Music

Locket Full of Moonlight (UK)   Year: 2004

©2004 Fundamental Records and Meat Market Records. All songs written by Bill Mallonee published and copyrighted by CyBrenJoJosh Music BMI.

Track List

    1. Locket Full of Moonlight [4:03]
    2. Shellshocked [5:25]
    3. After the Glow [4:23]
    4. Sweetness and Light [3:40]
    5. Table for Two [4:35]
    6. Overflow [3:59]
    7. Jaws of Life [3:25]
    8. Rearview Mirror [4:39]
    9. Dirty Job [4:05]
    10. Locket Full of Moonlight (Casual Reprise) [4:24]
    11. Hat in Hand [3:47]
    12. I'm Not There [3:56]
    13. Half Mast [4:54]
    14. Bearing the Load [4:01]
    15. Weight of Glory [3:38]
    16. Going South [5:29]

    About Locket Full of Moonlight (UK)

    Recorded in five days at Full Moon Recording Studios in Watkinsville, GA, Locket Full of Moonlight was released on December 16, 2002. It was record number two in a Paste Records deal to release three projects over a twelve month period. A UK version was released in 2004, containing the same track list, plus six songs culled from the Room Despair and Electromeo EPs.

    Did you know?

    In the musician credits, the 13 click track refers to Bill's feet.

    Quotes from Bill Mallonee

    Oct 20, 2002: These sessions were all done very "live" with a few overdubs... so they have a great organic soulful quality... we were in the a new, big room so guitars, amps and drums feel pretty visceral and real...

    Oct 20, 2002: ...probably the saddest and darkest record I've ever made...

    Apr 2003: Locket Full of Moonlight, that's a departure only because we had Mark Smith play drums on it and Mike Steel play bass. That really was a new chapter, if you will, of doing things. And the record was made in, like, six or seven days. I mean, it was such a quick album.... The songs were there, but the real story—the really fun thing—was having two new guys in a rhythm section that I had never played with before, kind of giving and taking. And it was really super. That's what the energy was. We just said, "We've got these ten songs and we're not going to do any more outside the lines." And, lo and behold, the record started to take on a bit of a concept as certain songs went and other songs got laid aside. So I felt great about it.

    Apr 2003: People would come up to shows and start talking about how they were friends with some couple who'd been married 20 or 25 years—and I'm not exaggerating the number of years—but the couple was calling it quits, they were bailing out, throwing in the towel. And it just started to read like a repeating chapter in a book after a while. So I started writing songs like "Table for Two" as if it were a first-person sort of experience, and put myself in that and see what it would feel like. I must admit that some of those songs felt like they were a little too close comfort, some days they were just hard to sing and think about even. They were painful to think about but I figured that's what made a strong record.

    May 8, 2003: Locket was opening a vein like no other... vicariously and in reality... I hear it as gritty and sadly realistic... [it] was all therapy and fear and wounds and failure.

    Jun 25, 2003: I think Locket is quite a great ride with its washy guitars and dreamy elements and themes of marital strife, loss of faith and trust in basic love relationships and the distorted view from the road.

    Dec 19, 2003: Locket Full of Moonlight... is intended to be very garage-like, very "push-record-and-bleed." It has its own fragile beauty and dark corners ("Dirty Job," "LFOM-Reprise").... It's raw, like many of the themes on the record... love/loss/breakdown/break-up... pretty brutal things... I thought it was my most auto-biographical and vicariously auto-biographical record to date... I'd have mastered "Overflow" louder... and I think the guitar part needs to be louder too... but other than that... I dunno, subjective judgment call, I guess. Locket was still one of my favorite records to make. And I probably shouldn't been saying this but was made for less than 2,000$ in about seven days (called in many favors!)... we didn't fine tune much of it we thought the heart was there... I was due to go to UK and Paste wanted the record before Christmas last year.... Thematically, it wasn't about writting "hits"... it was more about taking them.

    Dec 19, 2003: I think it sounds great... the way I would have mixed. It's "my type of record" sonically and lyrically and I thing the music suits. I think it sounds better than Audible Sigh—which sounded WAY too compressed. It is more similar to TTROTS, which is also a fovorite of mine. Locket definitely has a more washy sound... it was a much bigger room and we made use of the ambient micing... that is we used mics that were far away from the sound sources (amps, drums, vocals) to fill out in a reverb-u sorta way the mixes... it's very "60's" approach in that regard. Matthew Sweet used this on his Girlfriend album to great effect... Lenny Kravitz has done similar things...

    Sep 24, 2004: To my ears, even though I chose a different more "desperate" sorta unfinished quality in doing Locket Full of Moonlight, I STILL consider that record for all its "darker" moments... a very similar record to Audible Sigh. Although made in seven days, its "rough edges" and "live in the studio" quality are what make it engaging to me...

    Jan 7, 2005: So I put out Locket Full of Moonlight. Even that label didn't get it... it was the most auto-biographical record to date.... "Shellshocked" and "Dirty Job" are still two of my fav songs I've ever done... raw and unblinking in the experience... and I loved it for that reason.

    Nov 11, 2006: Locket Full of Moonlight was written as a sort of "open heart surgery" record...

    Credits

    Bill Mallonee: guitars, vocals, harmonica, orchestra bells

    Mark Cooper Smith: drums, concussion

    Michael C. Steele: bass, bgv's, size 13 click track

    Produced by: Bill Mallonee. Recorded by: Mark Cooper Smith, Michael C. Steele, and Jay Rogers. Mastered by: Rodney Mills. Art Direction & Design: Jose Reyes for MetaLeap Design. Recorded and mixed at Full Moon Recording Studios in Watkinsville, GA. Bonus tracks recorded at Third Ear Studios, Athens, GA and at FFG Studio, Cheltenham, England.

    Liner Notes

    These tunes were recorded by bill mallonee and vigilantes of love in the glorious "motel rooms of autumn" between Oct. 23rd - Oct. 29th, 2002... Most were written within a week to just a day or so before... A lot of these tunes are about "train wrecks" in lives I have known or lived myself... So some of these tunes are sad, lonely and perhaps a trifle dark... and then again some of them aren't. I thank God that He has the last word in these things.

    The additional tunes were recorded on our "days off" all along our winding way... Take care of each other... life is so fragile... and as always, thank you for listening!

    pax,
    bill mallonee

     

     

     

     

     

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