Description
Label Review.
2017 album.
Our Overview.
Decades is a collaboration between singer/songwriter David Palfreyman and writer/actor Nicholas Pegg, who describe the work as “a great big double concept album with all the trimmings”. Together with producer/engineer Ian Caple (Tindersticks, Suede, Tricky, Kate Bush), they have created a double album which entwines Palfreyman’s music and lyrics with Pegg’s linking narrative, building into a meditation on the fragility of time, memory, and personal history. An old man looks back on his life, chasing his memories through the years. Who is Kelver Leash? Over four acts and 20 songs, the decades unfold…
“David and I have known each other since we were kids,” says Nicholas Pegg, who grew up in Nottingham, “but this is the first time we have ever worked together on anything like this. Back when we first met, Dave was a bit of a rocker, all leather jackets and Knebworth, whereas I was more into Kate Bush and Soft Cell. But we shared a love of early David Bowie, and I think that’s how we first bonded, with tipsy sing-alongs of ‘Memory of a Free Festival’ at closing time. So even as teenagers in the eighties, I suppose we were already harking back to earlier decades.”
“It has been a joy working with Nick on ‘Decades’,” says David Palfreyman. “Initially we talked through the basic ideas I had for the album, and I sent over the demos and rough mixes of as many songs as I had at that point, and we started to weave it all together and work out how the songs might tie in with the story, and vice versa.”
“The album is called ‘Decades’ for a reason,” observes Nicholas Pegg. “Dave has a wonderful ability to reel in the influences and sounds of different eras, and harness them to his songwriting. So among other things, we have some fifties lounge jazz, some early sixties beat, some folky ballads, some modern indie type rock songs, some seventies proggy guitar wig-outs, even an early eighties synth-pop number – but they all fit together within the structure of the album.”
While recording continued, Nicholas Pegg worked on the linking narrative. “I spent a long time whittling down what I had written,” Nick explains. “We didn’t want to end up with a radio play punctuated by the occasional song. First and foremost this is a music album, so my challenge was to use miniature brushstrokes to create short, impressionistic scenes between the songs. We amassed all sorts of detail that isn’t spelled out on the album – Dave and I know the full story, but we want people to hear the album and join the dots for themselves, to fill in the gaps and bring their own imaginations to it. In the context of a rock album, that’s definitely something I’ve absorbed from heroes of mine like Kate Bush and David Bowie.”
“The whole ‘Decades’ project is something that I’m very proud to have been involved in,” concludes Ian Caple. “I’ve been able to see it grow and grow, from the basic demos and ideas into a fantastic concept album.”