”We hadn’t made an album in five years, though we all wanted to, but with Jon‘s illness it was difficult to start. He wanted to, but everyone else thought it wasn’t a good idea for him as he was in no shape. He really wanted to be involved, so we did some jams and stuff like that to keep him as busy as we could but there was never gonna be an album made in that situation. It was just too dark. After all, Jon had brain cancer. After he died, there was a real kind of lightness. In some ways everyone felt that he was in a better place. He was suffering, not having any real medication during chemotherapy and radiation for three years, then the cancer was in remission before coming back twice as much. After his funeral in August we did a concert in October and felt we’d been through it all and went back to the studio to see what could happen. There, we all sat down on sofas, pretty much put a microphone in the middle and started singing and it just came out. It was beautiful and positive and even though it was in the middle of winter it sounded like summer. Like it was recorded in the Caribbean with rays of sunshine, and it was amazing.
‘Come Home Baby’ was an instrumental that Tony brought in, it sounded like a traditional Charlatans song to me and I didn’t take notice at it too much until I was in the car driving from Manchester to Northwitch to go and see my family. I sat there listening to it and suddenly just thought ‘there’s something really good about this’, something that just transcends the traditional us, something a bit more spiritual and I just got the lyrics trying to write about my little boy. As with most of my lyrics they could mean more than one thing, quite dreamy I suppose, and I think a lot of people thought it was about Jon. It’s kind of bizarre. There’s only one song on the album that makes me think about Jon and that’s ‘Trouble Understanding’, but that’s just a song about nature, really. But it’s good with double meanings, isn’t it? Half the time I don’t know what the songs are about, I’m the kind of writer that lets things unfold and if I let it be like that naturally it seems to give more. If you try to rush it or crump its style it’s like nurturing something, really.”
The Fat Angel Sings 