text:
3 Ways in Which the Parking "Code of Practice" Bill is Good for the Car Park Management Industry
Wed Aug 2018
The Parking "Code of Practice" Bill, sponsored by Sir Greg Knight MP, was first presented to Parliament on Wednesday 19th July 2017 and had its second reading on Friday 2nd February 2018. The Bill is summarised as "a Bill to make provision for and in connection with a code of practice containing guidance about the operation and management of private parking facilities; and for connected purposes". Put simply, the Bill will introduce a code of practice to better regulate the management of parking on private land.
At HX Car Park Management, we welcome this new Bill and believe there are a number of ways in which it will benefit both the car park management industry and the motoring public.
1) Raising standards industry-wide
The vast majority of car park providers operate in a way that is both honest and fair. Unfortunately, however, it is a select few operators, who perhaps to not adhere to such high standards, who undermine the sector as a whole and this leads to large amounts of prejudice from the general public against our industry. A Bill enforcing standards industry-wide would help to rebuild a level of trust between car park operators and the motoring public, which would do a great deal to support the 82,000 people in the UK who work in the parking sector.
2) Providing the motoring public with a level playing field
A Bill enforcing universal standards would eradicate any confusion caused by varying codes of practice throughout the industry. A lower level of variance in the rules will ensure that motorists are clear on where they stand and what behaviours are and are not permitted when parking on private land. A Parking "Code of Practice" Bill will eliminate ambiguous terms of use, poor signage and any other causes for confusion, whilst making sure that the rights of both parties are fair, clear and unambiguous.
3) A fairer appeals system
The Bill should grant the motoring public with a right to make their case against a charge. Sir Greg Knight MP himself has stated that the Bill will put a stop to unreasonable terms, exorbitant fines, aggressive demands for payment and a generally opaque appeals process. This fairer appeals system will, once again, lead to a heightened level of trust and respect between the parking industry and the British public.
Ethical Car Park Management with HX
At HX, our practices reflect our commitment to ethical practices. This can be demonstrated, for example, by our use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras to provide a fair and non-confrontational approach to enforcement. As great advocates of a fairer and less profit-oriented approach to car park management, we welcome Sir Greg Knight MP's Bill and greatly look forward to seeing industry standards as a whole being raised to the level that we have been striving towards for many years.
Here at HX, we offer a range of car park management services to suit every piece of land. This ranges from Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), to Pay & Display and even Permit Parking. If you would like to find out about managing a car park ethically on your land, you can do so by contacting HX Car Park Management on 03330 066 316, or by filling out a contact form.


text:
New England Recovery Center
Corrections Division
Get Help Today. Call 1-877-My Rehab (1-877-697-3422)
Inpatient Detoxification
Clinical Stabilization
Medication for Substance Use Disorders
Rapid Access Treatment
MA Impaired Driving Program
Second Offender Aftercare
Partner Abuse Education
Peer Recovery Support
Inpatient & Residential
Westborough: 154-155 Oak Street
Weymouth: 861 Main Street
Framingham: 68 Franklin Street Great Barrington: 290 Park Street Haverhill: 100 Plaistow Road Leominster: 40 Spruce Street Milford: 200 East Main Street Millbury: 50 Howe Avenue North Adams: 1274 Curran Hwy Pittsfield: 390 Merrill Road
Saugus: 184 Broadway Southbridge: 176 Main Street Waltham: 210 Bear Hill Road Weymouth: 178 Winter Street Worcester 585 Lincoln Street Worcester: 475 Pleasant Street Worcester: 105 Merrick Street
Peer Recovery
New Beginnings Lawrence: 487 Essex Street The Recovery Connection Marlborough: 31 Main Street Everyday Miracles Worcester: 25 Pleasant Street
Airing Addiction
Family Meeting Series
Info for Families
What is Medication-Assisted Treatment?
Spectrum Careers
The Spectrum Way
Inpatient Detoxification Clinical Stabilization Residential Treatment
Outpatient Counseling Medication for Substance Use Disorders Rapid Access Treatment MA Impaired Driving Program Second Offender Aftercare Partner Abuse Education Anger Management
Bright Futures Detention
Spectrum Health Systems Names Kurt Isaacson as New President and CEO
Home » Spectrum Health Systems Names Kurt Isaacson as New President and CEO
Published On: April 26th, 2016
Spectrum Health Systems announced today that current Chief Operating Officer Kurt A. Isaacson has been named its new president and chief executive officer effective July 1, 2016. Isaacson will succeed retiring Spectrum President and CEO Charles "Chuck" J. Faris, who joined Spectrum in 1971 and led the organization through a period of significant evolution. Faris will move to a senior advisor role to facilitate a smooth leadership transition.
"I am honored to have been selected as Spectrum's next president and CEO and look forward to continuing to work with the talented team of professionals here," said Isaacson. "As the opiate addiction epidemic continues to impact so many lives we are committed to responding to the crisis by expanding access to treatment and providing the highest quality of care that sets individuals on the path to long-term recovery."
Since joining the organization as chief operating officer in 2013, Isaacson has spearheaded numerous growth initiatives, including the opening of six new outpatient facilities over the past two and a half years, and two new residential treatment facilities, the New England Recovery Center and the Faris Recovery Center, both in Westborough. This year Spectrum is projected to report more than $70 million in revenue, its highest to date and a $10 million increase over 2015.
"Kurt's 30 years of national healthcare experience combined with his unwavering commitment to the delivery of quality services make him the perfect choice to lead Spectrum," said David Felper, chairman of the board of Spectrum.
Prior to joining Spectrum, Isaacson served as the CEO of two psychiatric hospitals in Mississippi and Indiana, as well as the senior vice president of operations for a behavioral healthcare system in Vermont, where he planned, developed and helped implement 12 new services.
"Kurt is a remarkable leader who has been responsible for a great portion of our success over the past three years," said Faris. "I'm very happy with the board's decision, and I'm confident Kurt will ensure that Spectrum continues to be at the forefront of substance abuse and mental health treatment. I look forward to remaining actively engaged with Spectrum, its partners and its clients, and supporting Kurt in his new role."
Isaacson holds a master's degree in business administration from the University of New Haven and a bachelor's degree in health services administration from the University of Arizona.
Based in Worcester, Massachusetts, Spectrum Health Systems, Inc. is a private, not-for-profit substance abuse and mental health treatment provider. The organization currently treats 80,000 individuals each year through more than 140 programs in community-based settings and correctional institutions throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington State.
Brendan Melican, Public Relations Manager
brendan.melican@spectrumhealthsystems.org
Spectrum Health Systems Extends 29-Year Partnership with Massachusetts Department of Correction
Spectrum Health Systems, Inc., a not-for-profit organization providing a comprehensive ...
