Ceiling Sun Letters

Six months is a long time in music, and music writer, author and musician Jason Walker knows that better than anyone. So why the hell did it take him five years to write, record and then release the dazzling follow-up to Ashes & Wine, the captivating, blurry Ceiling Sun Letters? It turns out he was living in a bleak house.

“It’s been a process of breaking down everything that I’d accomplished musically and personally in the last decade,” says Walker. “Things started to go a little haywire in 2005. I was diagnosed with panic and anxiety disorder, and I’d found a need to let some blood out.” At a show at the Annandale, Walker took his commitment to the art to levels not seen since Iggy Pop took a steak knife to his chest. “I was playing the solo to our last song with a schooner glass and it seemed like the right time to lacerate my forehead with it.”

Eight stitches and some incredulous live reviews of that infamous show later, Walker was attracting odd stares and conjecture about his sanity. “Our rhythm guitarist and harmony singer Worth Wagers went home to the USA and the last show we did with him was our last show. After that, I briefly went mad, was hospitalised with septicemia (blood poisoning) because of – shall we say – unsafe practices, I nearly drowned in the Newcastle flood, battled drug and alcohol problems… the usual nonsense.”

While he managed to avoid rehab or psychiatric care this time around, Walker had nowhere to go to entertain his demons except to write about them and sing them out into the Garage Band program on his laptop. Several of the songs like ‘Hearts Get Hard’ came ‘automatically’ according to Walker. “I was singing some ideas into the computer and ‘Hearts Get Hard’ just… emerged, fully formed. There was no preconception whatsoever. In the past I’d imagined that songwriters who spoke of this sort of occurrence were yanking our chains, but now I understand what it means to be a conduit. It really did just drop out of my mouth, lyrics, melody and all.”

1. ASHES
2. ADVICE TO BEGINNERS
3. EVERYBODY’S IN DEBT
4. HEARTS GET HARD
5. SO FAR
6. TIME POOR
7. THE DEVIL THAT YOU KNOW
8. CRAWL
9. SHIVER
10. LONELINESS
11. FREE TO GO
12. YES/NO

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