Linda Hoyle - Maida Vale

Getting It As Right As Possible

In reviewing Linda Hoyle’s latest album The Fetch earlier today, on a first listen – I like the spontaneity and honesty of that – I know I make ‘mistakes’ in describing, mainly peripherals like mis-naming an instrument and similar, but especially when commenting on lyrics that I haven’t fully absorbed or simply misheard, or just totally misunderstood. But that’s fine because that is the honesty of it all.

This isn’t by way of admitting error and offering correction. I have, however, since writing my review found Hoyle’s website, still being constructed I think, and recommend it here. The lyrics page is interesting, and I quote in full Maida Vale below because it is complex to follow simply on a listen, and I think it is a wonderful narrative. There are commentaries on some of the lyrics, with others to follow I suspect. Check out the prose pieces too which provide snippets of detail about her past.

Maida Vale

These are things on the edge of my time
Edge of my time
Mist on the old canal
Basements in grey and dark lime

Red and blue on the slow Bakerloo
Dressed in a khaki coat
Worried, a month overdue

These are things slipping out of my range
Out of my range
Friends in a crowded flat
Some close and some now estranged

Dustman’s strikes and hard long winter nights
District and Circle Line
Ridden in Vanishing light

Smoke filled pubs and smoke filled mind
Music contracts swiftly signed

The BBC in black and white
Tobacco smoke and Dunhill light
The slow revolving two track tape
The strict red light of no escape
No escape

These are things I should try to forget
Try to forget
Chances behind a door
Kisses I can't yet regret

Indiscreet, insecure incomplete
Oddbins and flooded streets
Tangled in blue double sheets.

These are signs that might slowly derail
Slowly derail
Shepherds Bush, Stamford Brook,
Paddington and Maida Vale

Mind the gap, closely study the map
Queen of the underground
Stop me from looking far back

Psychic strife and psychic crime
The heart I lost was yours and mine

At Maida Vale announcer’s style
Their old school tie and yellow smile
So take it once, as good as live
The sound quite dead in Studio Five

Studio Five