Spectrum Health Systems Continues Growth Momentum with Employee Promotions
10 Mechanic Street
Email: info@spectrumsys.org
1-877-MyRehab (1-877-697-3422)
SPECTRUM ON FACEBOOK
Privacy Statement: English| Spanish
© 2023, Spectrum Health Systems, Inc.
No one will be denied access to services due to inability to pay.
A sliding fee schedule is available upon request.
Harvard Pilgrim Transparency in Coverage Rule

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


HMS students that are entering the following grades for the 2018-2019 school year need to purchase or check out the following books from a public library to read over the summer. Students may need a copy of the book for the English class for the first few weeks of school as well. Please contact the school office if you have any questions about summer reading.


text:
The other-worldly philosophers
July 25, 2009 hevangel Leave a comment
The lefties always love trashing economy theories being the slave of the all evil capitalism. Maybe this article from the Economist, the stronghold from the right, would deliver debate ammo to the lefties, if they choose to misinterpret it for their convenience.
Jul 16th 2009 – The Economist
Although the crisis has exposed bitter divisions among economists, it could still be good for economics. Our first article looks at the turmoil among macroeconomists. Our second (see article) examines the foundations of financial economics
ROBERT LUCAS, one of the greatest macroeconomists of his generation, and his followers are "making ancient and basic analytical errors all over the place". Harvard's Robert Barro, another towering figure in the discipline, is "making truly boneheaded arguments". The past 30 years of macroeconomics training at American and British universities were a "costly waste of time".
To the uninitiated, economics has always been a dismal science. But all these attacks come from within the guild: from Brad DeLong of the University of California, Berkeley; Paul Krugman of Princeton and the New York Times; and Willem Buiter of the London School of Economics (LSE), respectively. The macroeconomic crisis of the past two years is also provoking a crisis of confidence in macroeconomics. In the last of his Lionel Robbins lectures at the LSE on June 10th, Mr Krugman feared that most macroeconomics of the past 30 years was "spectacularly useless at best, and positively harmful at worst".
These internal critics argue that economists missed the origins of the crisis; failed to appreciate its worst symptoms; and cannot now agree about the cure. In other words, economists misread the economy on the way up, misread it on the way down and now mistake the right way out.
On the way up, macroeconomists were not wholly complacent. Many of them thought the housing bubble would pop or the dollar would fall. But they did not expect the financial system to break. Even after the seizure in interbank markets in August 2007, macroeconomists misread the danger. Most were quite sanguine about the prospect of Lehman Brothers going bust in September 2008.
Nor can economists now agree on the best way to resolve the crisis. They mostly overestimated the power of routine monetary policy (ie, central-bank purchases of government bills) to restore prosperity. Some now dismiss the power of fiscal policy (ie, government sales of its securities) to do the same. Others advocate it with passionate intensity.
Among the passionate are Mr DeLong and Mr Krugman. They turn for inspiration to Depression-era texts, especially the writings of John Maynard Keynes, and forgotten mavericks, such as Hyman Minsky. In the humanities this would count as routine scholarship. But to many high-tech economists it is a bit undignified. Real scientists, after all, do not leaf through Newton's "Principia Mathematica" to solve contemporary problems in physics.
They accuse economists like Mr DeLong and Mr Krugman of falling back on antiquated Keynesian doctrines—as if nothing had been learned in the past 70 years. Messrs DeLong and Krugman, in turn, accuse economists like Mr Lucas of not falling back on Keynesian economics—as if everything had been forgotten over the past 70 years. For Mr Krugman, we are living through a "Dark Age of macroeconomics", in which the wisdom of the ancients has been lost.
What was this wisdom, and how was it forgotten? The history of macroeconomics begins in intellectual struggle. Keynes wrote the "General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money", which was published in 1936, in an "unnecessarily controversial tone", according to some readers. But it was a controversy the author had waged in his own mind. He saw the book as a "struggle of escape from habitual modes of thought" he had inherited from his classical predecessors.
That classical mode of thought held that full employment would prevail, because supply created its own demand. In a classical economy, whatever people earn is either spent or saved; and whatever is saved is invested in capital projects. Nothing is hoarded, nothing lies idle.
Keynes appreciated the classical model's elegance and consistency, virtues economists still crave. But that did not stop him demolishing it. In his scheme, investment was governed by the animal spirits of entrepreneurs, facing an imponderable future. The same uncertainty gave savers a reason to hoard their wealth in liquid assets, like money, rather than committing it to new capital projects. This liquidity-preference, as Keynes called it, governed the price of financial securities and hence the rate of interest. If animal spirits flagged or liquidity-preference surged, the pace of investment would falter, with no obvious market force to restore it. Demand would fall short of supply, leaving willing workers on the shelf. It fell to governments to revive demand, by cutting interest rates if possible or by public works if necessary.
The Keynesian task of "demand management" outlived the Depression, becoming a routine duty of governments. They were aided by economic advisers, who built working models of the economy, quantifying the key relationships. For almost three decades after the second world war these advisers seemed to know what they were doing, guided by an apparent trade-off between inflation and unemployment. But their credibility did not survive the oil-price shocks of the 1970s. These condemned Western economies to "stagflation", a baffling combination of unemployment and inflation, which the Keynesian consensus grasped poorly and failed to prevent.
The Federal Reserve, led by Paul Volcker, eventually defeated American inflation in the early 1980s, albeit at a grievous cost to employment. But victory did not restore the intellectual peace. Macroeconomists split into two camps, drawing opposite lessons from the episode.
The purists, known as "freshwater" economists because of the lakeside universities where they happened to congregate, blamed stagflation on restless central bankers trying to do too much. They started from the classical assumption that markets cleared, leaving no unsold goods or unemployed workers. Efforts by policymakers to smooth the economy's natural ups and downs did more harm than good.
Illustration by Brett Ryder
America's coastal universities housed most of the other lot, "saltwater" pragmatists. To them, the double-digit unemployment that accompanied Mr Volcker's assault on inflation was proof enough that markets could malfunction. Wages might fail to adjust, and prices might stick. This grit in the economic machine justified some meddling by policymakers.
Mr Volcker's recession bottomed out in 1982. Nothing like it was seen again until last year. In the intervening quarter-century of tranquillity, macroeconomics also recovered its composure. The opposing schools of thought converged. The freshwater economists accepted a saltier view of policymaking. Their opponents adopted a more freshwater style of modelmaking. You might call the new synthesis brackish macroeconomics.
Pinches of salt
Brackish macroeconomics flowed from universities into central banks. It underlay the doctrine of inflation-targeting embraced in New Zealand, Canada, Britain, Sweden and several emerging markets, such as Turkey. Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Fed since 2006, is a renowned contributor to brackish economics.
