From Robyn on Patreon in 2023
If you spend long enough writing songs, they start appearing in your head without warning. None of this “Oh I’ll sit down with a notebook/laptop/guitar and see if I get any ideas” - you’re just taking dictation. I remember sitting on a mattress in early 1981 with a hangover; I was staring at a half-open door and then became aware that “Grooving On A Inner Plane” was playing loud in my head, soundlessly. “Uncorrected Personality Traits” hummed through my brain in an attic a few years later so I wrote it down before it could escape. Generally, for me, the embryonic song has a brain-life of about 15 minutes: after that it evaporates and I can never find it again.

“Resonator” appeared to me as I was walking the dog one dismal grey morning in London in March this year. I sat on a park bench transcribing the lyrics for as long as I could stand the cold, then I took the dog to a coffee shop to warm up and get her a bonus chunk of chicken.

The chorus to “Resonator” was so loud and clear in my head that I was tempted to ask the ladies running the coffee shop if they’d sing it with me into my phone. But I could see it might not make any sense to them: they also didn’t seem like they wanted sing very much. So the dog and I absorbed our nutrients and went on our way.

It’s easier to feel optimistic than to think optimistically. Once you get rational, all the Misgivings come crowding around: “Me first!” says General Doom. “One side, matey!” hollers Environmental Catastrophe. “Ahem”, says Geopolitical Dread: “Aren’t you forgetting something?” “Excuse me!” whines Financial Anxiety: “You can’t keep turning a blind eye to me, you know…” Artificial Intelligence sits smugly in this phone, biding its time.

But - nuts to them, in all their recurring misery. All my life we’ve been on the brink of extermination; sure, it may happen any time, and regardless, we all must vanish eventually. Most of us will still be here this time next year, quivering, laughing and eating potatoes. “Resonator” is a celebration of what I have; please join me in celebrating what you have, too…

Recorded at Stwdio Penty. RH guitars and vocals; Charlie Francis bass and organ, percussion and recording.