My Angel

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Lead Vocals: Kate St.Claire
Analogue Synth: Frances May Morgan
Bellzouki: Ed Lynch-Bell
Electric Guitar, Programming and Everything Else: Kate St.Claire

This is kind of a painful song to come back to, which is probably why I've been putting off listening to it, let alone writing about it.

It was after one of those last romantic rejections, just a kind of boring and painful one, not even a hugely breathless and desired relationship, just a kind of "we get on really well, we have lots in common, good chemistry; why don't we just be an item?" the rejection from which was not even heartbreaking, but just kind of flat and deadening. The painful part wasn't the rejection, it was what happened afterwards that turned it from just kind of boring and painful to hugely traumatic.

Girls in a band were supposed to stick together; they were supposed to get your back. Girl-friendships were more important than stupid, dumb boys. Why would anyone get territorial or jealous or catty over something as stupid and inconsequential as a boy?

All I can say is, it wasn't really about the boy. It was about respect, and boundaries and all of those other things which aren't so easily healed.

After it blew up, I limped off to a holiday cottage on the Isle of Wight (I think it belonged to Ed's Dad at the time) with my laptop and a guitar and spent the week going on long rambling seaside walks, and coming home and writing songs. One of the songs from those sessions was this one, the longing and hopefulness and almost frightening honesty of which is, well, a little embarrassing. "it's not so pathetic, not to want to be alone" I sung, even while knowing that it was, completely and shamefully embarrassing to want as much as I wanted.

I still wanted to believe at that point. That love was a given, that every pot would find its cover, that there was 'someone for everyone'. Even me. The irony being, that soon afterwards I simply stopped believing. In a way, it was actually quite freeing to just... give up. Choose celibacy; embrace a single life. Decide that no, it wasn't going to happen. Ever. But that didn't mean one's life was over, and get on with the rest of one's life. Is that a happy ending? I have no idea. Sometimes one has to forget about happy endings, and get on with the rest of your life.