very close to being picked. The two singers that were picked were chosen for pitch and tone, for their flexibility, for the style they displayed, for the strength of the voice and for the potential we saw in them.

They are Brittany Stallings and Dina Bankole.


thanks
stuart