Music for the beach is a personal choice, but should you find yourself among the delights of St Ives, Cornwall, this is just for you. Of course, it’s for everybody, since you must go to St. Ives. I’ve been every year for the past 25 or so, and this collection has been built up over those years. See you there.
Words & curation by Keith, St. Ives Bay by Mick Clarke
Recently, I had a bad case of listening anxiety. I had a short break on the Cornish coast - St. Ives, and was particularly looking forward to some quality music time. It just so happened that week was the one in which we were beginning to emerge from lockdown (in the UK at least) and perhaps for that reason, a bunch of new album releases arrived ‘on the market’ - new records from My Morning Jacket, The Pretenders (old favourites), along with Jessie Ware, Rufus Wainwright, Dream Wife, HAIM, Lianna La Havas, Courtney Marie Andrews, Margo Price (all highly acclaimed by reviewers and not yet familiar to me). On top of that, I try to pay attention to brand new music from artists entirely new to me, and so add to that list new albums by Suzanne Vallie and The Blinders. You can already recognise my problem perhaps, but then on top of these, I still hadn’t quite spent enough time listening to recent releases by Nadine Shah, Pearl Jam, Paul Weller, Ron Sexsmith, Rumer, SAULT and Tim Burgess.
As a music fanatic, I am constantly toggling between checking out something new or spending time becoming more familiar with a record. I’m always balancing the time spent listening to new music and classic catalogue - the buzz of the new versus those favourites that come with a guarantee to lift the mood. But I’m also a fan of active, deep listening, as opposed to background or casual listening, so I consider music listening time as a valuable commodity. That especially applies to when one has time by the ocean shore.
Anyhow all this led to problems during my week off. I couldn’t quite land on what I really wanted to listen to. I ended up flitting between this and that and even skipping tracks - which to me is a crime against music. I don’t know what the solution is, other than to really tap into the context you’re in at that particular moment you want to listen. In the end I spent a lot of time on my holiday choosing to listen to an album by Goldfrapp from 2014 - ‘Tales of Us’ - which I’d remembered I enjoyed so much when by the beach. I listened three times through the whole thing and it’s truly wonderful. It’s slow, melancholic and beautiful and doesn’t contain a weak track. An under-appreciated classic I feel. For the remaining time, I focused on the recent catalogue of My Morning Jacket (also well timed for beach and resulting in our previous post, which you may read here).
After that, I went back to the old solution - this being Porth to Porth, a playlist of music I have been building over the past 25 years or so. Six or Seven years before my first daughter was born, and for the past 12 years since the last one was. We skipped just one year - which I remember being a disaster - so never again. Have you been? If that’s a yes, then you know. You know about the light, the view out to Godrevy, the Atlantic swell that makes Porthminster my favourite swimming water in the world, the difference between the beaches on offer (from that Porthminster swim to the surf of Porthmeor) from a simple 10 minutes stroll between each one, and the Cornish pasties you must protect with your life unless you want a fight with a gull (they are worth it). If you know St. Ives, I hope you enjoy this collection the next time you go, or imagine yourself there. If you don’t - play it anyway - and grab yourself a brochure. Maybe this helps in some small way. See you there.
From lighthouse to lighthouse
From porth to porth
This ocean swell
Holds two decades of memories
An Atlantic fort
Of family, of friends
From then to today
This water, These beaches
Endlessly here for us
Ebbing and flowing into the bay
And more to come as we go forth
St. Ives, come what may
From lighthouse to lighthouse
From porth to porth