happy days in the gulag

<<happy days in the gulag>> - daniel prendiville

Daniel Prendiville spills the beans (metaphorically...) on his 2010 album, HAPPY DAYS IN THE GULAG, with the assistance of an unidentified italicised interviewer.

"'Happy Days In The Gulag' - what's it all about?"

"The first thing to deal with is the album title. I was watching a TV documentary a number of years ago about a British newspaper journalist who was researching the lives of people who had suffered at the hands of Stalin in the USSR back in the 1930s. These people had literally been airbrushed from history. The journalist met the daughter of a fellow who had been "purged" by the Soviets, and she had been sent to a gulag because she had kept a photograph of her father. Apparently it was a criminal offence to possess a photograph of such a "non-person". And although conditions in the gulag had been horrendous, somehow she felt that her time there was worthwhile because she'd met her future husband while in captivity. She'd actually found happiness in the gulag. The tale she told struck a chord with me - it seems that it is possible to find positive aspects in negative experiences, and that sounds like a valuable lesson to learn. This story is referred to in the album's title track, TITLE TRACK."

"So is this a concept album about prisons, then?"

"Well, it's certainly not a concept album! OK, there are two tracks which refer to prisons (TITLE TRACK and I'LL VISIT YOU IN PRISON), but there is a broad diversity of subject matter amongst the songs on the album. If you want to over-analyse the lyrics, you might form the view that there is a very loose theme running through the album - the fact that there many of us who are "incarcerated" in "prisons" of our own making. Not prisons made of bricks and mortar, but prisons of the mind - attitudes we form of ourselves or of other people or of institutions.

"And a prison is an institution, isn't it? But give me an example of one of these 'prisons of the mind'".

"I suppose this comes across most obviously on LUCKY DOPPELGANGERS, where the main character feels that someone else is living the type of life he'd like to live himself - all the while the other person wishes that he could live life like the main character. The other man's grass is always greener, and perhaps, to someone, YOU are the other man..."

"...your point being...?"

"Don't fall into the trap of thinking your life is worthless - someone out there might give their eyetooth to live your life."

"Any other examples?"

"CHARISMA TRANSPLANT deals with a sense of personal inadequacy. SQUATTER IN THE BRAIN is about how our lives can be affected by what goes on in our heads. Whether one is talking merely of "notions" or more serious issues, the old squatter in the brain can make our lives a living hell. Sometimes we can deal effectively with this - sometimes we can't. STOP-GO GUY is about a couple trapped in an unhappy relationship - not an easy situation to resolve."

"There's some mad stuff on this album, too. What's HUMOURLESQUE about?"

"Well, you might think from the tracks that we have discussed already that the album is one long exposition of unhappiness - I like to think that I'LL VISIT YOU IN PRISON is generally light-hearted, if twisted. HUMOURLESQUE started out as an instrumental piece and I felt I needed some lyrics to cover the long, abstract intro. So I came up with this image of a pathetic little creature, a kind of Beckett-like figure, eking out a miserable existence in a derelict house. Maybe it's a metaphor for the way some people feel about their lives."

"Do you feel like that about your life?"

"Not at all, but I can certainly imagine how one might feel like that."

"But I fail to see the humour..."

"If I have to explain it to you, you'll never understand it."

"So what's with all the instrumentals and the ambient tracks? Where do they fit into the theme of the album?"

"They don't as such. I reckon (I know, I should know these things, but sometimes even I don't know what the hell it is I'm doing...) they act as a form of relief from the songs. I like to cluster tracks in groups of three or four (fast vs. slow or song vs. instrumental) just to pace an album. Obviously, instrumentals take some pressure off me in terms of lyric writing. And sometimes they're just fun to do."

"I like FAKE PSYCHEDELIA, but it's not particularly psychedelic, is it?"

"No, and that's why it's fake. With that track, I was trying to achieve a vibe similar to CAREFUL WITH THAT AXE, EUGENE from Pink Floyd's UMMAGUMMA live album, but I think what I ended up with was something more like DARK SIDE... Still, it was fun to do."

"...and MEMORY FOAM PILLOW?"

"Ambient tracks are particularly good fun to do. Quite often it's a matter of finding a kinky synth voice and seeing where that takes me. This is the case here. The track always puts in my mind the picture of some creature like the Loch Ness Monster swimming around in a tar lake at night - occasionally the monster surfaces and you can see its scaly back gleaming in the moonlight - then it disappears back into the tar."

"Hmmm - you've mentioned Pink Floyd. Any other influences?"

"As I recall - Air, the Beatles (somewhere...), Jean-Jacques Burnel, Royksopp, and the Beach Boys. But then maybe there's a touch of King Crimson in there too. And Sparks. And Goldfrapp. And..."