The Beat Surrender

A few weeks ago an album landed here at Beat Surrender Towers. The cover didn’t look over exciting and I have to be honest, I expected some slightly dreary singer songwriter nonsense to be the order of the day when it hit my stereo.

I couldn’t have been more wrong though. I…Um is a startlingly honest and open album that lays everything in Lou Cowell’s life out for you to live through with her. I caught up with Lou recently and pleasingly she is just as candid when interviewed!

I’m a big fan of your album, how has the response been to it generally?

The general response to the record from those to whom it is personally delivered, is graciously favourable. A little lukewarm for my ego’s liking, truth be told, but I know all I have to do is strap in the ol’ ego and sit tight. For, without wishing to sound arrogant, generally, after a couple more listens, a few cuppas and, preferably, a row or two with the other half; I am invariably text or called in emotive tones, whereby gushing praise is showered over the songs. This response is worth the wait as far as I’m concerned, because it’s the real one; the soul-jerk rather than the premature knee’s input.

The second category of response comes by way of Album Reviews, from people to whom I am a complete stranger. In truth, had it dawned on me, prior to recording the record, that I would be the subject of review, I may never have ventured in front of the mic! But I find reading such reviews absolutely intriguing. It’s fascinating to read others’ interpretations of my lyrics, my private thoughts.

I’ve been overwhelmed by the reviews the album’s received. Genuinely moved in a way I never expected to be, at how ‘understood’ it has enabled me to feel. If a problem aired is a problem halved; many of mine seem to have been most satisfactorily down-sized!

Do you take much notice of the feedback you get?

I do. At least, I think I do. It’s a bit like visiting a fortune teller though; for the most part you hear what you want to hear. That’s human nature though, isn’t it? Saying that, mind you, I get so much inspiration from snippets of conversation, whether had or overheard, that, in spiritual terms, it pays for me be open minded and open eared at all times. I think you hear what you need to hear when you need to hear it. Whether you listen or not is another matter. But it tends to be that what’s needed has a canny knack of repeating itself through a multitude of different medias, in different ways until it’s message is heard.

The songs you write are startlingly open emotionally, is that a hard thing to do knowing it’s going to be out there in the public domain?

Thank you. No, it’s not, because to me those things are only said to my piano, in my room. Beyond that, they’re part of a song which is heard more as a conscience than a conversation. Certainly, I know when I listen to a song I am weaving my own life out of the words being sung to me, applying them to my own situations, as opposed to attempting to ‘spy’ on the singer’s life, of which I know nothing.

It’s funny, often when I sit down to write a song, to confide in myself; the lyrics are just ‘there’. More often than not, I only truly hear them for the first time when I read them back. And, as such, I have to trust that they’re for that particular song, and for whoever should happen to be its audience.

How do you find playing and singing the songs live when they obviously mean a lot to you?

Gigs, to me, are like mini comas! Not in the way that actors ‘play a part’ or ‘take on a role’, but, without sounding melodramatic, you just have to kind of ‘become the song’ and let it sing itself. I have never considered myself a singer. Goodness knows, I’d give my last Rolo for a huge gospel voice, but, alas; my last Rolo remains my own on which to gorge.

Rather, I’m a songwriter. The performance aspect of this finds me as the instrument for the song, as opposed to any kind of popstar-diva. Or, perhaps it’s my own fear that denotes this. I don’t know. I find it hard to have the lights dim around me, knowing that I’m about to become the loud voice still squawking when the DJ suddenly cuts the music, not least given the various secrets I’m about to spill. It feels like the dreams where you’re on the loo in a public place and you suddenly realise the cubicle has no door.

I’m a home gal, give me a plate of beans on toast and an episode of Eastenders over a gig any day of the week. But, I feel I have to keep up my end of the bargain. Music has taken me to the summits of spiritual mountains as the sun rises, and it has stripped me naked in the darkest of corners. I’ve been blessed with these songs, so I have to take responsibility for them, and music is meant to be heard. So I guess it’s the pleasure/pain theory.

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