Some songs are enduring. You can listen to them again and again, and they always make your heart soar and your ears glad. For me, ‘Song For Sundays’ from Luke Ritchie’s 2011 album The Waters Edge is such a song. Looking at its vintage, I think I probably found it when I was regularly listening to albums being reviewed by the For Folks Sake blog. At the time I was living in London, immersing myself in the plethora of amazing indie folk music being made in the early 2010s.
I think the reason why I still love this song, 14 years later, is for 3 main reasons:
- The lyrics are beautiful and paint a picture of a Sunday morning and an emotional state summed up as “So calm yet so unclear”
- The vocal performance at the end of the song is filled with intensity and it washes over me like the most beautiful wave
- The piano is just so darn perfect in both its twinkling sound and its function
We start off slowly with a beautiful acoustic guitar, soon followed by a warm kick drum, before the bass (possibly double bass?) and drums come in proper. I think the word warm sums up the vibe. It sounds like time and care were put into recording these instruments. My own limited recording experience has taught me that how you record something is everything. Mixing and overdubs can only do so much, it can’t fix something that wasn’t right to start with. If you get a nice snare sound or the guitars are mic’d up just right, it makes a huge difference.
Luke’s vocal is clear and warm, with a slight rasp in places throughout the song which gives it character. Setting the scene of waking up on a Sunday morning, I am reminded of one of my own songs ‘Look’, much less poetic than this, where I remark on Sunday morning’s hazy light, with someone next to you.
Once we hit the chorus, the piano kicks in, adding a rhythmic quality with its complex flourishes. The piano continues through the second verse and chorus, where I think I can hear some strings making an appearance. I’m calling it a chorus loosely, as it is more of a refrain. The music in this section builds up to mark our exit from the verse and the melody becomes more legato.
I mentioned loving the imagery in the lyrics and this is illustrated in the second verse, where a moment of drinking water is turned into an adventure:
I wring the tap dry of water –
My little hill-side source –
And then I’ll down a flooded river
In knotted loops and folds
But then I’ll simply lie stranded
Like some bloated corpse
Until you rise me up
The song pulls back after the second chorus/refrain, similar to the first verse. You can also hear the brushes on the drums which is a lovely touch. By the end of the verse and into the refrain, the song becomes a runaway train. All the instruments ratchet up, with Luke belting out the lines, before the song takes a breath and everything winds down to the end. It never fails to give me goosebumps and I can only imagine how satisfying it was to sing.
While I can never realy know someone’s songwriting journey or the path of a song, I can’t help but think that this song wanted to be written, patiently waiting for the final minute where it could soar. As a music lover, these moments are the ones that inspire me to keep going.
While Mr Ritchie hasn’t released a solo album since The Waters Edge, a little searching turned up a career focused on music and technology, with many interesting jobs. More reason to appreciate this album.