Earlier this year, Charlie Dore released ‘Like Animals’ Which Mike Davies reviewed on Folk Radio UK praising it as “Arguably her finest work to date.” We now have the pleasure of sharing the video (made by Vince Iddon of Moth Wing Music) for the opening track ‘Collateral’. Collateral is also our Song of the Day.
Charlie Dore on Making Collateral, the video
I’d often wondered what drives certain people towards a career in politics, where the smartest and most decent are often trampled by the venal, blissfully unencumbered by empathy. Populist figures, often voted into power by the very people they disdain and would walk over in order to succeed. I wondered what made these people tick and how they could command such power and loyalty. Why were they so attractive?Then last summer I did some reading about psychopaths, chatted with a psychologist friend and it started to fall into place. That was when I first started writing Collateral.
The song was a comment on a lust for power and certainly in this country, its ultimate misuse. Although at the time I was thinking of one person in particular, actually there are several candidates who many of us could now cast as the lead player. Julian Littman and I fleshed out the song over the autumn and it’s actually the only song we’ve sung in front of a live audience during what was to be our last ‘normal’ gig of 2020, at Wessex Acoustic back in February. I actually remembered all the words (there are loads) and it seemed to hit the spot nicely with the audience.
That same month Gareth Huw Davies (double bass) and Jessie May Smart (violin) played some genuinely inspired sessions, which at the time they didn’t know they’d be asked to replicate on film – shot at home during lockdown. My hard-working agent/PR Katie Whitehouse had introduced me to Vince Iddon and he’d made a beautiful and inventive trailer for the Like Animals album, so he was a natural choice for visualising this song. Although at its core Collateral has a political point of view I wanted that to be delivered with subtlety so the audience could work out the references for themselves.
We started the process with Julian, Gareth, Jessie and me filming ourselves solo and then the process of layering images and washes began. The initial brief was both simple and complicated – I wanted to show the players as a band playing in settings of decay and destruction. A kind of dystopic vision of life after the powerful and greedy had skimmed off the takings. At one point I even looked for photos of the Titanic but there were none of the bandstand. So Vince had to trawl the archives and also create from scratch beguiling and unsettling images that illustrated the lyric, yet with a light touch. He delivered all that.
I love the end result. Vince was a delight to work with and with his role as video-maker expanded to part clairvoyant, part alchemist he was a great collaborator.
Charlie Dore, September 2020
The Like Animals album tour is being postponed to 2021, however the trio – Charlie with Julian Littman and Gareth Huw Davies – will be previewing the album at Beardy Folk Festival on Sunday 20th September.
BUY the CD:
Video by https://www.mothwingmusic.co.uk