‘Freud' is a playful fan favourite that Tellison never thought would ever make the latest album TWOF, let alone the airwaves. But in obscure Tellison fashion - even when writing out of their comfort zone - the down tempo but uplifting ballad claims that Sigmund Freud, neurologist and inventor of psychoanalysis, forged a parallel between the teeth and the heart...this is of course, untrue - but ‘what if?' asks singer/songwriter Stephen H Davidson. And we are glad he did!
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Produced by
Peter Miles & Tellison
‘Freud' is a playful fan favourite that Tellison never thought would ever make the latest album The Wages Of Fear, let alone the UK's airwaves. But in obscure Tellison fashion - even when writing out of their comfort zone - the down tempo but uplifting ballad claims that Sigmund Freud, neurologist and inventor of psychoanalysis, forged a parallel between the teeth and the heart...this is of course, untrue - but ‘what if?' asks singer/songwriter Stephen H Davidson. And we are glad he did!
'Freud' is backed up by the beautifully melancholic re-imagining of the Academy Award winning show tune 'The Way You Look Tonight', originally sung by Fred Astaire in the classic 1936 movie Swing Time in a classic scene with Ginger Rogers.
'Freud' is quite a sonic departure if you're one of the many people more used to the rockier side of Tellison. However there's always been an undercurrent of quieter material in the band's repertoire since 2007's "Contact! Contact!" showcased downbeat shuffler ‘Fire' and the Pedro The Lion-esque ‘Hospital'. Indeed it's often in their quieter moments that Tellison's lyrical soul shines brightest. Inspired by personal heroes The Mountain Goats, Death Cab For Cutie, the introspections of Dave Bazan's aforementioned Pedro The Lion and Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, songwriter Stephen H Davidson sees these moments of calm as a chance for words to sit front-and-centre without competing with the hail of overdriven guitars and machine-gun drumming that you more-immediately associate with Tellison.
Imagine Frightened Rabbit at their stripped-back, yet lushly-arranged, best only replace the bleary-eyed Scottish stoicism with a half-joking half-hopeless sense of yearning and fragility. On ‘Freud' Davidson takes his lyrical cues as much from the musicians mentioned above as from former school-mate Emmy The Great's wryly-smiling gallows-humour and Kate Nash's trick of seeing the poetic in the seemingly mundane.
As front man Stephen (Davidson) explains: "I never thought Freud would be a Tellison song when I wrote it. It was more a half joke half poem with a wreck of a love song mangled up inside it. I was suffering from the crushing pain of wisdom teeth emerging at the time and somehow that, coupled with me having the hots for this French girl, ended up in the song. I think it captures a good coping mechanism. If you're feeling sad and hopeless sometimes you'll crack jokes to cover it up or make yourself feel better. This leads neatly back into the song's (fraudulent) ties to psychoanalysis. I find Freud a pretty fascinating guy and I enjoy the idea of him postulating theories about tooth pain and so-called 'love'."
Thus an everyday trip to the dentist becomes a reflection on loves lost, futile and hoped-for, on the tiny relations between a beautiful French dentist and Freud's "The Interpretation Of Dreams" and the semi-ridiculous inner-monologue of a half-lost twenty something. ‘Freud' might showcase Tellison in a different gear to their previous singles but it's every bit as bittersweet, impassioned and addictive.
Produced by
Peter Miles & Tellison