William Doyle by Ryan MacPhail
William Doyle releases his new solo album on March 19th.
William Doyle has shared the second single from his forthcoming Great Spans Of Muddy Time record.
“It sort of gives me a last-dance-at-a-school-disco feeling,” he says of it. “There’s a melodrama to it. It explores the chasm that exists between forming a thought and being able to express it clearly.”
This album is joining the fray close to ten years on from when Doyle’s East India Youth venture began with a CD-R demo handed to John Doran at a gig, a project which hit a peak in 2014 with the Mercury nomination of Total Strife Forever.
“The album this turned out to be – and that I’ve wanted to make for ages – is a kind of Englishman-gone-mad, scrambling around the verdancy of the country’s pastures looking for some sense,” Doyle has said of Great Spans Of Muddy Time. “It has its seeds in Robert Wyatt, early Eno, Robyn Hitchcock, and Syd Barrett.”
“I became obsessed with Monty Don. I like his manner and there’s something about him I relate to. He once described periods of depression in his life as consisting of ‘nothing but great spans of muddy time’. When I read that quote I knew it would be the title of this record.”
“Something about the sludgy mulch of the album’s darker moments, and its feel of perpetual autumnal evening, seemed to fit so well with those words. I would also be lying if I said it didn’t chime with my mental health experiences as well.”
Great Spans Of Muddy Time tracklist:
I Need To Keep You In My Life
And Everything Changed (But I Feel Alright)
Somewhere Totally Else
Shadowtackling
Who Cares
Nothing At All
Rainfalls
New Uncertainties
St. Giles’ Hill
Semi-bionic
A Forgotten Film
Theme from Muddy Time
[a sea of thoughts behind it]