#305
– Substate & Grab All You Can (In Session)
28th April 2016
They Say: “Substate is a pretty serious song but it has some very delicate moments and I like to think it’s quite light on the ears. It’s a rather fearless tale of a woman immersed in a love so deep, it’s in her very breath, in her veins. And when she finds herself without it, she feels weak, unable to even stand. When she’s been set free, she feels trapped. It’s secretly one of my favourite songs on In Hindsight. There’s something about its simplicity that I find settling.
In this live session, I played the piano and ran a loop on my laptop (created by Chris McCorry who wasn’t able to be with us on the day). Ben McAuley plays a simple drum kit made up of only a snare, floor tom, and symbol. He does anything but keep a beat. Rather, he creates a slightly chaotic - yet beautifully controlled - soundscape, filling the room with percussive emotion. He swells with the feeling in my vocals; wherever I go, he comes with me. For that reason, I love playing this song live. It’s always just a little bit different each time depending on how deep I feel like taking it.
'Grab All You Can' is very simply about the fact that life is short. We’ve got to make the best of our time on earth; to do everything we can to make ourselves happy and get what we want out of life. And most importantly, to be true to ourselves.
In this session we really stripped this song back to basics. The album version includes piano, guitar, bass, drums, concertina and prim (a Croatian instrument that’s been in my family for generations). But for the live session I played piano and Ben McAuley played acoustic guitar. It was very chilled out - I thought it had a sort of quiet, end-of-the-night vibe to it. I made the decision to drop the final verse for the live session to keep it a bit shorter which was strange but I think it worked. All in all, I think it’s a really nice version of the song. Clean and simple."
We Say: “Illustrating the ‘less is more’ approach beautifully, Pixie’s session - complete with Ben McAuley’s subtle percussion and then guitar - acted as a wonderful showcase for her unique - and slightly quirky voice. A quiet riot."
Both these tracks come from Pixie Saytar's album, 'In Hindsight', available to buy now.
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