For about a decade before the crisis, macroeconomists once again appeared to know what they were doing. Their thinking was embodied in a new genre of working models of the economy, called "dynamic stochastic general equilibrium" (DSGE) models. These helped guide deliberations at several central banks.
Mr Buiter, who helped set interest rates at the Bank of England from 1997 to 2000, believes the latest academic theories had a profound influence there. He now thinks this influence was baleful. On his blog, Mr Buiter argues that a training in modern macroeconomics was a "severe handicap" at the onset of the financial crisis, when the central bank had to "switch gears" from preserving price stability to safeguarding financial stability.
Modern macroeconomists worried about the prices of goods and services, but neglected the prices of assets. This was partly because they had too much faith in financial markets. If asset prices reflect economic fundamentals, why not just model the fundamentals, ignoring the shadow they cast on Wall Street?
It was also because they had too little interest in the inner workings of the financial system. "Philosophically speaking," writes Perry Mehrling of Barnard College, Columbia University, economists are "materialists" for whom "bags of wheat are more important than stacks of bonds." Finance is a veil, obscuring what really matters. As a poet once said, "promises of payment/Are neither food nor raiment".
In many macroeconomic models, therefore, insolvencies cannot occur. Financial intermediaries, like banks, often don't exist. And whether firms finance themselves with equity or debt is a matter of indifference. The Bank of England's DSGE model, for example, does not even try to incorporate financial middlemen, such as banks. "The model is not, therefore, directly useful for issues where financial intermediation is of first-order importance," its designers admit. The present crisis is, unfortunately, one of those issues.
The bank's modellers go on to say that they prefer to study finance with specialised models designed for that purpose. One of the most prominent was, in fact, pioneered by Mr Bernanke, with Mark Gertler of New York University. Unfortunately, models that include such financial-market complications "can be very difficult to handle," according to Markus Brunnermeier of Princeton, who has handled more of these difficulties than most. Convenience, not conviction, often dictates the choices economists make.
Convenience, however, is addictive. Economists can become seduced by their models, fooling themselves that what the model leaves out does not matter. It is, for example, often convenient to assume that markets are "complete"—that a price exists today, for every good, at every date, in every contingency. In this world, you can always borrow as much as you want at the going rate, and you can always sell as much as you want at the going rate.
Before the crisis, many banks and shadow banks made similar assumptions. They believed they could always roll over their short-term debts or sell their mortgage-backed securities, if the need arose. The financial crisis made a mockery of both assumptions. Funds dried up, and markets thinned out. In his anatomy of the crisis Mr Brunnermeier shows how both of these constraints fed on each other, producing a "liquidity spiral".
What followed was a furious dash for cash, as investment banks sold whatever they could, commercial banks hoarded reserves and firms drew on lines of credit. Keynes would have interpreted this as an extreme outbreak of liquidity-preference, says Paul Davidson, whose biography of the master has just been republished with a new afterword. But contemporary economics had all but forgotten the term.
Fiscal fisticuffs
The mainstream macroeconomics embodied in DSGE models was a poor guide to the origins of the financial crisis, and left its followers unprepared for the symptoms. Does it offer any insight into the best means of recovery?
In the first months of the crisis, macroeconomists reposed great faith in the powers of the Fed and other central banks. In the summer of 2007, a few weeks after the August liquidity crisis began, Frederic Mishkin, a distinguished academic economist and then a governor of the Fed, gave a reassuring talk at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He presented the results of simulations from the Fed's FRB/US model. Even if house prices fell by a fifth in the next two years, the slump would knock only 0.25% off GDP, according to his benchmark model, and add only a tenth of a percentage point to the unemployment rate. The reason was that the Fed would respond "aggressively", by which he meant a cut in the federal funds rate of just one percentage point. He concluded that the central bank had the tools to contain the damage at a "manageable level".
Since his presentation, the Fed has cut its key rate by five percentage points to a mere 0-0.25%. Its conventional weapons have proved insufficient to the task. This has shaken economists' faith in monetary policy. Unfortunately, they are also horribly divided about what comes next.
Mr Krugman and others advocate a bold fiscal expansion, borrowing their logic from Keynes and his contemporary, Richard Kahn. Kahn pointed out that a dollar spent on public works might generate more than a dollar of output if the spending circulated repeatedly through the economy, stimulating resources that might otherwise have lain idle.
Today's economists disagree over the size of this multiplier. Mr Barro thinks the estimates of Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisors are absurdly large. Mr Lucas calls them "schlock economics", contrived to justify Mr Obama's projections for the budget deficit. But economists are not exactly drowning in research on this question. Mr Krugman calculates that of the 7,000 or so papers published by the National Bureau of Economic Research between 1985 and 2000, only five mentioned fiscal policy in their title or abstract.
Do these public spats damage macroeconomics? Greg Mankiw, of Harvard, recalls the angry exchanges in the 1980s between Robert Solow and Mr Lucas—both eminent economists who could not take each other seriously. This vitriol, he writes, attracted attention, much like a bar-room fist-fight. But he thinks it also dismayed younger scholars, who gave these macroeconomic disputes a wide berth.
By this account, the period of intellectual peace that followed in the 1990s should have been a golden age for macroeconomics. But the brackish consensus also seems to leave students cold. According to David Colander, who has twice surveyed the opinions of economists in the best American PhD programmes, macroeconomics is often the least popular class. "What did you learn in macro?" Mr Colander asked a group of Chicago students. "Did you do the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model?" "We learned a lot of junk like that," one replied.
The benchmark macroeconomic model, though not junk, suffers from some obvious flaws, such as the assumption of complete markets or frictionless finance. Indeed, because these flaws are obvious, economists are well aware of them. Critics like Mr Buiter are not telling them anything new. Economists can and do depart from the benchmark. That, indeed, is how they get published. Thus a growing number of cutting-edge models incorporate one or two financial frictions. And economists like Mr Brunnermeier are trying to fit their small, "blackboard" models of the crisis into a larger macroeconomic frame.
But the benchmark still matters. It formalises economists' gut instincts about where the best analytical cuts lie. It is the starting point to which the theorist returns after every ingenious excursion. Few economists really believe all its assumptions, but few would rather start anywhere else.
Unfortunately, it is these primitive models, rather than their sophisticated descendants, that often exert the most influence over the world of policy and practice. This is partly because these first principles endure long enough to find their way from academia into policymaking circles. As Keynes pointed out, the economists who most influence practical men of action are the defunct ones whose scribblings have had time to percolate from the seminar room to wider conversations.
