I wrote a few new songs after having spent the summer at the Alabaster Coast in Northern France. It’s an impressive coastline, correspondent to the white chalk cliffs on the other side of the channel – not quite as shiny maybe.

It has a certain morbid charm, with many summer mansions falling into disrepair while seemingly creeping closer to the edge of the cliff with each passing year. Here in Normandy, the beaches are laden with history. The tragedies of the past are enough to numb the mind: Monstrous concrete structures lie half buried where they fell when the coastline receded. Seeing them we are reminded both of how distant and how real the past still is.

This song, however, is not about any war, it is just a melancholy reflection on the mildewy ways of time and towels, and the realisation that each winter could be the last for a house that was built this close to the sea.

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Summer’s Last Resort — Lyrics

The stereo is all treble
The copper pipes leak
There’s just a handful of pebbles
Between us and the sea
Between us and the sea

I bring what I can carry
You bring your baby girl
We can dream and be merry
At the edge of the world
At the edge of the world

And we’ll call it the summer’s last resort
Where we’ll soothingly hum her
What tunes the summer brought

The attic’s a mouldy
Paperback library
This place has a memory
That stopped in ‘93
1993

We know we can’t stay here
We know we won’t leave
There’s reason to pray, dear
There are remnants of grief
There are remnants of grief

So let’s pray that the winter finds us still afloat
Or will we silently sing her
The last thing her daddy wrote

I found this on his desk
Might be a shopping list
Might be a poem, might be a goodbye note

We know we can’t leave here
We know we can’t stay
Let’s go search the new year
For any remnant of grace
For any remnant of grace

And let’s hope that the winter finds us still afloat
Or you’ll silently sing her
The last song her daddy wrote

And he called it the summer’s last resort
And we’ll soothingly hum her
The last song that summer brought

And it passed sooner than I thought
Forget me not

 

Chords

am  /  /  |  Fj7  /  /  |  Cj7  /  /  |  bm7/4  /  /  |
am  /  /  |  Fj7  /  /  |  Cj7  /  /  |  B7  /  /  |
am  /  /  |  Fj7  /  /  |  Cj7  /  /  |  bm7/4  bm6  /  |
am  /  /  |  Fj7  /  /  |  Cj7  /  /  |  G/b  /  /  |  G  /  /  |

dm7  /  /  |  /  /  /  |  F  /  /  |  /  /  /  |
C  /  /  |  am  /  /  |  bm7/4  /  /  |  bm6 /  /  |
dm7  /  /  |  /  /  /  |  Bb /  /  |  F  /  /  |
dm7  /  /  |  am  /  /  |  G  /  /  |  G/b  /  /  |  G  /  /  | G/b  /  /  ||

 

Musical Analysis

Pretty straightforward, fast waltz, only remarkable feature is the chord progression from B7 to am (second to third line of the verse), which seems to lead away from the key of a minor to e minor  but doesn’t, just doesn’t…

Song Lyric Analysis

Come on, do you really think this is necessary…?

Anything else?

Well…