The Shropshire Songs

Auckland's COVID-19 lockdown of August–September 2021 afforded much time for arts and crafts. During that period i dusted off my neglected ukulele and set to music five poems from A. E. Housman's lilting, lamentful, and generally black-humored collection of 1896 A Shropshire Lad. I wrote one song per week, and surprisingly, they all turned out well. The weeks, that is.

I might rearrange the songs for more instruments one day and republish them under Paper Dragon's banner. Until then, here is the music for your listening enjoyment, released 2022-03-21 as The Shropshire Songs 1 by Loud Kisses, a musical side project i later canceled after realizing that one band (Paper Dragon) is enough work already.

The Shropshire Songs 1

Look at that beautiful album art! I thank the artificial intelligence system DALL·E 2, that made it in under a minute from my text prompt "A beautiful painting by David Hockney of the Severn River in Shropshire, England on a rainy day; trending on Art Station". As for the fonts, well, only a trained designer could have picked those. Thank you, Helena Teichrib.

You can listen to the songs with the audio player below, which, once started, will continue to the next track on the list. All music is copyrighted CC BY-NC 4.0 by me, Alex Raichev, and all lyrics lie in the public domain. And if you want to play along on ukulele, you can read the tablature for hints. Bonus!

Finally, you can download all the songs, lyrics, etc. here.

Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now · lyrics · tablature
When I Was One-and-twenty · lyrics · tablature
When Smoke Stood up from Ludlow · lyrics · tablature
Farewell to Barn and Stack and Tree · lyrics · tablature
I Hoed and Trenched and Weeded · lyrics · tablature

The Shropshire Songs 2

Still inspired by A Shropshire Lad, i switched to guitar and wrote seven more Shropshire songs. Actually ten, but only seven good ones. Housman, the acerbic critic, is probably grumbling in his grave. In critiquing the proposed drawings of an illustrated edition of A Shropshire Lad in 1920, he wrote to his publisher, "The trouble with book-illustrators, as with composers who set poems to music, is not merely that they are completely wrapped up in their own art and their precious selves, and regard the author merely as a peg to hang things on, but that they seem to have less than the ordinary human allowance of sense and feeling." But Housman is dead, so let's enjoy this second EP, released 2022-09-23!

Thanks again to DALL·E 2 for producing the landscape above from my text prompt "A beautiful painting by David Hockney of the Wrekin hilltop in Shropshire, England on a rainy day; trending on Art Station". The creations of our industrialists are unemploying us, but think of all the free time we'll enjoy! Fonts reused from the first EP. Reduce, reuse, recycle!

But what's the "Loud Kisses" line about, you ask? I answered that question above already. Pay attention!

You can listen to the songs with the audio player below, which, once started, will continue to the next track on the list. All music is copyrighted CC BY-NC 4.0 by me, Alex Raichev, and all lyrics lie in the public domain. And if you want to play along on guitar, you can read the tablature for hints. Bonus!

Finally, you can download all the songs, lyrics etc. here.