These basic models are also influential because of their simplicity. Faced with the "blooming, buzzing confusion" of the real world, policymakers often fall back on the highest-order principles and the broadest presumptions. More specific, nuanced theories are often less versatile. They shed light on whatever they were designed to explain, but little beyond.
Would economists be better off starting from somewhere else? Some think so. They draw inspiration from neglected prophets, like Minsky, who recognised that the "real" economy was inseparable from the financial. Such prophets were neglected not for what they said, but for the way they said it. Today's economists tend to be open-minded about content, but doctrinaire about form. They are more wedded to their techniques than to their theories. They will believe something when they can model it.
Mr Colander, therefore, thinks economics requires a revolution in technique. Instead of solving models "by hand", using economists' powers of deduction, he proposes simulating economies on the computer. In this line of research, the economist specifies simple rules of thumb by which agents interact with each other, and then lets the computer go to work, grinding out repeated simulations to reveal what kind of unforeseen patterns might emerge. If he is right, then macroeconomists, like zombie banks, must write off many of their past intellectual investments before they can make progress again.
Mr Krugman, by contrast, thinks reform is more likely to come from within. Keynes, he observes, was a "consummate insider", who understood the theory he was demolishing precisely because he was once convinced by it. In the meantime, he says, macroeconomists should turn to patient empirical spadework, documenting crises past and present, in the hope that a fresh theory might later make sense of it all.
Macroeconomics began with Keynes, but the word did not appear in the journals until 1945, in an article by Jacob Marschak. He reviewed the profession's growing understanding of the business cycle, making an analogy with other sciences. Seismology, for example, makes progress through better instruments, improved theories or more frequent earthquakes. In the case of economics, Marschak concluded, "the earthquakes did most of the job."
Economists were deprived of earthquakes for a quarter of a century. The Great Moderation, as this period was called, was not conducive to great macroeconomics. Thanks to the seismic events of the past two years, the prestige of macroeconomists is low, but the potential of their subject is much greater. The furious rows that divide them are a blow to their credibility, but may prove to be a spur to creativity.
Economisteconomy
Previous PostDragon Ball EvolutionNext PostEfficiency and beyond
4 reasons for 3-D TV, 7 more for why it's a long shot
Carrier Pigeon Beats Internet
The Rise and Fall of the Quants
Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature
Take Smart Risks
The nature of wealth
History of Work Ethic
The Evil That Apple Does
Do Romantic Thoughts Reduce Women's Interest in Engineering?


text:
Features, Interviews, Music April 13, 2021 May 7, 2021
"Written in a Dark Cave, Recorded in the Sunshine": Flyte Sink & Soar on 'This Is Really Going to Hurt'
Flyte © Jan Philipzen
A breathtakingly bittersweet soundtrack to inner healing, Flyte's devastatingly vulnerable second album 'This Is Really Going To Hurt' is a majestically visceral experience. We spoke to the band about their album's emotional journey, working with producer Andrew Sarlo, and finding their voice.
'This Is Really Going to Hurt' – Flyte
I think if we've ever been thwarted in the music world, it's because we've never wanted to shout very loudly. I think we've been too busy looking inward.
Flyte's new album was inspired by loss, upheaval, and personal turmoil – and in coping with that darkness, the English band tapped a wellspring of light and sonic beauty. A breathtakingly bittersweet soundtrack to inner healing, This Is Really Going To Hurt is a majestically visceral experience full of vivid harmony, sweeping melody, and devastating vulnerability.
In sharing their scars with the world, Flyte transform an otherwise intimate affair into a universally relatable triumph of the heart and soul.
This Is Really Going To Hurt – Flyte
Tear the pages from my notebooks
Smoke me out the window
Find your new man
A matching outfit
Post a picture so I know
But go, easy tiger
This is only going to get worse
Easy tiger, you're a survivor
But this is really going to hurt
Use a stranger
To get back at me
A punishment to fit the crime
I heard his old man's
A famous actor
Does he help you with your lines?
Released April 9, 2021 via Island Records, This Is Really Going To Hurt aches in all the right ways. The follow-up to Flyte's 2017 debut album The Loved Ones (with 2019's White Roses EP tucked in the middle) sees the British four-piece turned three-piece returning to the fore with a heavy spark: They've honed those stacked vocal harmonies that earned them accolades from the start, finding new ways to build a world around their voices that keeps their music feeling fresh, whilst definitively Flyte.
"We're learning maybe for the first time ever that the vocal sound we have, it's our sound, it's the pillar in everything," Flyte's bassist Nicolas Hill says. Speaking to Atwood Magazine from the band's studio in London, Hill is reflecting on Flyte's sound next to his bandmates Will Taylor (lead singer & guitarist) and Jon Supran (drummer). "You actually don't need to do all that much more around it, and our inclination is always to do as much as possible – have as much fun as we can, and discover as many different sounds as possible, and make every part count."
Produced by Andrew Sarlo (Big Thief, Bon Iver), Justin Raisen (Angel Olsen), and mixing engineer Ali Chant (Aldous Harding), This Is Really Going To Hurt elevates Flyte's already soaring sound through a series of ten wondrous songs that chart a slow, emotionally volatile journey out of heartbreak and isolation. Inspired by the departure of Flyte's former member Sam Berridge and the dissolution of Will Taylor's eight-year relationship, This Is Really Going to Hurt was itself a therapeutic record for the band to write and record.
"It was from a very dark time," Hill notes, going on to say that by the time the band were ready to record these songs, they had already begun to see brighter, happier days. As a result, the album "starts in this very dark, sad place, and it just slowly and incrementally just pick itself up… Written in a dark cave, recorded in the sunshine."
Yet whether they're dwelling in the poignant pain of album opener "Easy Tiger" ("an ideal turbulent indulgence to soundtrack our moments of doubt and trouble") or basking in the bliss of "Mistress America" and the catharsis of "Never Get to Heaven," Flyte glow with a special sublime radiance. The band strike a particularly moving chord on the album's second track "Losing You," a raw reckoning of parting ways that taps into the immediacy of heartache with sweetly hypnotic melodies that ebb and flow like a musical tide.
"Every detail of 'Losing You' is taken directly from the week after a breakup," Will Taylor recalls. "We actually got back together and years later it ended again, but this time the roles had been reversed. It felt strangely poignant singing a song that I was initially directing at someone who'd hurt me, to then turn it around and sing it back at myself. I don't think Flyte was ready to take on this song until now. We were finally confident enough to just play the song and not add any extra production, and let the lyrics do all the talking. Andrew Sarlo wanted it to feel like the track never left the lonely bedroom. Like the band just came over, jammed out the song and that was that."
