Here’s a joyous thing to brighten a January and a New Year which has gotten off to what could be described as a “mixed start” and not even with the advice “must try harder”, no, it’s the simpler advice: “just try, just a bit.” On the lyric video for ‘Rainbow Cardigan‘, which heralds an upcoming new album release, the slightly pensive looking Karla Kane (maybe she’d just been told how many stairs there are at Covent Garden) kicks off the latest single with vocals and trademark ukulele, before the band join in on a rounded sound that is full of pep and jollity that carries lyrics that are somewhat more sombre and reflective on the state of the world – be it the whole shebang or the more personal interior life.
Karla Kane has explained about the song, and how it encapsulates themes of the new album, saying: “Often when I write a song, it starts with a little scrap of something and only after it’s all stitched together is the pattern unveiled. Here, the concept seems to be of a woven textile piece representing the knitting together of time and space – a kind of cosmic map or web. The song is a bit of a microcosm of the album “Concerns Of Wasp And Willow” as a whole, with its imagery of colours and shades, its distinctive blend of sadness and joy, anxiety and wonder. There is, in fact, a real rainbow cardigan, which I fell in love with and bought from a little shop with a wonderful owner in the town of Kendal, England. The opening lines talk literally about climbing up to Kendal Castle on a cold and rainy day. Looking around at the ruins, I realized that old as they were, in the grand, universal scheme of things, they – and all of humankind’s civilizations and buildings – they really aren’t old at all. And that leads into how it feels to me, heading into my own ‘middle ages,’ sometimes unspeakably ancient and sometimes like a little child. Perhaps you’ve felt the same? We then move to one of my favorite places on Earth – Lake Lagunitas, in Fairfax, California, where I grew up, and to the way reliving past mistakes can seem to replay endlessly. I was thinking of earthquake faults and topographic maps, which led me back to textiles. All the good and bad and colours and textures of life woven and wrapped up together, I suppose.”
