Chris Olley - A Streetcar Named Disaster

Last year after one final show at Glastonbury and a  farewell 2 hour set in Nottingham six.byseven finally imploded. “For the first time I could look at the band not as a failure but as a success, that’s what gave me the strength to finally let go. When you believe in something so strongly it becomes hard to let it go, persistence can turn into stubbornness and you lose track of reality. I still believe I did the right thing in keeping it going and I still want six.byseven to be a success but I was probably the only one left who felt like that. Maybe being in a band that Peel asked to do five sessions was not such a failure after all!” During Chris Olley’s time in six.byseven he had already released numerous albums under the monkikers of  ‘Twelve’ and ‘’Fuck me USA.’ These were largely experimental and instrumental albums but perhaps now the time had come to release something under his own name. “ It’s all very well making music, hiding behind a project or band name but when you do it under your own name it’s a completely different thing. To quote Neil Young, I had to at last go about making a solo album, ‘just to see if I could make one.’ " Chris went back to the start, quite literally, “I didn’t have a band and I was going to find it hard to convince new people to begin a new journey to travel down a road of rock n roll road of doom. I picked up an acoustic and tried to find out who I was within music, I didn’t really care if it was right or wrong, good or bad, it just had to be me, whatever that was.” Lyrically and musically this is an open and honest album with clearly defined songwriting steeped in the traditions of American Folk, sometimes dreamy, sometimes tetchy, often feeling solemn and yearning but always cathartic. Recorded mainly in basements, front rooms on portastudios and various studios over a 6 month period without the use of computers or a single snare drum, the album relies heavily on the sound of vocals, guitars and mellotron. Chris says “Lyrically I was coming to terms with losing my Mother to alcoholism and making the choice to jettison so many friends and change my life for a new start whilst still reflecting on and trying to understand the past. Simple, stripped down and from the heart that’s what these songs needed to be. Whatever they are, I believe they are a piece of my life and me at this time.

Tracks : 01. flying 02. Pissing 03. In too deep 04. rock and roll 05. Sleepwalking 06. journey through the past 07. heaven knows 08. throw your lovin’ arms around me 09. fear is a lie 10. Pain 11. keep your tears away 12. forever

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