Four hauntingly bittersweet stanzas capture the beauty and pain of love:
I met a girl last night, she was only 23
I brought her home to mine she gave herself away to me
But the light in the hallway and the silence in my room
Said I don't think I'll get used to losing you
And you were wearing that red dress when you took him upstairs
The one I bought you in New York before you made this mess
You've run with another, you've cut me through and through
And still I don't think I'll get used to losing you
A riverside hotel tonight
With walls that catch the city lights
Just tell me you want me I don't care if it's true
'Cause I don't think I'll get used to losing you
Tell me where did you learn to lie so well
To love like a secret you'd never tell
You've stripped me of everything and I hate you, I really do
Still I don't think I'll get used to losing you
Flyte carry this stirring sentiment with them throughout their sophomore record, creating a plethora of musically warm and inviting safe spaces in which they and their audience may find solace, take refuge, and seek answers to questions we never wanted to ask.
Born out of darkness, This Is Really Going to Hurt really does hurt – Flyte's powerful performance all but ensures a stirring emotional response – but in due course, we each find our own way to lighter pastures.
This Is Really Going to Hurt may have come from a dark space, but it is as much an album of loss and pain as it is one of healing and recovery. For Flyte, this album release is a massive weight off their shoulders. Hill and his band mates admit they're "exhausted," but "also very excited for people to actually hear the whole thing… I just wanted people to hear the album as a piece as quickly as possible, so it's been annoying sitting on it for so long."
Flyte connected with Atwood Magazine the day before This Is Really Going to Hurt's release to talk about everything from their album's emotional journey, to working with producer Andrew Sarlo and finding their voice.
Call it therapy, recovery, or rediscovery: This Is Really Going to Hurt is a musical and spiritual awakening, and we can't wait to see where Flyte go next.
:: stream/purchase Flyte here ::
A CONVERSATION WITH FLYTE
Atwood Magazine: It's really great to meet you guys. Flyte, we are one day out from the release of your sophomore album, This Is Really Going to Hurt. How are you feeling?
Nicolas Hill: Well, I don't know, my girlfriend, Feli, she was just in here being like, "You're gonna be famous tomorrow. Tomorrow is gonna be when you become famous. " And it is one of those funny things where you go, "The time we put into this thing." It really does feel funny thinking about it, culminating in one special day, that's not really how it works, I guess we've been bragging this record since well into last year. It's only a bit of a shame we can't have a big party, see everyone who's involved, there's lots of brilliant people involved in the album, a hall to get them all in the same room, but covid and the Atlantic Ocean is stopping that from happening.
I appreciate that. This album is arriving a long four years after The Loved Ones' release. How have you grown as a band between your first and second albums?
Nicolas Hill: Well, a lot of time has elapsed, we've changed, we've lost a member, which was a huge… At first it was a huge blow, but actually it turned out to be an amazing just opportunity to change our sound, and we found it. It took a while to get used to it, but I think now we're better for it, really.
Will Taylor: And I don't see that we've changed the sound necessarily, more that we just evolved, adapted, survived. I think it's been a lot about survival for us, not in terms of the music industry or anything like that, they've actually been very kind to us this whole time, it's more just about, I think, learning to define what kinda band we are to ourselves, at the very least, especially in a time when the "band" is particularly in the zeitgeist, and hasn't been for a very long time, and I think we've always felt very upset when anyone has described as an out and out indie band. I think we've… And it's lovely to hear it described as art when you say it, because that is what we want to see it as you wanna say it as something that's an extension of ourselves, an expression of what we're feeling, and we like to take our time to express that 'cause it's a hard one to figure out. It's a hard one to figure out what you're feeling on a day-to-day basis, but in a much broader scheme, coming of age, and seeing the world change in the way it's done over the last four years. Even just the last year or two years, it's just a way of, I guess, translating all that for us, trying to make that connection between life and the music we make. And not just be a band that writes songs just for the hell of it or for the sake of it, make things with real purpose, and in order to do that, you need to take time and be very careful about each step you take.
Nicolas Hill: And have experiences, actually lived experiences. You can't write… Yeah, I don't think we could make this album unless we'd been through something besides making…
Jon Supran: I think the first album, our experience was that we were in a band, our experience was that we were four guys in a room playing together all the live-long day. I mean, we played together so much before that first album, and you can hear that when you hear that album, you hear four people who have got very, very good at making quite elaborate, very dance music, and this is such a different kettle of fish because this is the sound of three people and their lived experiences, I think the music was secondary.
That's really interesting. I'd love to dive deeper into that. Can you share a little about the story behind this album?
Nicolas Hill: Well, we started making an album straightaway after The Loved Ones with an idea of like, "Hey, we're gonna make another one straightaway." We're one of those those bands that puts in an album every year. And I think not long into that, we realized that touring really heavily was something that was stopping us from doing that. And then the next thing was Sam leaving the band, and that was another roadblock, I'd say, and actually, the White Roses EP was an artifact, in a way, of that first attempt of Second Home. And then around the time the White Roses EP had been finished, I had broken up with my ex-girlfriend of eight years, so that was a big moment. And that wasn't long after Sam leaving the band. So those were two big losses.
Nicolas Hill: I think we were getting into our late 20s, and life was becoming a lot more visceral and not all rose-tinted. Jon, you had some turbulent times, I'm not sure you wanna specify, but we just… But it was all…
Jon Supran: There were some shit times.
Nicolas Hill: It was all culminating in about the span of about one year. I think it was just a really bad year, like a shocker, as one would say. And that was precisely when the record was conceived in that time, so it was from a very dark time.
It sounds like we're talking about 2018, 2019-ish.
Nicolas Hill: Yeah, that's exactly right. And then towards the end of 2019, we were having a nicer time, I'd say. We had a good summer, touring with Jess from The Staves. She's an amazing singer, obviously, and knows exactly how to sing with other harmony singers. So that was a great time, having her join us and be a surrogate Sam. And then we did our first really long, really extensive tour of the States, and that was a real opportunity to get some distance behind us and start to feel better. We started to feel better about ourselves and have a fun time.
And by the end of 2019, I think, we decided that we wanted to make this record properly, but do it in the States, where we'd found a good time for ourselves. So by the time we got to the States in early 2020, not long before the lockdown began, we went to California, LA, stayed in this perfectly nice flat just off Sunset Boulevard, so that was surreal in itself, like some cliche band-goes-to-LA fantasy, and worked with Andrew Sarlo, who's Big Thief's producer. Really, really great producer and someone we were really hoping we could work with. Him saying yes, it was amazing. Justin Raisen, who we'd known from Angel Olsen, Yves Tumor and stuff like that. So by the time we made the record, I'd say we got over ourselves a bit and we were just having a nice time. So actually listening to the album, it's a lovely thing to hear almost in chronological order. It starts in this very dark, sad place, and it just slowly and incrementally just pick itself up… "Put it on its feet and try to stride off into the sunset by the end."
