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Second Nature

Dominic Miller

Label: Q-Rious Music
Released: 2004
Views: 209

Tracks

Introduction; Truco; When I Close My Eyes; Foi Boa; If; Unify; Rest in Peace; Lullaby to an Anxious Child; A Cause; Quiero Decirte; In a Whisper; The Last Song.

Personnel

Album Description

'Second Nature' is not like 'First Touch'. I didn't want to make it the same, because that's just not what I do. Obviously a lot of people wanted me to do the same kind of record, instrumentalists. 'First Touch' was what it said it was; it was a first instalment and formed the prelude to 'Second Nature' in a way. I wanted to use more sounds and textures - I used Manu Katché on drums and he contributed a lot to to the record: not just his drumming but his musicianship. I used Pino Palladino on bass, Adam Glasser on harmonica and I used flute on one track - just different textures. The music is coming from the same place; same writer, same guitarist, but it's probably a bit deeper. I certainly did a bit more with Brazilian styles. I started making the album during the world cup and do obviously I was quite influenced by football, the weather and Brazil! The winter came and the influences changed again... The melodies to all the tunes that I write are always vocal. As you can hear on 'First Touch' and again on 'Second Nature', I'll play two guitar parts; I'll do something like the melody on the left and the harmony on the right. At solo gigs I try to do a combination of the two. There are some solo tracks, but not many. But the melodies are usually in my head - they are 'sung' and so they have 'breath'. Every so... often I toy with the idea of singing, but I think that would be the end of my career! 'Truco' is the name of a card game in Argentina. It's quite aggressive card game - there's plenty of screaming and shouting. It's a cross between poker and bridge. I was in Buenos Aires and I had my Walkman and was sitting in this bar. People are so noisy in Buenos Aires, there's a lot of screaming, shouting and yelling. Some people were sitting next to me playing this card game and I remember recording the ambient noise of waiters and clanging and general noise for a whole cassette's worth. It inspired me to write this tune which is frenetic - a fast riff with Pino playing some awesome be-bop. I asked him if he could play the bass part again an octave higher and he had absolutely no problem with it! So when you hear the track, it's not an octivider, it's two basses. I also detuned the guitar; the bass E string went down to D and D string went down to C and I use that sort of harmonic tapping thing. Then the drum machine comes in with a sort of drum'n'bass riff. That was fun to do. 'Quiero Decirte' means 'I want to tell you' and it's totally Brazilian. It was written during the World Cup and it's a typical bossa nova sort of thing. I had the idea of there being narrative in it because I've always liked the way Barry White used to do all those things that went 'Hey baby, I want to...' and so I got this friend of mine [Diego Kovadloff] to write me this dodgy Spanish poetry and put that over the top. I'll probably regret it for the rest of my life! I just wanted to do a Barry White in Spanish. 'In A Whisper' was recorded live with Manu and Pino. I used a steel string guitar for that one. It's the last track on the album, officially; but the 'real' last track is an Elton John song called 'The Last Song' taken from his 'The One' album. I always liked that song. I'm not a huge Elton John fan, but I thought it would be wacky first of all to do a cover. I've always wanted to do a cover and it just happens to be an Elton John song which I really, really, like and so I've put that on the end. I pretty much copied the melody note for note and it really works well on guitar. REVIEW: As part of Sting's band, guitarist Dominic Miller sometimes gets overlooked. Even though the 40-year-old has the looks of a lean, shaggy-haired, Strat-toting youngster, he seems to get a little taken for granted in his role as guitar factotum. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the recent string of Sting gigs at the Albert Hall in which he was also accompanied by such jazz luminaries as keyboardist Jason Rebello and trumpeter Chris Botti. Now Miller's second solo album has arrived and it's time for him to take the spotlight. 'Second Nature' shows a very different side of this versatile Buenos Aires-born musician. Although Miller may have spent years playing rock'n'roll as a session player, his own music owes a huge debt to his Brazilian heroes Antonio Carlos Jobim and Baden Powell, and as a result the 12 songs here sing of South America - ringing, lyrical numbers plucked and strummed by a guitarist who remains true to his roots. The Times REVIEW: The scarily tasteful sideperson with, among others, Peter Gabriel, Sheryl Crow, The Pretenders and Sting, Dominic Miller gets a chance here to stretch out rather more than the bosses normally allow. Instrumental albums by accompanists invariably lack focus, but Miller's association with great songwriters has taught him that melody is king. As the band purrs jazzily behind him, he supplies plentiful hooks on top, particularly on 'Unify' and 'Foi Boa', the album's definingly delicate moment. A good phone book (need a bassist? here's Pino Palladino) means that Miller's undoubted dexterity is placed in a proper musical context and on this evidence he's unlikely ever to be out of work for long. Q Magazine by Rob Beattie

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