Text by Paul Thompson
I'd done three solo albums under the name Everdark. The third of the three was quite satisfying to make, and then (2001 onwards) all my efforts were funnelled into writing for and playing in Manichae. This was all well and good, but I felt restricted by Manichae's heavy rock, and, latterly, metal style. Whilst thoroughly enjoying playing in Manichae, there was a lot more variety in what I wanted to do than what I was actually doing. In late 2005, after gigging fairly hard for months, we'd played a gig at the Old Angel in Nottingham which was (in my view) an absolute disaster. I nearly walked out of the band there and then. It's a story that I'll eventually tell on the page dedicated to Manichae, so I won't go into detail here, but suffice it to say that I was in need of a rest from the band. We agreed to take a month's break, and I dived into another solo album with glee. I had the equipment and software at home to experiment a little more with different ideas, mainly those that wouldn't fit the Manichae sound - any straight rock stuff could eventually have been poured into the Manichae mould.
I wrote a number of songs very quickly, and largely kept first takes - not because they were especially brilliant, but because I wanted something finished quite soon. It was these recordings that surfaced in early 2006 as Disc. I recruited my closest friend and Manichae sound engineer Brendan Rieley to help me mix the album, and there it sat. I put this out under my own name, rather than under the name Everdark for two reasons. One is that Everdark was my solo project back in the Foe days (1994-2002), which was worth drawing a line under; and another is that this was much better - a world apart, quality-wise. I wanted this to stand on its own two legs, without past works to compare to. In hindsight, I would have retaken some parts of the album, but there it stands, as a document.
Over 2007 and 2008, I worked on the follow-up to Disc, Pacific Highway. This is named after the road I lived on in Sydney, Australia, when I was seconded to another office there by the company I work for . The title track was written over there, in May 2007. The album was mostly written back in the UK, and was finally released in October 2008.
During the course of 2009, I wrote my sixth solo album, the third under the Paul Thompson name. This was Small Victories, and was released in January 2010.
In 2010 came All We Have Are the Wrong Answers, inspired by the choices available to the voter in the UK.
In August 2011, I moved to Canada, which disturbed things a little, but by November I had still managed to finished album number five under my own name, Alone in the Bitter Watches of the Night. The title was inspired by my occasional bouts of insomnia.
See also:
Paul Thompson's MySpace profile