That's wonderful. It sounds like this record was made... It was written during a dark time, and then you were able to record it as you were coming out of that dark time, and now it's a relic of this era.
Nicolas Hill: Yeah, absolutely. Written in a dark cave, recorded in the sunshine.
Right, I like that a lot. It's a beautiful record. You touched on the White Roses EP – it came out in-between this time, and ''White Roses'' has become Flyte's most streamed song! To what do you attribute this success, and where do you feel that song falls in your band's history and the story?
Nicolas Hill: I think it's a lovely-sounding song, it just sounds inviting when it comes on, I think that's a big part of it. There's just a lightness of touch to that EP, which I really enjoy. I think that was us trying to… That was the first exercise in minimalism and simplicity after The Loved Ones' complexity. And then I think people really connected with the theme of losing someone. I think we said in the press release, it was a song that was almost… It was like a funeral song, and we were referencing big goodbyes like Funeral Blues, WH Auden, and even Truman in The Truman Show's closing line before he walks out the door. So something to relate to them. We had lots of people get in touch saying that that had been the song that had helped them after they'd lost someone, and funny enough, lots of people saying that they played it at their wedding at the same time, so obviously it was like… But then again, that's people not quite listening to the lyrics. Hearing a flower and putting it in. But there was obviously some kind of nice… There was a nice, broad universal quality to its sentiment that seemed to ring true to people, obviously.
I remember when I first heard that song, and then I actually dove into the words. The white roses metaphor was just so well done.
Nicolas Hill: Thank you, mate. It was written at my mom's shed.
Nice! And having The Staves join you was an excellent touch that gave it that much more color. They're a wonderful band, I loved their latest LP.
Nicolas Hill: The nice thing is as well, I ended up living with Jess, and have moved out, but now live two doors down. So you just get… We all get them in our lives all the time, and it's just nice 'cause you're just in the kitchen and you start humming something, and you instantly just have two girls behind you just harmonizing.
Listen, you're a trio, they're a trio...
Nicolas Hill: Everything's in bloody harmony.
If there were more Flyte x Staves crossovers in the future, I don't think the general public would mind. That said...
Nicolas Hill: Don't think we would mind either.
Flyte Take Off with Majestic, Dazzling 'White Roses' EP
:: INTERVIEW ::
The past three years have been marked by everything from Brexit, to the personal upheaval and turmoil you already expressed, and more. How do you feel This Is Really Going to Hurt reintroduces Flyte and captures your artistry beyond that EP and your first record?
Nicolas Hill: I think we just went inwards. Brexit, you talked about, and lots of big themes, lots of big stuff, that I think people in the UK at least have tapped into, via the political and via the national – big themes via post punk, lots of bands have – to name a few, like you've got Fontaines and IDLES and Shame. There's a long list of bands that have taken that path, whether it's very outward and they're expressing frustration and anger and literally able to articulate it by almost speaking rather than singing, and go there into that political realm.
I think we did quite the opposite, I think we just went quieter and more introspective and more inwards. I think if we've ever been thwarted in the music world, it's because we've never wanted to shout very loudly. I think we've been too busy looking inward.
What I would say is that gives your music a little bit of that timeless quality, where it doesn't matter when someone's listening to it, because they're gonna connect with these emotions no matter what's going on in the greater world, because they're more consumed with what's going on in their immediate surroundings.
Nicolas Hill: Yeah, and hopefully, most of all with this album, because it was entirely inspired by introspection. And not all that much outside influence musically, that in terms of taking, borrowing things from other people. I don't think I really listen to music much. Quite possibly, 'cause music is squandered after a relationship is over in so many ways. There is almost nothing you can listen to.
Yeah. What was your vision going into this record? We talked a little bit about the stuff that happened around it and that inspired it, but I'd love to get a sense for... Once you honed in and said, ''Okay, we're gonna do this,'' what was your hope for it, what were your goals, and did that change over the course of recording it?
Nicolas Hill: I think definitely our goals changed. I think we ended up with something far different to what we thought, what we thought we were gonna have when we set out, nut I think all records evolve like that when you're making them that. I don't know, I don't think we had a goal at the start, did we? It was like…
Jon Supran: No, I think we made the album, we thought we were gonna make to a certain extent, but one thing we did learn was that there was a chronology happening as we made it. The tracklisting was like, there was only one option really for the tracklisting. I tried so many different ways to order the album, and there was just no way it couldn't be those exact tracks in that exact order, and it makes perfect sense. But that was a nice thing to realize what we were doing.
Nicolas Hill: And as we realized what was happening, it was like old songs suddenly came more sharply into focus. Like "Losing You" is an old song, and "Never Get To Heaven" – [they] were just two songs that were on the shelf for a while, and suddenly they started making sense for this record.
Can we talk a little bit more about the tracklisting and the story this album is sharing with its audience?
Nicolas Hill: Yeah, I think it's "Easy Tiger" as the track that opens the door, and what you see behind that door is a sad, lonely person wrought with insecurity and paranoia and guilt. And the title of the album, This Is Really Going to Hurt, it gets repeated. It's pretty clear what's going on. It's a very stark image. And it's in a very small, confined space. It then moves, not that far forward with "Losing You," but at least it lets the sun shine a little bit on you, and it starts to feel a little bit more open, like maybe some friends have joined you in the room. But it's still very much this painful, With Or Without You themed, very direct, breakup song. And then as a bit of relief, you get to have that I've Got A Girl moment which is very much the band together singing about a band member leaving, rather than about the relationship. I think it's the one point in the album that the relationship isn't sung about, that's entirely about the band member who's leaving, so Zan gets his one moment there, and we get our one moment to be a band letting go a bit.
Jon Supran: Yeah, and thrash out a bit.
Nicolas Hill: Yeah and doing two guitars solos, and after having done no guitars solos ever, suddenly two. And then Under The Skin is that really big explosive, angry feeling. So I think already at this point, you're moving systematically through every shade of emotion to the post-breakup period can bring you. And then Everyone's A Winner is there to… As you're sifting through the rubble, you're getting this God's-eye view of the whole thing, and you're looking at much broader themes all of a sudden, and it's starting to feel a lot more final.
