What a song we have for you today – taken from Jim White & Trey Blake’s new album ‘Precious Bane‘ (out on the last day of January). It’s a gothic polemic, of sorts, a declaration of freedom against an uncaring universe and an embracing of the strength to not be bowed down by that thought. The album was inspired by a gift shared by Trey Blake – an obscure 19th century novel which gifted the album its title. Over the years Jim and Trey kept up a correspondence, with White becoming increasingly intrigued by this shy, impoverished woman who led a fairly desperate hand to mouth existence in the south of England.
Trey Blake is a neurodivergent artist living in obscurity in Brighton – growing up with undiagnosed autism, she managed her condition and the resultant inability to function in the mainstream world through various addictions. Along the way she sought to create art (songs, prose & photography) that encompassed both light and dark, drawing on her experiences of brokenness and loss on one hand and transcendent beauty and oneness on the other. The songs on the new album were traded across the ocean, until the full album took shape. And what songs!
Jim White says of ‘The Long Road Home‘ that: “We’re forever told that in the end Love conquers all. It’s a tidy assertion, albeit one that seldom plays out as true. And while such axiomatic narratives may offer superficial solace to pilgrims navigating the proposition of existence, some poor souls, the ones who cannot abide Life’s endless procession of artifice, must take the long road home.”
