Transcript
Speaker: I'm Lydia. I'm Ed. We're friends with a playlist for everything. And it turns out, we both have one called Survival Songs. And he got us thinking, what are other other people's Survival Songs? So we thought we'd find out. Welcome to Survival Songs. A podcast where each episode our guest tells us about a song that gets them through the best and worst of times. Sensitive topics might be discussed. So look after yourself. The show contains portions of copyrighted material. We'd love for you to support and celebrate the artists by streaming, downloading and buying their brilliant music. And go give our guests a follow on social media.
Speaker: Help us grow the community of survival song listeners by joining us over on Substack and add to our public playlist on Spotify. Links are in the show notes. We hope you enjoy the show. Hello and welcome back. It's Lydia here again and why start a podcast if you're not going to use it to have all the conversations you want to have with people you really love. This is one of those, I can't wait for you to meet Florence Brady. Florence is a singer and voice researcher based in London. Her PhD research looks at the impact of collective singing on community health and hope.
Speaker: She is one part of the band Remore who released their most recent EP Flourishing Green in June 2024. Flo lives with her partner and fellow musician Joe and the pair will welcome their first child this summer. This is Florence's survival song The Good Old Way by The Waterstones. But I am a sweet hope and glory in this day. I am a sweet hope and glory in this day. But I know I have and I feel I have a sweet hope and glory in my soul.
Speaker: So that was the Watersons singing The Good Old Way, which is the survival song of our guest today, the brilliant and beautiful Florence Brady. Hello Florence. Hi Lydia. I so enjoyed listening to this song. i I know this band a little bit but I hadn't heard this song in full and you've made me spend time with it. I want to start by asking how how the song first found you. um my My partner gave it me, like to be honest, a lot of songs that have made their way into my
Speaker: this mental survival songs playlist seem to have have come about ah through through No and Joe. But I think it's more they've they've come about since the the COVID rupture, as it were. there's is There's been a new set in the past for four years. um So yeah, so this one's only been in my life for two two years, maybe? It's relatively new. And yet it's one of those ones that the first time I listened to it, I had listened to it 20 times. What grabbed you about it? um The force of the singing, the way that the harmonies live together and what that does in my body.
Speaker: I think for me it's like listening to this song is like it's having a big oxygen rush. I just feel like incredibly present in myself and relieved. um Yeah, it's like sun coming out and So yeah, it's a physical response to it more than more than anything else. Are you able to say more about what the song like at what point in the song does that happen? what What's it doing for you? What's it offering up?
Speaker: um
Speaker: there's there's no warm up or introduction, they just launch and like it just stops me. The first time I heard it, it stopped me in my tracks, whatever I was doing. I mean, I was probably sitting and sitting with the intention of listening to this new song I'd been given and still it was like a point of real physical arrest. And then when the voices first split,
Speaker: and take the pleasure of Jesus, etc. Those moments where all this space opens up, it's it's kaleidoscopic and then the the the chorus is just it is an absolute punch.
Speaker: And just the way generally that the Watterson's voices all live together, because they're related, um you have this um this real ah blood harmony thing going on. um So like when when people who are related to each other, particularly at sort of ah the closeness of siblings and cousins as they are, um their voices resonate together in a particular particular way. You hear it as well and like the the Lynch brothers and Lancum and those siblings you sing together all over the place, just like their voices sit together in a very specific way.
Speaker: um And yeah, it's just vibrations and vibes from start to finish. there is There's no softness in it and yet it's really joyful and warm. And the way you use the word kaleidoscopic, I so know what you mean. It just it It launches off into the ether, doesn't it? But then I'm ultra aware of how all the voices land together on the same note at the end of every chorus. they They go places, they travel all the routes, and then they come back together. You've described lots of different bits there, but I wonder if there's a bit that you sort of wait for. Or ah and because it's such a repetitive song, maybe there's a bit that comes back around every every time, every every loop.
Speaker: I think like that the the chorus is just from from the practical thing of I've learned or been learning the lyrics just by ear. So I got the chorus down a lot quicker than I got the verses down. So whenever that point that comes back around again. um that you can really launch off. You can really join in but that at that point.