And then I think from then on, from the second half, things start to open up a lot more, there's even little touches of new things that are coming, and warning potential new relationships, not to get involved, there's a bit of foreboding happening, but also the band is getting more organic, more natural, more loose, more live. We're getting some guest players in all of a sudden, we're very much in LA at this point, and strings and trumpet solos, and we're starting to have fun with it, until you get finally to that "Mistress America" optimism, which is very much also on that tour that took us away from London, took us away from the gray feeling of England. And then there's a nice positive question mark at the end, "Where do we run to now?" and it fades away almost gloriously, in a way. And it feels like the whole story is told then, and then there's almost this little reflective epilogue at the end, that we get to heaven. So if you tried to put that in any other order, It just would ruin that flow.
I appreciate that. It's really wonderful to hear you tell the story through the songs. It's not a perspective I would've necessarily picked up right away.
Nicolas Hill: Well, you know…
I know. In the title track you sing, "Easy tiger, this is only gonna get worse. Easy tiger, you're a survivor, this is really going to hurt." Why name the album after this line?
Nicolas Hill: It just sounded perfect, really. It's funny, we did think… Is this a bit of a long sentence-y title, it'd be cool if… Titles are great when it's just one word or two words, "This is really going to…" They're all rubbish words on their own. And so for a while we were like, "Oh, then we're gonna come up with a punchier title, and that's gonna get better." But again, same with the tracklisting, there was just nothing else that could've been called, it really was the perfect way to express what… I love the feeling of there being almost like an emotional warning on the front of the album before people hear it – the emotional equivalent of parental guidance.
I love the feeling of there being almost like an emotional warning on the front of the album before people hear it – the emotional equivalent of parental guidance.
It's cool because you talked about how there is just this seeping darkness, but your music is not inherently dark, I would say ''Easy Tiger'' might be the darkest track on the record – it definitely set the tone when you released it last year, and I understand why you open the album with it.
Going a few songs in, ''I've got a girl, wait for the joke to end,
Nicolas Hill: Yeah, we were having a lot of fun with it. So we were trying to get that lyric finished altogether around a campfire in Scotland. I remember having a… There being a lot of glee about the lion "tied to the headboard between two nightstand." We kept batting that around the fire until it was like, "Yeah, that's a great line." And we uncovered, I suppose, the sentiment as we wrote the lyric, because it was just a feel, initially, and I think in the process of seeking out that lyric, we were like, "Oh, this is about Sam, this is completely… "This is our way of thinking about this moment that happened to us." And I think we'd realized that the solution to writing, certainly at that point, was just like, "If there's a story to tell, tell it, and tell it as honestly as possible." And then I think we were pretty far into the night when we recorded it, it was like 2:00 in the morning, maybe, I think we were drinking quite a lot of beer, and maybe smoked us a joint or something like that. I think we were in that kinda place, like 2:00 in the morning, very, very in a specific place, and I think it was just a really good feel that came outta that.
Jon Supran: Yeah, the lines were a bit bland, it wasn't perfect, it was a lot of groove and feel to it.
Nicolas Hill: Yeah, I love listening to Jon's drums, and Nick's base in that track, 'cause you can hear they just… Neither of you guys had a part.
Jon Supran: Plan, yeah. We never had a plan.
Nicolas Hill: No. It was just a feel. And so this is a really lovely sense of it just being an evolution throughout the track of how elaborate that you think you can push that plot to go, and all those nice little melodic notes that come through. And then we would… Actually, we start that track off in Tim Rice Oaxley's home studio, he's in a band called Keane, and he'd been a friend of Jess' in the States, and she put on to him, and he harbored us in his home studio for a bit. And so that piano was the Keane piano, the one that everything they ever did is… That sound is on that piano.
And, so I think we were really, "Well, we've gotta use this piano, it's gotta get on the record somehow." And it's this electric Yamaha, there's this big spanky sound you get out of it, and put the mic on the strings themselves, and chuck it into an amp and dirty it up, and that's a really cool aspect of the track. It's a real central column of the track, isn't it? That piano, just bashing all the way through, and that was Jon playing that.
Nice. So if I A/B this and "Somewhere Only We Know," I'll...
Nicolas Hill: It'll be uncanny.
That's awesome. You started talking about the music and the sounds, I'd love to segue to talk about just the way in which the band, as a musical entity has also evolved. If I talked about Flyte four years ago, you very much felt like a folk-influenced pop band, a lot of Beatles influence in the first record, but at the same time, very folksy, and you still carry those harmonies through. But how do you define your sound and the music you make these days?
Nicolas Hill: I don't have an answer.
Jon Supran: No, I don't really know.
Nicolas Hill: I mean, I don't know, I really don't know. I mean, the tracks sound… They don't sound the same. They're not coming from the same… Similar place, I think the Times just called us folk rock or something like that.
Jon Supran: Yeah. I prefer not to have a label.
Nicolas Hill: I mean, Folk-Rock, that just doesn't sound right at all.
Jon Supran: No. I want people to make their own minds up.
Nicolas Hill: Yeah, and indie rock is not our bag. There's no good answer, to be honest.
I always think Mumford and Sons whenever I think about folk rock, and this is not that... But we give words their meaning. Labels aside, what were you chasing making these sounds? It's a bigger production, but you stayed true to your harmony roots.
Nicolas Hill: Yeah, we're making more music now, actually, and we're learning maybe for the first time ever that the vocal sound we have, it's our sound, it's the pillar in everything. You actually don't need to do all that much more around it, and our inclination is always to do as much as possible. Have as much fun as we can, and discover as many different sounds as possible, and make every part count. It was actually when we're working with Andrew Sarlow on "Losing You," he was very adamant that we didn't add too much else to what was just there at it's core. And those were the favorite songs on the album, "Losing You" and "Never Get To Heaven," the two we produced with Andrew, because there's the least going on. "Never Get to Heaven" is just a guitar and three voices, and it sounds just as big as Under the Skin, which has got an orchestra of instruments in it.
I was really moved by your recent "live" showcase, and first of all, it was beautiful, I thought it was wonderful, I thought it was at a time when we can't get together and experience your music live, I thought it really did capture what you have become as performers over the years, and you're clearly just ready to bring this record on the road. I was really moved when you opened your set with "Mistress America" and I'd love to learn more about this song. How did it come about?
Nicolas Hill: Well, I think it gains an extra level of gravity when we do it acapella like that, the way it just adds this extra emotional layer, I suppose, and in so many ways, I wish we'd done that version for the album 'cause it's really strong hearing it like that. But that one is really about leaving behind you all the baggage, all the negative energy that you can accrue from being in the world of music. And I picture all these shitty little venues and toilet tours that the UK offers artists starting out. And I think the kinda hopelessness and the sheer impossibility of having success, and I think that song, there's a nice feeling of… And obviously, I think that extends beyond us and beyond our career, I think it's just a feeling of a little bit light at the end of the tunnel, maybe, maybe just glimmering some kind of a little bit of hope there. Feeling like… And when it was written, at the time, it was still very much, Trump was in power, Brexit was in full swing, still is. And it's just trying to, I guess, express how we were feeling when we were pushing out across these big, open roads in America, and chucking a lot of our emotional litter outta the window.
