Life Upstream

about this album

About Life Upstream by Michael Stevens The name: Tim came up with this. It’s from The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux, in which the protagonist refers to dead things floating downstream, whereas there is life upstream. Or something like that. I had read the book when I was younger so I was up for that. Tim also named the band, it should be noted. The artwork: The cover is one of the last things we agreed on, and was reproduced by kind permission from the artist Michael Tallon. He’s a friend of my brother’s and is an exceptional artist. I scanned a few samples of Mick’s work, and we all liked this particular one immediately. I remember Barry thought it reminded him of Egon Schiele. I still think it’s my favourite record cover of anything I’ve been involved with. And on to the songs. Okay. The Blatant Truth initially started life as some dreamy chords that Wil came up with on the keyboard, with Derek adding the “dum dum - dum dum” sort of Glen Campbell thing (which I actually played on the recording). Wil is great at lush, slow chordal pieces. I took Wil’s chords, rearranged them and formed a structure for the song. The song is about the idea of floating through life, bewildered and lacking identity, without a prime motivation – or a soul, if you will. I always liked the idea in the book Peter Pan, in which Peter has lost his shadow and Wendy stitches it onto his feet for him. It’s not to much of a stretch (and not a little bit pretentious, what the hell though) to say we were

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