Category: New album releases

What have Mike Morton and The Gift been up to since ‘Antenna’ was released?

So much has happened to the world since ‘Antenna’ came out, it was released early in the summer of 2019 and as soon as it was released David Lloyd decided he wanted to leave! I felt something was amiss with Dave because he was quite frustrated throughout the recording of ‘Antenna’, largely because he wanted to move quicker.

As a band of six people, it was always difficult getting us together, all of us did jobs that were demanding and most of us had kids. It was like herding cats, getting us to rehearse but we did. We said to David Elliott at BEM that we’d get the album ready for delivery in June and Dave (Lloyd), being the producer, did night after night of mixing, working against the clock, and I think he was burnt out because we over promised on the deadline.

Neil Hayman, our drummer, was really loyal to Dave also frustrated by the lack of rehearsal and so he left. So that was another big thing. As soon as we launched it (Antenna), the band lost two key members. We replaced Neil with Joseph (my son) who brought a lot to the sound because he’s got a good swing to this play and Leroy (James) managed to fill the sound out with just one guitar.

Then we were about to play a whole series of gigs in 2020 when you know what happened, lockdown! We’d recovered from losing a key member and then literally nothing except band zooms for almost two years! I will say that through that time, those two years, I was writing, I sat down at the piano, picked up my guitar and wrote. So, in the absence of The Gift activity for that time, I built up these songs. In 2022 the five man band did a few gigs but Leroy said that he wanted to pursue different types of music and bowed out and so did Gabri.

I really wanted to record these songs I’d written, they became the story of a life from beginning to end and I like stories, they also got me through the lockdown. I think ‘Awake and Dreaming’ still works because it is a story, all the best music has a story behind it. We did consider pausing The Gift and me doing this as a solo project but they decided in the end to leave and we are all still friends. We recruited Ben Croft on keyboards, had Chris Taylor on drums, Stef Dickers has always been with me and we recruited Chris Tortoioli on guitar. This version of the band did its first gig at the Nene Valley Rock Festival last September and has been working steadily on the new album since.

‘Seven Seasons’ is an album that was inspired by a song on ‘Antenna’ called Back To Eden. David called it an epic in five minutes and wondered if I’d read Shakespeare’s ‘Seven Seasons of Man’ before I wrote it, a piece by Shakespeare that charts seven seasons of a life. I decided that I would take that story and make a whole album based on it. It’s split into ‘The Seven Seasons Suite’ and three other songs at the end that stand outside of it. The suite starts with an overture and then the first part, Coming Down To Land, a gentle ballad about a baby arriving and the infant years. The second part, Baby Blue Eyes, is about going to school, taken from the idea of ‘Little Boy Blue Come Blow Your Horn’ and that, while school is essential, it can crush your spirit if you go to the wrong place. The third part, Sweet Bird of Youth which, itself, is the name of a Tennessee Williams, is about when you leave the clutches of school or college and are in your prime, you’ve got a job and are dating, the testosterone is rushing around your system, the world is your oyster, my son! The fourth, Lay Your Heart On Me, is about falling in love and settling down, love and marriage. It’s a gentle song. Part five is the midlife crisis song, Yours Sincerely. It’s about feeling yourself age and your efforts being wasted as your relationship breaks down. It’s entirely autobiographical and it’s quite cynical, an epic about the mid-life dark point. There’s an instrumental interlude which leads in to part six, Evensong, a song that’s very dear to me. It’s another gentle ballad about old age and probably the most Genesis-like, they are a big influence to me. It’s about an old man looking back over his life, he’s benign now and sees it all as learning. He’s wiser and not holding on to things any more. The last part, part 7, is about end of life and is called Where We’re From, a lot of work went into it and it’s a big song. It’s not a religious song but it is hopeful.

The three other songs at the end that stand outside of the suite are Keep Calm And Carry On, which is a crazy instrumental, Harbour Lights, which is a love song and then Think Of England ends the album.

Think Of England will be the first single and this song is saying that Brexit was a very bad idea! It’s outside of the main song suite on the album because it is a stand alone topic, it is a lament for some of the collective decisions that this country has taken. It’s not an angry song and it’s not saying that those who voted to leave the EU were foolish, it takes a fairly careful line. The song comes from the Victorian idea of ‘Close your eyes and think of England’, the idea that we are being violated by some of the decisions that are being made at the top. I like to think it’s slightly hopeful at the end, that we will find a better way, “Wait for miracles again”.

It’s saying that because we cling to the past and archaic, unhelpful ideas of what England particularly is about, it doesn’t make us very happy. There’s three verses to it; the first verse is about a disaster capitalist who profited from the financial crisis of 2008 and just plays our economy like a casino, the second verse is about someone who’s clinging to a world that’s gone and will be bitterly disappointed when these sunlit uplands do not materialise and the final verse is about an enigmatic woman on the streets. It’s compassionate towards her because she’s the one that’s really struggling to get by. It’s not a cheerful single! It kind of flips what a lot of so-called prog songs do, the ones from the classic genre that start quiet and get more intense and aggressive as they go along the gentle beginning and the ferocious climax. This five minute single flips that, it starts with heavy guitars and is quite aggressive, it may surprise people. It’s not metal but it punches your face hard but, by the time it gets to the third verse, it becomes a piano elegy and so the end is really soft. It’s almost like all the anger has gone and all that’s left is sadness. There’s anger in this song but I’m not pointing the finger as we have enough division already. I’m asking look at where we are now, are we making sensible choices as a nation? This is just a song of regret.

Watch the video for Think Of England here: