Down an August Path

Walking home late on Wednesday I noticed some sunflowers in a front garden, growing up against a wall, nearly reaching the first storey. Now I’m wondering whether to nip out and photograph them, lit by street lights, sunflowers in the dark. Ungainly things, out of their element. It would make a good back cover, I reckon, in contrast to the sunlight on the front – but it’s half an hour’s walk away, I’ve no bus change and it’s nearly bedtime as it is. So it’s too late, ’cause this is getting posted tomorrow morning, this EP by my sister and I. Planet Sunflower are our band, or duo anyway, and years ago we used to make songs by looping bits of Nick Cave records and writing down the names of things in the room to use for lyrics. ‘In My Eyes’ from Loss Angeles is a Planet Sunflower song (no Cave there – The Seahorses, Stevie Wonder and Beatrix Potter were our, uh, inspirations). Another, the best one, was called ‘Wind Sand and Stars’ for no better reason than that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s book of that name was on a shelf nearby when we wrote it. Random choices can be good ones. Though lately when we’ve done stuff it’s been less random, more song-like. Catriona (AKA Janet Sunflower) says, ‘The first two songs are old Planet Sunflower-style (complicated) & the latter two are new PS-style (simple / only got an acoustic guitar on us).’* ‘The Escarpment’ is our first single.

Planet Sunflower – ‘The Escarpment E.P.’

1. The Escarpment
2. Big Stripey Lie
3. Where is the Now?
4. My Planet Sunflower
5. Cheap Cigs & Beer
   

Songs by Catriona and Chris except ‘Big Stripey Lie’ which is by Kate Bush. The first two were recorded in August 2008, and the rest between 2004 – 2006.

Download it here, or listen below.

* She said this before we found the fifth song, so it made sense at the time.