WITCH WATCH Underground/Overground Track 4 Games For May

Sleeping
Dreaming
Forever
Forever
You see
Through me
But can you
Forgive me?

Water ghouls. Lonely, murderous ones at that.

Games For May was written at the time when Murder Shoes and Witch Watch were operating at the same time. Initially, Witch Watch was demoing songs that Murder Shoes didn't want but then there came a change. Games For May I held specifically for Witch Watch as well as every song written afterwards. My "A" Game" was now going elsewhere.

I wrote the demo on the drums first, using a disjointed maraca heavy beat and added a few electric claps on the chorus (the cheesy 80's type.)For the album version, Austin re-arranged and re-interpreted all of those percussive elements into a more effective lean, taut, almost Prince style sultry strut. Add to that some 12 string chorus, delay, and reverb flashes, a dozen e-bows, and some Gala/Spooky era Lush style vocals with lyrics pertaining to supernatural aquatic manslaughter, and voila, a new track.

I might as well delve into this as they'll come up later- Lush was/is a band that continues to inspire me. An English group, formed in 1987 by Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson, their high range vocals and interwoven chorused out 12 & 6 string, phased guitars struck me deeply. So much so that I recently discovered that my strumming pattern is undoubtedly adapted from theirs. "De Luxe" was probably the first song of theirs that I heard. There's so much going on melody wise that it sends you to so many places. Identifying the layers always provides lessons for me. A song of ours, "Transparencies", off our debut, is very much in this send-you-to-the-dreamy-outer-limits Lush style, eapecially the ending. I try not to put our singer, Anna, in the position of singing that high, but damn, it sounds so good and Lush-like when she does.

Lush would continue to change during their four album run, and I enjoyed going to the record store hunting down as many single b-sides as I could. I'm still pissed I couldn't find the "Superblast" single. But am I elated that I have "Sweetie" on clear vinyl? Hell yeah.

The title, Games For May, is a reference to Syd Barrett era The Pink Floyd single "See Emily Play".

You can hear Games For May HERE.