Different version of new album

[Faded Foreign Lord]

Hmmmmm, just looked at the track listing for 'I am very far' on the OR website and have noticed that 'Mermaid' is not listed. On my version of the album that I bought here in Oz, track 7 is 'Mermaid', not 'Hanging from a hit'. And, as I've mentioned in a previous post, have no lyrics in the album sleeve. Oh well. Love Mermaid though. I might check out itunes and see if Hanging from a hit is available there.

[mr. magpie]

Looks like a misprint. "Hanging from a Hit" is the song you're listening to, I think the title is just wrong. You can hear "Mermaid" on itunes and on youtube, the track came out in February.

[sonnyjames]

I read that Will decided to take Mermaid off the main release late on, replacing it with Hanging from a Hit, because the album as a whole just felt too dark to him with it on there. He did leave it on the Japanese / Australian versions, however. Here's the quote, in fact, from a Drowned in Sound interview he did recently;

"When I’m sequencing a record, I usually think in terms of the way all the songs will work together instead of which are the most accessible songs. Sometimes I think this tendency has hurt our commercial prospects – for instance, ‘Lost Coastlines’ is a song I wrote in about 2003 that I didn’t get around to recording until years later and then ended up surprisingly being one of our most commercially successful songs. In the case of ‘Mermaid’, I found that when I kept it on the record it somehow made the whole thing much darker-feeling than it already was. I was surprised that a lot of people described ‘Mermaid’ as uplifting or romantic, because I think of it as a disturbing song that even sort of disturbs me. So I left it off in favour of ‘Hanging From a Hit’, which I personally think of as a somewhat sweet song.

I remember being a high school kid and getting really excited when a Japanese import version of a record surfaced in a store, so for this record I decided it would be fun to do import versions, making the Japanese and Australian versions of the record have different art and different tracklistings. ‘Mermaid’ is on the Australian version, which also has a darker and more severe look to the artwork."

I'm kinda gutted that I know this, because I'm really loving IAVF...but still can't shake the feeling that Mermaid should really be on there instead of Hanging and would have made it (in my opinion) an even stronger record still. It's right up there with my favourite OR songs, in fact.

Was disappointed it didn't get an airing at the UK gig on Monday night, either (or the recent solo show). Maybe Will finds it just too disturbing!

[Faded Foreign Lord]

I am fairly sure that the song I'm listening to is Mermaid. It starts with the line 'so I said, Men, pull her out of the water and then, lay on hands and bind back her flippers and tail, until international waters...' This is Mermaid isn't it? I can't see Hanging from a Hit anywhere apart from youtube and this sounds totally different. Even when I look on itunes, I can't find Hanging from a Hit. I like the sound of it though, especially the out of tune piano.

[Bless This Tiny Alley]

Yeah, those are definitely the lyrics to Mermaid. Huh. Neat! Hanging From a Hit is indeed a good song.

Anyone heard the Rider single yet? "I Guess We Lost" is absolutely amazing. Can't believe it didn't make it on the album. The alt. mix of Rider is great too