Us
Tinkering about somewhere between the earthy and the ethereal, Sweet Billy Pilgrim scrape strings and tap away at laptops and try to make beautiful things. Their debut album was "we just did what happened and no one came", a collection of songs recorded in a draughty shed with a cast of spiders and crispy moths. Mojo magazine awarded it four stars and The Sunday Times called it, ‘a rather special debut’, making the single ‘Stars...
Writing: Interview with Tim Elsenburg
Interview with Tim Elsenburg, frontman, songwriter, and producer of Sweet Billy Pilgrim’s Twice-Born Men.
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Writing: Going for a Song
(from an article in the Sunday Times dated 20.04.08, in which Tim was asked to yarn about a song that changed his life) "...like an iron foundry at full volume", promised the NME in their review of ‘Descension’ by Slab!. I remember peering out at those words from behind a curtain of teenage hair, and wondering why a band would want to sound like that. I was intrigued. There was something heroic about these musicians...
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Writing: Breaking Up is Hard to Do
The break-up song. It's practically an institution. The lights dim, the tempo slows to a notch above funereal, the piano picks out a suitably mournful motif and suddenly everyone listening is transported back to that moment when love and duty and hope and doubt and friendship and time all went smashing into one another, and then quickly drove off without leaving any insurance details. Even the appearance of Phil Collins on the drumkit halfway through,...
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Writing: Work > Recognition
That simple equation can be a gobful of bitter pills for a songwriter. There are daily challenges to sanity and stability, more rejection than the hardiest double glazing salesman could cope with, and the nagging sense that you could have qualified as a surgeon in the time it's taken to produce and release a record. So why do it ? I've been lucky enough, from time to time, to make a (sort of) living as...
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