Speaker: Like the imaginative landscape of it, like starting in the chorus, I just i think How it feels at that point of the chorus is standing outside with like your head slightly tipped towards the sky and it feels cool, like cool breeze. and it's like you've got to the top of the mountain or it's going to sound really weird but there's that like it goes around in memes a lot. You know that picture of Nicole Kidman when she's just divorced Tom Cruise and she's like walking out and embracing the sunlight and her head sit back and she's slightly like like relieved but in a way that is
Speaker: isn't about like relieved and settling down into your couch. It's like your like relief and so you can stand in your power and just be like, yes. So it's it's it's somehow that picture, even though that is a really weird pop culture merge that I didn't quite expect to bring up in this moment necessarily. The Watsons turn every listener into Nicole Kidman. I love that, yeah. yeah Ed and I talk a lot about the different shapes of survival and what different songs do to elicit a feeling of like, I've survived this or I will survive this and what you're describing is that top of the mountain feeling. It's I have survived or I'm convinced there is a top of the mountain and I can reach it. Is that is that what survival means for you in terms of this song? I think so. and
Speaker: and what What this song i mean is is about is is that hope for the future that comes that comes out of like really steadfast action in the present. so like if If the song is about anything, um it's about it's about that, whether you're religious or not religious. so I think that idea of hope, dare progress, survival is about existing beyond the present moment. And I think when you're out of survival mode, in which everything is just now,
Speaker: surviving is itself a long, durational process. And like, when you remember or realise that you have survived the future time opens up again because you're not locked in in flight flight adrenaline anymore so it's nice to Have a song that feels like it's opening the future up again. It's that moment of realising that you have survived. Yeah, survival is a moment and then surviving as the ongoing bit. And there's something about this song for me that evokes a sort of workers vibe. It's a song you could plough fields to, it's a song you could um forage to. It's a it's so
Speaker: It's one I want to use my hands while I'm listening kind of thing and um and hope as a kind of collective act and singing as a collective act. I know that's something you're very invested in. do you Do you feel like saying a bit more about that? Yeah, so my i'm I'm doing a PhD at the moment and my research is in singing as ah as a collective action and singing as a way to to support ah social imagination and imagining the future by means of experiencing like even micro transformations in there in the present, sort of stopping to focus and and breathe and hear your voice connected to other people's voices um has really profound effects on people individually.
Speaker: um which means that sort of people are more opened up to relationships with others, with their environment, with the world and from understanding that you're in relationship to all these other things. That's where action, solidarity, all this other stuff comes from. That's my so that's that's yeah that's what I'm looking into. But i i find ah I think one of the things that really compels me about the good old way
Speaker: as As a religious song, but not personally as ah as a particularly religious person, um although my dad's a very Catholic man, um there's there's something about hearing like so songs of faith and in like really strong working class voices. Because a lot of the choral music I think we experience in in the UK is filtered through ah you know a very refined, rarefied musical idiom.
Speaker: um and you know there's There's lots of lots of communities around around the world where the where the idea of ah like spiritual music and and working classness really you know really coexist, like particularly looking at African -American spirituals and things like that. But and in terms of English music, um
Speaker: listening to songs like this really grounds the experience of faith for me in in communities and in voices that are a bit more like mine. um I mean, I'm not Northern, like not not the Waterston specifically, but there's there's something about it not being churchy or classical and still still holding some of the more more lofty ideologies shall we say. Yeah completely. It's something you can borrow whoever you are because it's your faith and assuring us in something.
Speaker: And there's a seamless link. I think, you know, the world needs lots and lots more of these kind of folk tales that we can all sing together. And you write a few of those, don't you Florence Brady? Because you're in a band. Do you want to say a bit about that? as I'm in a band ah called Remaré or Remaré. It's Latin, so like we don't need to completely agree on. on how to say it. There's various various variations. um And the band itself um operates on a collective model and has been around for for a long time. But I started joining in about two years ago and we've just released an EP called Flourishing Green.
Speaker: songs about the the sea, or specifically losing loved ones to the sea, in an expanded sense of losing they can pass or go missing, or they just work too hard and you can't be bothered with them anymore. So, always you can lose someone. It's true to say, and I'm not just saying this because I'm talking to you today, that Johnny's On The Water is currently my most played song of 2024. So thank you for that. That's cool. It's just immensely beautiful. I really, really adore it. i'm And I've loved this conversation. Thank you, Florence Brady. Thank you for taking the time to do this.
Speaker: Thank you, Lydia. It's been lovely. Where would our listeners find out more about you or the band or the work you're doing? Do you want to point us towards any places to learn all things Florence Brady? So you can follow Remre on Instagram. Our music is on Spotify and on Bandcamp and then I post a little bit about my research and stuff on my, on my personal Instagram as well. So I'm around and about. Yeah, you are. I'll see you soon. Thank you for this.
Speaker: We really hope you enjoyed the episode. If you want to support the podcast further you can choose to upgrade your subscription on Substack, but most of all we just love it if you told your friends about what we're up to. Thanks for listening.
