Waiting Rooms by Samantha Whates

Most songs are conceived while we are in transit. At the beginning, or end, of a journey to somewhere, with someone. Anticipating, dreading, dreaming of, hoping, waiting for change. Whates` ambitious aim was to record in the surroundings where such thoughts take root. Live, on location, no overdubs. Traveling to the waiting rooms of a Victorian ferry terminal, Great Ormond`s Street Hospital, disused prison cells - haunted by the buzz of their former occupants - and train stations - both operational, or Grade 2-listed and closed to the public. The sessions involving a collective of seventeen friends - on acoustic and electric guitar, cello, clarinet, double bass, harmonica, lute, percussion, piano - prepared or otherwise - shruti, and viola. With recordings confined, due to spacial and locational logistics, to arrangements of between two and five players. It wasn’t possible to get a piano on that boat to the Isle Of Bute, or down into Loughton Tube after midnight.

Whates` songs on Waiting Rooms concern themselves with folk. Everyday stories, here performed in everyday places. Old Coat is a winter of romance-gone-wrong remembered. The protagonist of Sometimes Something seems overwhelmed by the aches of love, and life. Dark Waters finds them trying to come to terms with self, and self-loathing, and the salvation that can come from the heart of another. Sailors is a metaphor for all those in fragile but determined vessels afloat on the seas of chance. Guilty is bruised by spiteful slights. The Rehearsal, a blues harp skiffle shuffle dedicated to mistakes, apologies, and the need to start over. Daylight Savings, appropriately autumnal. I Love My Life both opens and closes the album. The first take, a defiant statement. The second, a slow, sad but hopeful waltz. Whates` voice is magical throughout. Flights of angelic improvisation, with a touch of Joni (Mitchell) in the high notes. Committing to tape unique recordings, that more than anything set down in a studio, capture a moment in time. Pieces full of memories. Not just those penned in the lyrics, but also of the space, the architecture, the high-ceiling-ed reverb, the strip-lighting hum. The performance. Passing trains. The journey there and back.

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