Demoitis #4: Anna Vincent
9th June 2024: ‘A Window' by Anna Vincent
Demoitis: Anna Vincent
Tell us about your project:
What’s the name of your musical project?
This is my most recent musical project which I decided to release under my own name, Anna Vincent. ‘Under the Glass’ was ostensibly a solo album, but it’s really a collaboration with my husband Max Bloom, which I wrote and he played on and produced during the lockdown in 2020.
Where are you from, and where are you based?
I’m from and based in London, and this album was mostly recorded at home, at the flat where we lived until quite recently, on Upper Clapton Road in Hackney (except for the drums, which were played and recorded remotely by the amazing Adam Gammage at his studio in Northampton). It was a very fruitful period and I look back on it with great fondness. Both Max and I used the weird lull in time during 2020 to write and record solo albums, and Adam was a great man to have on hand, providing drums for both. Our days would be spent taking our government-allotted walks in the local park, making food, writing music, and then getting together to share what we’d come up with. The pace of life slowed down, small things became big things, and vice versa, so it really made a lot of space for music and being free to create.
How long have you been making music under this name or in general?
Under my own name - forever! But as this incarnation of “Anna Vincent”, just since 2020. I’ve mostly been in bands before that, and I suppose that part of my life started when I was about 16, so I could say I’ve been making music for over 25 years. But really, it’s been longer than that, if you count the weird 4-track tape meanderings of my early teenage years and the childhood songs we’d make up and record onto cassette even before that. The more notable bands and projects I’ve been involved with have been The Total Drop, My Tiger My Timing and Heavy Heart, as a principal songwriter/performer, and then as a live member in Happyness, Max Bloom’s band, and Ski Lift.
Within this project, what role do you play (e.g. principal songwriter, guitarist, producer, etc.)?
I’m the principal songwriter and vocalist on ‘Under the Glass’. Max played pretty much all the instruments and produced and mixed the whole thing. I actually wrote all the songs on acoustic guitar, so the parts you hear on the final album are based on what I put down on the demos, but Max is a far more skilled and natural musician than me, and it made sense for him to record the parts for the album itself. I’m not precious about that; it’s got to be whatever sounds best for the record.
Tell us about your writing process:
Do you write all the elements of the song, or is it a collaboration with other musicians?
In the case of this album, I wrote everything on acoustic guitar, and - unlike previous projects - I wanted all the songs to be fully formed with just guitar and vocals before I even touched Logic and started building a demo arrangement. This was a much more organic and traditional approach than I’d taken before, where I’d often do a lot of writing using the laptop. So to answer the question, I did write all the main elements, but there was a second phase when Max and I came to record which was much more collaborative. With past projects, I have tended to like to get a song idea to a particular stage of completion before bringing it to the band, as I’m not really that good at creating off-the-cuff, but those projects were always much more collaborative.
Which instrument do you typically compose on?
For this most recent project, it was exclusively acoustic guitar and voice, but for previous projects it might also have been keys, bass, or even on a couple of occasions, drums (adding vocals over the top before any melodic instruments). I have often used Logic as a compositional tool too, but by the time I came to write ‘Under the Glass’, I felt I’d reached a bit of a dead-end with that approach, and something about the slowed down, low-tech, back-to-basics feel of lockdown seemed to lend itself well to the same approach with musical composition.
Do you usually write the vocal melody first or the lyrics?
I almost always write the vocal melody first, aside from on a small handful of occasions where I’ve created lyrics from a poem, and fitted a melody to those. But they’ve tended to be more freeform pieces, with a linear structure like this song, ‘Keepsake’ by my previous band Heavy Heart. For me, the melody is the most important thing, and I prefer not to let words tether me too much at the beginning of the writing process.
Do you write or record nonsense lyrics when you first start composing?
Always! As you’ll see from the demo I’m sharing here. I find it very freeing to just vocalise and let the melody lead the way. But the sounds and half-words I use when I sing still play an important part in shaping the flow and feel of the piece, and the rhythm and interplay of the vocals with the music too, so they aren’t throwaway at all.
