The Fat Angel Sings

The “Beechwood Park/Corridor Country” single follows James Elkington’s 2020 full-length album Ever-Roving Eye (PoB-050) and includes one studio outtake from that acclaimed album as well as a cover of the Zombies classic. Both “Park” and “Country” are performed in solo settings. Uncut awarded Ever-Roving Eye a 9/10 rating, hailing it as a “triumph … an outstanding record from a humble collaborator” (and their Album of the Month), while Pitchfork, MOJO, The Guardian, and many others described it as Elkington’s best work to date.

James shares his thoughts about both “Beechwood Park” and his relationship to memory and the past: I’m not really a nostalgic person, but I write about the past a lot as if it happened in a dream and that I’m merely reporting on it. “Beechwood Park” by The Zombies has that same feel to me. On the face of it, it seems to be an idealized view of the past that’s almost trite in its remembrance of “summer rain” and “country lanes,” but the winding chord sequence and spidery guitar tone makes it feel like it’s happening in a different dimension, and I’m always drawn to music that does that.

I worked up this version last year when I was sitting in a studio in upstate New York, waiting for a cab. The band I’d been working with had already left that morning, and the studio engineer was elsewhere, so I was on my own for some time. I can’t remember what prompted me to start working on it, but I do know that the studio was on a country lane, and it was raining, late summer.