A double CD containing a total of 26 songs. This low-key, lo-fi collection is a fine showcase of Hugh's style and lyrical sense.

Essentially, it's Hugh Featherstone "unplugged", and sometimes even solo - just his voice and a 12-string guitar. A return to the territory visited in his cassette album "the Black Tape". After scratching his itch to let rip in big pop-rock style on two of his previous three albums, he's back down-home again with a collection of close-to-the-heart songs presented in a close-up intimate way.

The mystery of the 13th song

Wait a minute! 26 songs, you say? Yep. Although the advertising for this album heralded a total of 24 tracks, and indeed only 12 are numbered on the sleeve for each CD.

However, at the end of the listing for each disc mysterious initials appear in brackets: (t.w.b.f.) and (e.o.t.w.) respectively. Very curious. These baffling ciphers can be unraveled by listening to the discs themselves, or by simply studying the tracklists on this page.

Why did Hugh do this? Were the tracks added at the last minute? Is this a fiendish game or a private joke? Or is this the guy just plain superstitious about the number 13? Must ask him some time.

Whichever way you look at it, you certainly get a lot of songs for your money with this album; not so much bangs for your buck, more songs for your shekel, tunes for your tenner, rhymes for your rupee, lyrics for your lira, chords for your krone or... erm... ditties for your drachma. Some of them have turned out to be firm favourites among Hugh's fans (horses for courses), and he has since rearranged and recorded a few on subsequent discs.

The biggest heartbreaker on Me & Miss Wray is Statistic: not your normal kind of love song, but nontheless a song of compassionate love for a young landmine victim. What begins as a tale told with great tenderness and understanding builds to a searing attack on the Big Business international landmine industry.

This anger is almost unique in a Featherstone song, and although in this case perfectly understandable, it comes as a surprise. Though many of Hugh's previous songs are critical (directly and indirectly) of the political status quo, they are usually couched in irony rather loaded with venom. I've never seen Hugh angry, never seen him lose his temper over anything. Not even burnt toast, death or taxes. But I know there are some things would drive even him to boiling point if he didn't believe in something better and wasn't able to find a channel for his emotions in his faith, life and his work. This helps explain his many years of work for causes such as UNICEF and Amnesty International.

As a lyrical storyteller Hugh often has to be somewhat dispassionate about his subject matter, but if the passion wasn't there in the first place he wouldn't have written the song. A most ingenious paradox.

Statistic is a remarkably beautiful song: exquisite, painful, without a trace of sentimentality. The sketched details of the last minutes of an Asian child's life unfold in a way that Graham Greene would surely applaud and which take our breath away.

Many of Hugh's songs appear at first to be about one thing, then turn out, on further listening, to be concerned with something completely different. How does he do that? I call it "Featherstone's parallex view". You don't need special glasses, no prescription necessary. Just dive into the music and enjoy whatever meaning you may find.

For example, The park floats on the surface of a rain-soaked love song, but actually swims through the undercurrents of the ancient genesis myths of the great flood, the Deluge theme of primordial poetry in many cultures. Deep stuff, indeed. But no need to drown in it, get aboard the next track.

Laundromat seems to be about someone callously dismissing a friend who loses the plot following a failed love affair, becomes obsessive and locks himself up in his apartment. But on closer examination, what is repeated is the plea to him (surely it must be a guy) to get in touch when he's ready. The suppliant even says please. I'm here for you, he intones, but you got to make the first step back to wholeness yourself. Which of us hasn't known somebody in this terrible end-of-an-affair state, or even been down there ourselves. There but for the grace of God... Tough but fair? Cruel to be kind?

In the end Hugh is talking not just about what we may lose and find when romantic love is gone, but what remains: the love of true friendship, acceptance, understanding. At the very least, the willingness to learn these things from each other. Without this, a relationship cannot succeed anyway. Such companionship is at the heart of all his work. It doesn't cost anything and there are no conditions, you just have to want it too.

Three-chord town and Sometime, never, maybe, two of the standout tracks on Me and Miss Wray, are of a different order. Still within the prism of "Featherstone's parallex view" we now see the story from the viewpoint of the lovelorn. The tone is much lighter than in "Laundromat", and the shoe is now firmly on the other foot. Both songs are a direct plea to the departed beloved (in other words talking to the walls he/she left you with), but both are actually about time. We know time passes quickly when you're having fun and slowly when you're longing for love. And here's living proof.

"It seems things only last until you really want them to,
just like our life together, pretty short kind of forever,
this year, next year, sometime, never ... maybe."

Two very different songs held together by several threads of consciousness. Two sides of a coin. Pure gold. Take a bite and test their metal.

Hugh put a pop spin to these songs on his 1995 CD album Landing, and in a perfect world they would have reached us on a single. His vision of Three-chord town as a film of "toy cars and cardboard cut-out streets" may still see the light of darkened movie theatres. Sometime, never ... maybe.

Whatever, If you are a fan of popular music in English, I challenge you to listen to this album and claim there's not one song that doesn't reach you. Give it a listen. Or two.


Recorded ddd & add, winter 98/99
Post-master & lithos: Shuttle Music
Sleeve design: PhilBy nemodreaming.com

Thanks for the support, time & talent of: the Lorenz family,
Jackfruit & Julia, Manfred at Shuttle, Mathias & Norbert, Wini,
Yannick, Amelie, Momo, Don, David, Pip, Sara, Philby & Kim

All songs, copyright, words & music: Hugh Featherstone
p & c Struts & Frets 1999

Published by Polygram/Universal

The philosophical optimist in me can offer no excuse for the catalogue of failure most of these songs represent. All I can say in my defense is that I write better downbeat stuff than upbeat & that audiences, for obscure reasons of their own, seem to prefer getting thoroughly miserable to being cheered-up.

When recording we employed an arsenal of very expensive valve microphones & precious little else. By largely avoiding digital widgets, the instruments mostly sound as they really do and the quiet bits, due to our care for natural dynamics, are genuinely quiet. This probably makes "miss wray" unsuitable listening for car stereos or as musical wallpaper for bars and restaurants.

This production is dedicated, not without a certain irony, to my family, life with whom is somewhat removed from the almanac of emotional disaster enclosed here. Also to all those friends, from Hollyhead to Varna, whose kitchens I have colonized down the years. Many thanks to all of you, and greetings to Luzie Ackers, who initially gave me the idea for this collection.

May the Kong be with you all... HF '99.

The few helpers I had:

Momo played percussion on Cold rain on the stars;

Yannick Le Roux and Winfried Winkler (my "Tone Poets") played drums and bass on
I'll remember you, Someone else's child, Three-chord town and Emotional dunce;

Jackfruit, friend & co-producer, played bass on Not missing, sang the backing
and programmed the chart.

Other backings were sung by my daughter Kim (If you feel the same),
Amalie, a friend (Stay another day), and myself.

I played all the guitars & the violin.