And if so, have any of these ever made the final composition?
Yes, definitely - I try to retain as much as I can from those initial ideas. In fact I often try to mirror those sounds when I come to write ‘real’ lyrics, as I do think there’s something powerful in the subconscious decisions you make in those early stages of creation. If you deviate too much, you can often over-polish or over-intellectualise what should really be an expression from a deeper, less intentional part of your mind. And sometimes I do even come up with more fully-formed lyrics the first time I write a melody, which I like to try and use if I can, as I believe there’s a reason I’m saying those words, even if it’s just because they push and pull nicely with the music.
Tell us about your song:
What’s the name of your song?
It’s called ‘A Window’.
When was the song written?
It was originally written in 2017. At the time, I was still in Heavy Heart, so this song would have been written with the band in mind, but I remember never quite being able to get it out of the demo stage, and so it never got taken to the band for development.
To date, has the song been released?
It has now - it’s the second track on my solo album ‘Under the Glass’ which came out in 2021.
Or is it still a work in progress at the demo stage?
It’s finished and released, which does feel very gratifying, seeing as it sat gathering dust for three years. I think it probably wasn’t quite right for the band, but it always stayed in my mind as an idea, and something I’d strum on the guitar now and again, so when I came to record my solo album I knew it had finally found its home.
If you want to, feel free to share the inspiration behind writing the song, or the meaning behind its lyrics/narrative.
I know what the song is about now, but I’m not sure I did at the time of writing, even though the core lyrics in the chorus actually came out fully formed (and were more or less retained for the final version). If you compare the lyrics in the demo and the final version, you’ll hear that I tried to use as many of the half-words and sounds as I could, as I liked the feel and sentiment of what I was singing, even if it was fragmented. It was almost as though my subconscious wrote it, and then I had to go back and work out what I was trying to say. The main refrain goes ‘This is a window I left open for you”, and then it breaks out into this part where it says ‘All of the light is on the other side / you fall in love and fade out / Obviously the trick is not to try / You’ll find your way, oh you’ll go so far.” When I came to write the final lyrics, I knew the song was about not giving up, but also about not trying too hard. Sometimes in the creative process (as in life), we can squeeze onto an idea or a project too hard and crush the life out of it (I’ve done it too many times to count). I was really struggling with finishing this song, but it started to flow when I drank some wine, relaxed and tried to care just a little bit less. Max and I had been writing some pop songs for fun alongside our own albums at the time, and we’d write the lyrics then and there in the room, not allowing ourselves to think too much about them. We got some great results so I tried to apply the same approach to this song, and it really unlocked something. Which isn’t to say the song is meaningless - it’s actually perhaps the song I relate to most on the album - but somehow loosening my grip on it allowed the real meaning to emerge. Musically, I always loved the slightly looping, hypnotic flow of the guitar and keys part in the demo, which for me kind of signified the repetitive nature of the creative process, and of those anxious thoughts of self doubt - “What if I am the things I’m scared I am?” - which then resolves into this idea that there’s always a window through that feeling, and there’s light on the other side. For me, working with Max on these songs was a huge part of rediscovering my love for music after a hiatus, so the song is also in tribute and thanks to him.
‘A Window’ (original demo December 2017)
Tell us about your demo or demos:
When did you record this demo, and how (e.g., audio-note, DAW, etc.)?
I recorded the original demo on 4th December 2017 on my laptop on Logic. I know this because when I went back to my old laptop to try and find it, that’s what I’d named it. My birthday is 5th December, so clearly this was me getting one last song in on the day before I turned 36! I probably would have made an audio-note on my phone before the demo, when I very first came up with the idea, as I get so scared about losing those first little gossamer strands of a song to the whirlwind of other distractions, so I like to get things down as soon as I can.
If relevant, who did you collaborate with on the demo version of the song?
It was just me, in my bedroom with Logic, a guitar, and my wired iPhone headphones (I still use these to demo vocals; I love the thin, airy, dreamy sound it gives when paired with Logic’s Silververb plugin).
