I’ve been looking for a sunny album to get into this week to go with the good weather. It’s not really working out. I listened to a lot of Phoenix yesterday and today, but I keep going back to Amy Shark’s “Love Monster” album. It’s not particularly sunny, but it is a very consistent album, full of dark and thoughtful tunes.

As is often the case, picking my song of the day from that album is almost arbitrary. They’re all powerful, emotional songs that seem to originate as vocals and an acoustic guitar. I like songs that start from that point because that’s where I have always written from so it makes the most sense to me. It’s kind of an IT approach to song writing, where you get as close to a full song as quick as possible.

“Middle of the Night” is one of the less acoustic guitar songs on the album, although I’m sure there’s a decent version that could be made from it. I think it’s my favourite at the moment because of the lyrics. I like the way Amy Shark writes lyrics because they’re focused on a topic most of all. There’s very little extra language put in exclusively to sound good. It’s the kind of lyrics a person could actually write down as opposed to vocal sounds to fill space. I also like the repeated “Fuck my life” lyric. Swearing is such useful type of language that censoring it or avoiding it is really limiting. Here it’s essential in creating that defeated feeling. It’s a bleak track but it’s cool and it’s been stuck in my head all week.

You can listen to “Middle of the Night” by Amy Shark here.