F I R S T      S I D E

This album is two very separate sides for me. Each side has a title; the first side is called "Hounds of Love" and is 5 separate songs, all individual but in some way are linked because they are forms of love songs. The second side is called "The Ninth Wave" and is a conceptual side consisting of seven tracks that are linked together.

It becomes increasingly difficult for me to talk about the content of the songs, I'm not sure why -- maybe it's because the more I go on, the more I feel it's for the songs to say than for me. Especially with the second side on this album I see it very visually -- I would eventually love to see this as a piece of film and so I feel restricted about talking about these songs other than a brief analysis of the story, otherwise I find perhaps too much energy is going into talking about the visual side of it rather than doing it. I will try to give a brief analysis and to fill you in more about some of the people we didn't get round to talking about in the last newsletter.

The first track on the first side is "Running Up That Hill" and I'm sure you will have all heard this by now. I am very excited about how it's been received by people, it's so rewarding after working for a long time to see that your work is being received with open arms. This song is very much about two people who are in love and how the power of love is almost too big for them, it leaves them very insecure and in fear of losing each other. It's also perhaps talking about some fundamental differences between men and women.

The second song is called "Hounds Of Love" and is really about someone who is afraid of being caught by the hounds that are chasing him. I wonder if everyone is perhaps ruled by fear and afraid of getting into relationships on some level or another. They can involve pain, confusion and responsibilities and I think a lot of people are particularly scared of responsibility. Maybe the being involved isn't as horrific as your imagination can build it up to being -- perhaps these baying hounds are really friendly.

The next song is called "The Big Sky". Someone sitting looking at the sky watching the clouds change. I used to do this a lot as a child, just watching the clouds go into different shapes. I think we forget these pleasures as adults we don't get as much time to enjoy those kind of things, or think about them, we feel silly about what we used to do naturally. It's also suggesting the coming of the next flood how perhaps the "fools on the hills" will be the wise ones.

The fourth song on this side is called "Mother Stands For Comfort". It's about a son who has committed a terrible crime and how basically although his mother knows that he's done something wrong she'll protect him and care for him and hide him from the people who are looking for him. It's talking about a mother's love and how sometimes she will actually go against the morality she feels within herself about what is right and wrong if the child is endangered.

The last song is called "Cloudbusting" and this was inspired by a book that I first found on a shelf nearly nine years ago. It was just calling me from the shelf and when I read it I was very moved by the magic of it. It's about a special relationship between a young son and his father and the book was written from a child's point of view. His father is everything to him, he is the magic in his life and he teaches him everything, teaching him to be open minded and not to build up barriers. His father has built a machine that can make it rain; a cloudbuster and the son and his father go out together cloudbusting, they point big pipes up into the sky and they make it rain. The song is very much taking a comparison between a yo-yo that glowed in the dark that was given to the boy by a best friend and it was really special to him, he loved it but his father believed in things having positive and negative energy and that fluorescent light was a very negative energy as was the material they used to make glow in the dark toys then and his father told him he had to get rid of it, he wasn't allowed to keep it. But the boy, rather than throwing it away, buried it in the garden so he would placate his father but he could also go and dig it up occasionally and play with it. It's a parallel in some ways between how much he loved the yo-yo and how special it was but that it was considered dangerous. He loved his father (who was perhaps considered dangerous by some people) and how he could bury his yo-yo and retrieve that whenever he wanted to play with it but there's nothing he can do about his father being taken away, he is completely helpless. But it's very much more to do with how the son does begin to cope with the whole lonliness and pain of being without his father. It is the magic moments of a relationship through a child's eyes but being told by a sad adult.