Page 30 - Black Velvet Issue 90

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decision; am I going to give in to this or am “Yeah. I guess so,” she replies. “I’m written now! It was good for me to engage
I going to stand up? So in a way it has the very drawn to her character. It’s not a coin- actually with the topic when feeling so
same rebelling spirit but she’s basically giv- cidence that she’s the one who speaks in strongly about it. The book actually opened
ing that the finger and ‘let the earth cover the lyrics. Yeah, she’s my favourite!” with a quote by a 17th century philosopher
me, angels will come for me, but not whose name I’ve lost right now and he talks
tonight’. So it’s about her very deliberate he band released an official lyric about mankind and all of the wonderful
choice to live. I thought it should have a cel- Tvideo for ‘The Glory And The Scum’ things we can do and all of the horrible
ebratory vibe to it. I’m very happy with how a few weeks before the album was released. things that we can do and then he con-
that track turned out.” Charlotte wrote this song about the violent cludes with ‘We truly are the glory and the
events that have been happening all over scum of the universe’, and yeah, that res-
peaking of death, ‘Turn The Lights the world. Charlotte felt frustrated about the onated with me and my thoughts about that.
SOut’ was written about the character world and the media’s way of discussing That was just one of the things that I read
Death in The Sandman. Charlotte says, the events. Charlotte says, “I was feeling re- and immediately knew “This has to be inte-
“There’s a lot of death on this record. I’m a ally down. I’ve always been a fairly opti- grated into some song title at some point,
huge Neil Gaiman fan and I always thought mistic person and I really believe that every or in some song’s lyric at some point,” and
that his personification in The Sandman se- one of us has equal potential for good and it worked out with this song.
ries is very interesting in a way that it’s so bad. It’s basically all about how we choose ‘The Glory And The Scum’ originally had
different from all other cultural representa- to use that potential. And I do think that the working title ‘Clawfinger’. Charlotte
tions of death. They always have to be these everyone has the potential to do the ab- says, “Often, songs like this one, when a
scary, skinny grim reaper-y kind of guys solute best and the absolute worst, so that song starts from the instrumental world
that we have to be very fearful of and in this is where that comes from. But I was actually rather than the lyrical world, then we work
comic series it’s a young goth woman who given a book by a friend when I was feeling on a track and we’re like, “What are we
does her job with a lot of empathy and love fairly pessimistic about all of this. The gonna call this one?” and I think this one
and she welcomes everybody to the world book’s called The Better Angels Of Our Na- initially had a riff that reminded us of the
and she also greets them at the end of their ture by Steven Pinker. The book is a history band Clawfinger. In the end, I’m not even
lives. I fell in love with the character as soon of violence in mankind. That doesn’t sound sure if that riff ended up in the eventual
as I first read the comics and it was a really like it would cheer you up but it does, be- song. But yeah, we tend to stick with the
nice challenge to make her speak through cause the conclusion of the book is that very first working title we give a song until I
the song.” we’re living our days in one of the most am very sure I’m not going to change the
Other characters in The Sandman in- peaceful eras ever and it’s a trend that is lyrics anymore so people don’t have to
clude Dream, Destruction, Despair and De- still continuing. That was kind of a hopeful change the working title six times! We just
sire. We ask Charlotte which character she idea. Of course that book was written before go from first title ever to the final thing.”
would be out of all of them. Would it be 2016 so I don’t know if the conclusion It’s interesting that going back to the
Death? would have been the same if it had been ‘Lucidity’ album, on ‘The Gathering’, Char-

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