Did you experience ‘demoitis’ with a particular version of this song?
I really did! I’ve experienced demoitis on so many occasions, so it was quite hard to choose which song to focus on for this, but I thought a more recent example that actually got released would be most interesting. I am a great believer in the first take, the demo idea, the raw, unvarnished moment of creation, so it can be very hard for me to let go of a demo and develop it. I’m a solid but quite basic musician technically - I think my forte is more in melody and words - so often the things I come up with when writing are half-accidents which I can’t easily repeat again. Coming from a bit of a lo-fi background, I do also have a love for the messy and the unintentional, so it can be hard for me to feel so attached to a polished final version as much as the original, even if it’s tinny, out of time, out of tune, badly recorded, half-baked!
How do you feel now when you hear the demo version of the song?
I actually thought my demoitis was going to kick in when I first played it, but very quickly realised that the experience of working with Max seems to have cured me of this affliction! Throughout the process, he was always so respectful of my original ideas, whilst gently elevating them and making them a thousand times better. So now what I hear when listening to this demo is the shaky kernel of a really good song which needed to wait for three years until Max could help it grow into its full potential.
‘A Window’ (second demo April 2020)
Do you feel any hesitation about sharing this raw version of the song with a wider audience?
I do, a little bit, as it really is quite rough, and it really isn’t as good as I remembered it being - but that’s demoitis for you! And it just goes to show that a good song can start out like this, and is worth persevering with, even when it feels impossible, because the final version is one of the things I’m proudest of in my career.
Tell us about the final version of the song:
When did you record this final version, and how (were there any specific instruments or recording techniques you used)?
The final version of ‘A Window’ was recorded in April 2020, so it must have been one of the first songs we worked on for the album (the very first was ‘Naxos’ which I remember clearly, because I was quite nervous about sharing the demo with Max). Most of the sessions for the album would start with me showing Max the demo I’d made (here’s the one for ‘A Window’ - this is not the very first demo, but a basic version I made on Logic once I’d completed the song on guitar), and then we’d discuss what we liked about it, what we could add, any sonic references, and anything that needed changing. Max would start by piecing together a drum track on Logic which we’d then build everything on top of. Once the whole song was finished, we’d send it to Adam to record drums onto. He’s an incredible drummer and was able to record to the finished tracks, which made life so much easier.
If relevant, who did you collaborate with on the final version of the song?
Max Bloom and Adam Gammage.
Did any of the original aspects of the demo version make it onto the final recording (if one exists)?
No, but I did want to echo that hypnotic, looping synth sound from the demo, so Max used some reversed guitar to create this, which I think is very effective. We agreed that the song needed to open up sonically from the demo and use the same instrumental palette as the other songs I had for the album, and I think it really benefits from this approach.
With hindsight, is there anything you’d change about the final version?
No, nothing, I’m really proud of it, and this feels like the song it was always meant to be.
‘A Window’ (final version)
Tell us about the future:
Did you learn anything through the recording of this song that will influence your future recording process?
I learned to trust in other people more, and that sometimes you can’t always do everything by yourself. I think through recording this and the other songs for the album, I realised that there’s freedom and fertile ground to be found once you unshackle yourself from the demo and open your mind to change. It’s hard to do sometimes, but it can have great results.
What do you have upcoming, music-wise or otherwise?
I’m on another little hiatus at the moment while I have a baby! But I’m certain that - once the dust settles a bit - she’s going to provide rich inspiration for a new set of songs. And as always, I have a little batch of hopeful demos from across the last few years, sitting there just waiting to be rediscovered…
One final question: Could you recommend three other musical artists or bands that we should speak to for future editions of Demoitis?
I know you’re already speaking to Max Bloom, so I’ve got four more: Ski Lift / Benji Tranter, Unlucky, LIINES and Happyness.
Anna Vincent - June 2024
Such a fascinating insight into the creative process! I loved listening to the various demo versions of this amazing song, and hearing how it developed into the final work.
Thank you x