Danielle’s notes on each track:
Silence Set Me Free, the title track of album, is about setting one’s self free, freeing yourself from someone else’s noise and seeing an image of yourself again, being free of the narcissism of the other, realising the choice to be made; to not be the victim.
Future Gazing is a co-write with singer-songwriter Hannah Brown, who sings backing vocals on this track and on the song Hush. The song’s about the battle to live in the present, not allowing an imagined future or hurt from the past to rob the present.
Hush is a very personal story about the life I thought I was going to have, and how I realised that I wanted something different – ultimately rejecting a life I felt I hadn’t chosen for myself.
Pinch is a very new sort of collaboration for me, where I have responded to the words and the emotions behind a poem that a friend of mine had written about a trip to the Norfolk broads, permeated by deep feelings of loss. It’s my favourite song to perform live, especially when supported by the beautiful backing vocals of my friend, Kirsty Griffiths.
Affection highlights the deep and intense feelings of being uncared for, cast adrift and not thought about … the destructive ways that can follow, but also the determination.
Heaven is a song about the push and pull of a relationship that always ends with rejection, that seems like heaven, but is in fact destructive.
Shake is about inter-generational shame, about the secrets families keep, of trying to ‘shake’ these secrets out, because the desire to know ones past and where one came from is so important. Originally a rather slow piano ballad, the message is communicated better with the guitar beating out the rhythm – like beating out the secret’s that are swept under the carpet. The guitar soars in the choruses and drives and echoes when the truth is revealed. Drama ensues as the truth seems so dangerous that surely everyone will perish if it’s exposed. Yet ultimately, everyone survives.
Brother My step brother died when I was 17-years-old. The song is about how difficult it was to make sense of that experience, how damaging it was when grief was not talked about, how the most difficult and painful things were given no words. My brother died of pneumonia caused by a rare degenerative disease that weakened his ability to swallow. It was this experience that spurred me on to become a Speech and Language Therapist.
Unfold is about being on a mission to self-destruct, being taken over by someone, feeling helpless, both emotionally and physically, in response to being held down. It’s about breaking free of this. There’s a line: ‘Don’t let them take it out … wake up and fight the men that held you down.’ I can’t but I will!
Forevers follows a one night stand with the possibility of more … that pleasure of needing someone and wanting them physically.
Danielle Cawdell: Silence Set Me Free
Out now via Heantun Records (CD & Digital)
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