New music alert! The sparkling new Disappointed Skeptics Club album is live on Bandcamp today! As ever, it was written and recorded during February Album Writing Month and then locked away in a drawer until the summer. I love doing that. Returning to it fresh not only allows me to make clear descisions about song selections and arrangements, it gives me space to get excited about the music again. And I am really fond of this collection of songs.
This year’s approach was a little different to previous years. The theme was simply to try and be as authentic as possible. As a rule I don’t write about my own life; I prefer my songs to be stories (hey, I’m a writer, what do you expect). I’m not, in other words, a songwriter who opens a vein and shows you what’s inside. So this year’s album, My Authentic Shelf, is my attempt to do a bit more of that. The lyrics are still filtered and allusory (because poetics), but the subjects of these songs are all events from my life. Reflections on relationships and on old friendships, encounters with nefarious celebrities, a chat I had with a guy on the bus to work when I commuted to Dunfermline, it’s all there. Even a couple of unbelievably vivid dreams (yeah, that’s stretching it but they still ‘happened’ to me, okay?).
Perhaps because the songs are introspective, the mood of the album is both dark and slow, and the instrumentation blends sweet and harsh in a way that I find both a little disturbing and also completely appropriate. We’re living in dark times. If you really want a peek into my mood (or anyone’s) in 2025, it was never going to be funtimes, was it? And, look, I’m a piano player, a singer-songwriter. Sometimes I try and hold back on the number of slower songs I put out, but not this time friends. So if you’re in the mood for off-beat, desperately dark ballads, this record is full of them. It me, on a plate. You can’t get more authentic than that.
My Authentic Shelf is out on Bandcamp today (which coincidentally is Bandcamp Friday!). It’ll be on all the streaming services too at some point, but you don’t care about that, do you? Go to source. You know the mantra: Pay the creator, stream it later.
ayeahmur 