Colin Clyne’s career is going from strength to strength. Having scored play on Radio 2 (among others) for his last two single releases, the award-winning singer-songwriter is very much on a roll, and his latest offering only provides further evidence.
Clyne’s own lines summarising the song struck a personal – if perhaps unexpected – chord with me, describing it as ‘a tale of loss, regret and hindsight, be it in love, death or a self-departure from who we felt we were’. He explains that ‘It is based around the symbol of public benches, more so than ever over the last year I have seen so many benches ablaze with flowers and messages to loved ones lost.’
Walks have been a significant and regular feature of the last year and a bit, and while home-schooling and otherwise largely confined, getting my nine-year-old daughter off her tablet and out of the house has been at times a real, effort, but a rewarding one, and those trips and provoked some interesting and insightful conversations. And it transpires she’s wary of benches with plaques. People’s names, dates, and other kinds of memorial, she finds uncomfortable on account of their connotations of departure; ‘deathbenches’ she calls them.
Clyne’s reflective reminiscence, prompted by passing one such place is perhaps a little less blunt, and rather more nuanced, both conceptually and musically, as he contemplates grief and loss against a subtly-poised backdrop of acoustic guitar and piano, and it builds the emotion with a swell of strings and a delicate harmony backing, and its strength is in its humanity.
