No blank verse here!
One of AUK’s favourite singer-songwriters, Katherine Priddy has released a new single today. ‘Close Season’ is out now via Cooking Vinyl. This is a remarkable track and is the first of two winter-themed songs written in collaboration with Poet Laureate and all round good guy Simon Armitage with Priddy setting two specially commissioned poems to music. The collaboration came about when Armitage read out a poem on Guy Garvey’s BBC 6 Music show and issued a challenge for any artist listening to put music to it. He mentioned Radiohead and Katherine Priddy in particular and within 24 hours, Priddy had responded with a song using his poem for the lyrics.
This proved the catalyst for Priddy and Armitage to join forces on two new songs. Armitage wrote two poems especially for the project, which Priddy turned into songs and recorded with producer Rob Ellis (PJ Harvey, Anna Calvi, Marianne Faithfull). The first track, ‘Close Season’ is out now. The second, ‘Daybreaker’ will follow in the New Year.
Speaking about the project, Simon Armitage said: “I was once DJing in a treehouse in a wood and I saw Katherine dancing among the trees, so I knew we had some musical reference points in common. This kind of collaboration is all about trust and a belief in each other’s work. When I’ve written a lyric for someone else it’s like the words have become evacuees – they’re still mine but they’re being nurtured and loved by someone else, and they’ll come back smarter, more streetwise and speaking with a different accent. ‘Close Season’ is the personification of winter as a cold and insensitive man, someone who takes as he pleases and leaves snowflake fingerprints on everything he touches. Winter can be baffling and unresponsive, but it doesn’t mean that we are numb to its presence and its consequences. Frost can burn. ‘Daybreaker’ is the thaw after the freeze, the light at the end of winter’s tunnel, that day when it feels like sunlight is in the blood. Katherine has found those moments in the lyric when the warmth of dawn suddenly floods in. The speaker in the song is ready to spread her wings and head towards brighter things. If ‘Close Season’ is a night song, this is a song for morning, a waking up, a throwing open of the curtains.”
Priddy also commented: “As someone who studied literature and has always drawn on poetry and books for my own songwriting, it is such a great joy to have worked with Simon on this project. It was an exciting and somewhat challenging process for me, as an artist who places a great deal of emphasis on my own lyrics. It felt odd and slightly nerve-wracking, placing such an important portion of these songs in the hands of someone else… but who’s better than those of the Poet Laureate. For ‘Close Season’, I wanted to try and capture that dangerous mix of soft intimacy and unspoken anger, building to a passionate outburst that’s been smouldering at the centre of an unfaithful relationship. I loved the idea of Winter being personified as a cold lover, who drifts in and out, beautiful but hard, delicate but spiteful, irresistible but dangerous. It feels suitably different to a lot of the happy Christmas numbers that always paint the Winter as something magical and cosy. In contrast, ‘Daybreaker’ felt hopeful and quietly joyful. It reminded me of the feeling you get towards the end of Winter, the first day you notice the air has lost its sting, and you see the first tentative buds appearing on the branches. I wanted to try and capture this feeling in this song, how it builds from being still cold and lethargic in Winter’s grip, to a warm, almost ecstatic ending as the sunlight returns.”
Priddy is out on tour in the new year with tickets still available at most venues.
26.02.25 – Pocklington Arts Centre – SOLD OUT
27.02.25 – Sheffield Greystones – SOLD OUT
28.02.25 – Nottingham Metronome – SOLD OUT
01.03.25 – Stamford Arts Centre
05.03.25 – Pontadawe Arts Centre
06.03.25 – Gloucester Guildhall
07.03.25 – Leicester Y Theatre
08.03.25 – Settle Victoria Hall
10.03.25 – Colchester Arts Centre
12.03.25 – Norwich Arts Centre
13.03.25 – Oxford SJE Arts
14.03.25 – Teddington Landmark Arts Centre
15.03.25 – Ashford Revelation
19.03.25 – Leeds City Varieties
20.03.25 – Gateshead The Glasshouse Sage 2
21.03.25 – Glasgow Oran Mor
22.03.25 – Manchester Halle St Peters
See the video for ‘Close Season’ below.
