Parrot Stories
From DFTBA
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Parrot Stories is the debut studio album by Alex Day, released on October 1, 2009.
Contents |
Notes
Alex's debut album started life as a release titled Nowhere Left To Hide (a lyric from one of his unreleased songs, "Lionlight") as announced on his online diary dated December 29th, 2006. With this announcement came seven confirmed tracks and a further nine unconfirmed tracks; of these, the only one to make it on to the final retitled album three years later was "Sicily".
On July 25th, 2008, Alex announced a name change of his album from Nowhere Left To Hide to Shoebox, saying "it's a collection of things personal to me, like my memory box is." At the same time he recorded a five-track demo CD called the Shoebox EP containing the following tracks:
- "No More"
- "What You Do"
- "Holding On"
- "Sicily"
- "The Blanket"
On January 10th 2009, Alex retitled his album to Parrot Stories after hearing a quote read aloud by Lex Croucher from the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, which she was reading for school:
"I love parrot stories! Do you all like parrot stories?"
Alex felt that, aside from the quote being amusing to him, he was like a parrot on his CD telling the same story in lots of different ways, since nearly all of his songs are about girls, and so the title would be fitting. He also said it "gave me an excuse to put a cartoon parrot with a leather jacket on the cover of my CD, which is always good".
The recording sessions took place over four days from Thursday to Sunday, August 20th-23rd 2009.
Track listing
All songs written and composed by Alex Day.
- Jewel case CD, digital download (A0010)
- "A Thousand Hours" - 2:45
- "Hearts" (feat. Lex Croucher) - 3:15
- "No More" - 3:22
- "Holding On" - 2:52
- "Candy Floss" - 2:34
- "What You Do" - 3:16
- "No Sacrifice" - 2:17
- "Impossible Dreams" - 1:59
- "Sicily" - 3:03
- "How We Were" - 2:41
- "Don’t Look Back" - 3:09
B-Sides
- "Standing In One Piece" - a song about Kristina Horner on ukulele, dropped at the last minute when Alex said it was "bland and obvious filler" for the album.
- "The Blanket" - dropped in the studio when Tom Milsom said it was "quite similar to the other songs".
- "Why" - dropped in early demos on the advice of Tom Milsom, who said it wasn't interesting.
- "Polkadots And Politics" - dropped in early demos on advice of Tom Milsom, who said the chord sequence was 'just weird'.
- "Parrot Stories" - designed as the opening track of the CD, a song on ukulele apparently inspired by Julia Nunes. Dropped by Alex, who thought it wasn't a strong track.
Personnel
- Alex Day – vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, ukelele
- Tom Milsom – backing vocals, major minor, percussion, production, engineering
- Lex Croucher – vocals ("Hearts")
- Elizabeth Creaghan - album art
- Oli Horton – engineering (Dreamtrak)
