The release of Paul Smith and Peter Brewis’ new album Frozen By Sight is imminent, November 17 via Memphis Industries, no less, and with this in mind, they’ve kindly given us a new track, ‘Trevone’, from the record. The album unites the travel writing of Smith, Maxïmo Park’s frontman, with arrangements by Brewis, whose day job is with Field Music. Each track is tethered to a different location – Smith visits Los Angeles, Barcelona, Budapest and further afield over the album’s duration – with ‘Trevone’ embedding itself in the Cornish seaside village that lends it its name through closely-observed, imagistic lyricism, complemented through the music, which moves through a twisting chamber arrangement to a tuned percussion and strings-gilded crescendo, carrying Smith’s observation, "Sidestep, and the whole world appears".
"I was on holiday in Cornwall when I wrote these words," he says. "It’s an area of England that feels otherworldly and I’d never been there before so I had a fresh perspective on the place – a common theme underwriting this album. There are lots of different chord changes in the song; a device that reflects the questing spirit of the words. I wanted to convey the idea that around each corner could be a small revelation and that objects are transformed under scrutiny: the wind through the fields becomes an ‘invisible current’; rocks are ‘hippo-toothed’; ‘two tusks of rock’ become a ‘corridor’ to another world. Sure enough, Peter’s arrangement follows suit and the music blooms at its conclusion." Listen above and catch the band over three dates next month:
DECEMBER
Thu 18 – Band On The Wall, Manchester
Fri 19 – St Giles-in-the-Fields, London
Sat 20 – Sage, Gateshead
