Category Archives: Albums

Half Man Half Woman (2010)

4 Replies

  1. High Times
  2. Somewhere Different
  3. It’s Not The Same Without You
  4. Chromatic Jew
  5. Take Pity on the Beast
  6. Lying Next to You
  7. Agar Rag
  8. Cul De Sac
  9. Spoken Like a Man
  10. Say Goodbye to What’s Left
  11. Into the Blue
  12. Say Goodnight

When you buy the physical CD, the packaging opens up to make a paper sculpture.

You can hear clips from every song at the iTunes store. And, of course, you can buy a physical copy here at our shop on DeborahConway.com


Listen to two songs from Half Man Half Woman

Lying Next to You

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It’s Not The Same Without You

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The Making of Half Man Half Woman: Part 8: Take Pity on the Beast

Also: Part One – How is this album different to Summertown?

Part Two – Half Man Half Woman: Production

Part Three – Writing Half Man Half Woman

Part Four – Into the Blue

Part Five – Judaism and Half Man Half Woman

Part Six – Instruments used on Half Man Half Woman

Part Seven – Influences

Summertown (2004)

6 Replies

summertown.jpg

  1. Stay On Track
  2. Accidents Happen In The Home
  3. Any Fool
  4. Try To Save Your Song
  5. Something’s Right
  6. Sunday Morning
  7. One Chance
  8. Sleepwalker
  9. I Love You But
  10. It Doesn’t Work That Way
  11. Heartache
  12. Here And Now

Musicians: Deborah Conway, Willy Zygier, Gerry Hale, James Black, Shannon Birchall
Additional musicians: Dave Williams, Toni Collette, Paul Kelly, Kim Wheeler, Michael Barker.
Produced by Willy Zygier and Deborah Conway. Co-produced by Gerry Hale.

Something’s Right, video

Something’s Right

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Heartache

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Summertown

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About Summertown

The last 3 albums had revolved around making music out of essentially non-musical components, (not that there’s anything wrong with that) but when it came time to do it again, I don’t know – I guess we had both gotten tired of torturing electric guitars and using atonal samples. Those sounds seemed everywhere.

We started talking about songs we liked from a pre-electronic era; artists like Simon and Garfunkle, The Mammas and the Pappas, Jimmy Webb, James Taylor & Carole King all came up in our conversations along with many others. We didn’t want to recreate them (as if we could) but we wanted to evoke that spirit, that approach to song-craft; beautifully realised verses, choruses and bridges that seem to have always belonged together even before they came into being. Also a certain gentleness and warmth that we hadn’t explored seemed like the path that was beckoning. We’ve been angst, brittle, pissed off and depressed, let’s give peace a chance.

During the writing period for this album, I broke my arm. I got some good material out of it but it severely cramped my guitar playing and confined Willy to rhythm only. This had its own knock-on effects for Gerry Hale (mandolin, cittern, fiddle, slide, Dobro, charango etc) and James Black (piano & organ) and the amount and intricacy of the various parts on the record. In the end maybe it was a bonus, forcing us to comply with our blueprint to simplify.

We expressly wanted to make an acoustic record and upright bass was the obvious route to take. Shannon Birchall (moonlighting from The John Butler Trio) brought a big, fat, warm, bottom end to the project, while Michael Barker (also from JBT) on percussion and Dave Williams (from Augie March) on drums put the engine into it.

With the vocal talents of Paul Kelly, singing a duet on “It Doesn’t Work That Way” – an examination of gender delineations as filtered through an IKEA experience; and Toni Collette trilling on Sunday Morning in the perfect counterpoint of girly vocals, we found two more outstanding contributors to Summertown.

In some ways Summertown sounds like my most mature record to date, ironic given the circumstances it was recorded in. My parents announced they were going on a cruise for a couple of months, leaving an empty house. I knew the answer would have been ‘no’ if I’d asked, but the thing is nature abhors a vacuum. They departed at 12.30 on October 6th – at 1.30 we had started loading in a van full of gear and set up a studio in their lounge and dining rooms. It’s unlikely at this point in life to get the kind of frisson usually reserved for 14 year olds deliberately disobeying their parents, but I have to say it was a sweet feeling and the vitality of youth flowed in the blood of all the tracks we subsequently put down.

- Deborah Conway and Willy Zygier