Equus: The Giant Mums - I Wove Myself In (8 January 1993)

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This track from The Giant Mums debut EP, Eyedropper, should have turned up here a couple of weeks ago when I reached it while working through the notes of selections made from this 8/1/93 show.  Its absence is even more inexplicable when you consider that my notes say This may be worth requesting, which I would have to do from my benefactor, Webbie, who has come up trumps for me with uploads any time a track heard on a Peel show has not been available on YouTube. Webbie's generosity and support has been invaluable to this blog. They have provided two requested uploads for 1993 already. I can count on their support totally, but I only go to them when it’s a track I really, really want to include because I don’t want to be a nuisance or have them feel I’m taking them for granted. I also like the random element of not being able to include tracks if circumstances dictate it. Generally, I only ask for tracks if it’s an earworm that stayed with me from the moment I heard it.  Sometimes, there can be a gap of two years between hearing a track on an audio file and blogging about it, but if I can still sing or hum it to you having maybe only heard it once before, I will ask for it.  But despite what my notes said, I couldn’t remember a blessed thing about I Wove Myself In.  It wasn’t like the choruses and playout of Sweet Revenge by ColourNoise, the atmosphere and grandeur of She Ran Away From the World by Big Red Ball or the gloriously cheap, homespun charm of guitar and tambourine led No Hippy by Bello, all of which told me from the moment that I heard them that I would need to ask Webbie to make sharing these possible for me to enjoy and by definition, put them out there for everyone else to enjoy as well.  It made me happy and hopefully made others happy too to expose these unseen, unheard gems after nearly 30 years.  

But with I Wove Myself In, all I drew was a brick wall blank, no recollection whatsoever.  And no one else had uploaded it, so it clearly didn’t deserve to be heard despite what I had written in my notes 

sometime in 2020.  In a fit of fatigue and with other tracks from 8/1/93 waiting to be blogged about, I pushed on and was all set to ignore it until I realised that as I was poised to write a  Notes post and then move on to another Peel show and other records, I owed it to myself, to you and to The Giant Mums to go back and listen to the track to see whether I should ask Webbie for it.

I can’t pretend that the memories came piling back to me as I listened to it play on the recording of the show, but I was initially taken by the muscular, angular riffs that came in at the end of each verse. However, it was the last 2 minutes, from around 1:56 onwards that told me that, yes, this would have gone on the metaphorical mixtape and although I don’t rate it as essential as some of the tracks I’ve previously asked for, it was worth asking Webbie whether they could help.  Typically, the upload was made within an hour or so of my asking. I run out of superlatives to describe Webbie but I mean every one of them.

Despite the loudness and attack of the music, I Wove Myself In is, like Headacher by The Bear Quartet from the same show, quite a sweet song.  It holds great resonance for me given that the emotions it describes seem to chime perfectly with those of someone looking to enter into a relationship, which I had spent most of the previous year aching to do, though I looked for a calmer take on things as 1993 dawned. It’s a love song of great directness and awareness of the emotional disturbance which falling for someone can cause, though the lyrics also point towards singer, Dave Roby having to process the feelings that someone else appears to have towards them and being unsure how to react to this.  But what makes the track are those final 2 minutes with guitar work which spends a minute or so suggesting quiet reflection on whether to commit to the relationship. There is in those almost arpeggio like figures that run through the third minute of the track, a feeling of inner contemplation and talking through the night to gain a better understanding of each other. The music suggests two hearts moving closer to each other, losing one another in the pools of each other eyes. And then at the 3:00 minute mark, the pace picks up again with the feel of Roby and his prospective partner falling into each other’s arms and kissing passionately at the moments where the band come in together and languorously in those guitar windmill like interludes that punctuate the last 30 seconds of the track. Although, it appears to end emphatically, those tinkly chiming sounds which carry on under Peel’s voice at the end of the track seem to suggest the start of the stopwatch which commences anytime two lovers come together. Will they last forever or are the sands already starting to run towards their inevitable break-up?  I Wove Myself In manages to project all of this in a little over 3 and a half minutes. Maybe it was more essential than I gave it credit for.

Video courtesy of Webbie from the 8/1/93 show.