Got it. Is toilet tour a copyrighted phrase? 'Cause I absolutely love it.
Nicolas Hill: It was a well-used phrase over here, but you can have it! [laughs] I've definitely learned a new appreciation of this record just from talking to you about it.
Do you guys have any personal favorite highlights off the record? Do you all share the same favorites, or do you have different songs that you gravitate to?
Nicolas Hill: We hate them equally at this point.
Oh, wonderful, good.
Nicolas Hill: Jon, what's your favorite record?
Jon Supran: I'd probably say one of the Andrew tracks. I mean I think losing it really helped us to unlock something in the way that we play and record, and make music as a whole in general. Instead of similar… It's a symbol for moving forward, I think, to the next album, at least, that where we're making it, we've got head space in mind now. How to approach recording and songwriting and being satisfied with something that you have, and less perfectionist, I think, and trusting that what you've made is actually… Is really good…
Will Taylor: Yeah. Trusting ourselves a little bit more. Losing You, when it comes on is… It just sounds great every time. Every time it comes on any system, I'm like, "Oh yeah, wicked, that sounds fucking great."
Nicolas Hill: I remember I just… I think "Losing You" is my favorite, 'cause I remember leaving LA and being on the plane and just having just a week to listen to it, and just thinking like, "this is… " It was such a nice end of the chapter, 'cause it's the last thing we recorded. And it was the best, I think it was the best thing we recorded. It's probably the best thing we'd ever recorded, I think, that song. And I just remember being like, "That was just a nice full stop to our trip."
Jon Supran: I really like Love Is An Accident as well. I think that sounds great, that one. You can tell with the kind of musicians behind it, because I think we're looking for sonic, in a way, more than melody, 'cause you get so tired of those initial core things.
I know what you mean.
Nicolas Hill: And I really love "These Women," I like how little of a fuck it seems to give.
That's wonderful. It's sounds like working with Sarlo really unlocked something for you guys.
Nicolas Hill: Yeah, 100%. And he didn't just produce those two tracks, he mixed the whole record, and he did bring more of that to all the other tracks too, and really helped shed a bit of flab…
Jon Supran: Wait, unnecessary flab.
Nicolas Hill: A little extra flab, cut away some of the unnecessary over-dubs, and just streamlined and simplified it a bit. He was a really integral part that… Yeah, I'm working out, really. Full credit to him.
Would you work with him again in the future?
Nicolas Hill: Well, we're hoping to. The trouble is with someone like Andrew, he teaches you, you don't really need to work with anyone, 'cause it's just, you've gotta just be you.
He's the "teach a man to fish" kinda guy.
Nicolas Hill: Exactly. Yeah.
Jon Supran: Anti-production producer.
Nicolas Hill: Yeah.
That's fantastic, he's actively losing himself business.
Nicolas Hill: Yeah, yeah, precisely.
Obviously, I have tons of respect for him as a producer, but you never know how much a producer... How much of a part of producer plays in the art, right? Until you get a little bit deeper into it and figure out what their role was.
Jon Supran: Yeah, I mean I will say for Andrew, beyond what we've said about him, he is just a phenomenal engineer. And he's just got a tremendous ear. He just knows how to make something sound as phenomenal as it can sound. Just a great engineer.
Well, I'm excited that he taught three men to fish! Going back to the album one last time, you are clearly a lyrically forward band: Do you have any favorite lyrics in these songs?
Nicolas Hill: I really like the third verse in Everyone's A Winner, I think that's great 'cause I think it's an example of the least, lyric-y, least poetic version of our writing, which I quite like, the darkness of some of the lyrics on this record. I really like Easy Tiger for that same reason.
I'm pulling that up.
Nicolas Hill: The third verse is the one that goes, "Everything's forever, except the dog in the chair, and the bedroom that we share, and the friends who must choose which one of us would they wish to lose."
That's a good line. What do you hope listeners take away from This Is Really Going to Hurt, and what have you taken away from creating it and now putting it out?
Nicolas Hill: Well, a big part of me hopes the fans that we've had since we were starting out back in 2014 have grown with us… that they've grown with us and they can relate to the album the way that we related to it, as we were making it.
That's wonderful. Now that we've had all this conversation about it, I just wanna go back to my starting question, we're just a day before its release. What are you feeling?
Nicolas Hill: Exhausted… But we're very, very, also very excited for people to actually hear the whole thing, I'm not a fan of just putting out a single, and then another thing, I just wanted people to hear the album as a piece as quickly as possible, and so it's been annoying sitting on it for so long, I'm just relieved that tomorrow, people will just have that bloody thing.
Flyte © Sequoia Ziff
I know that this album wasn't supposed to wait this long, but what are your plans for moving forward from this? I know that the UK just got out of lockdown very, very recently.
Nicolas Hill: I think we'd love this time around to not wait as long between them, I think we'd like to… I think there's a lot we have to say still post finishing this album, and there's a lot we wanna get off our chest in a different way. So I think we all wanted… You were saying this Jon, it'd be nice to just make an album that wasn't necessarily less…
Jon Supran: High stakes.
Nicolas Hill: Well, making a record that was happy would be good and is warm and had a good warmth, and a vein of happiness running through it.
Or if it's a happy record, does it have to have sad melodies?
Nicolas Hill: Well this is the thing, I think that it doesn't really matter what the music does in terms of sentiment, because we've learned that from This is Really Gonna Hurt, there's loads of songs that people would be forgiven in assuming it was a happy song.
That's true.
Nicolas Hill: But you just need to hear it to realize this is fucking bleak. And maybe we could just do the reverse with the next one, but we wanna enforce imitations on ourselves even more, we actually have this cassette machine that John found, a two-track cassette machine, two-track, actual cassette recorder. And we're actually exclusively just limiting ourselves to that, and no computers.
That's incredible. Has it been a challenge?
Nicolas Hill: No, it just makes things so much easier I hate computers.
Jon Supran: Don't tell anyone else this is our secret weapon, you can't actually let anyone else know that cassettes are really good.
I mean, that's really funny. I wrote a thesis once upon a time back in school about the Beatles and how they added with Revolver, how they found a way to multitrack and multitrack. And they were in the process of building up. And you're talking about the opposite in terms of just really scaling down to bare bones.
Nicolas Hill: Well, I'd love to scale down so that we can build up again, get to that place where they were, where they were able to then be excited about making Revolver, because it's a problem when you have too much to play with.
You have the entire world of possibility, so how do you figure out what you wanna make? But that's what you do. What artists are you listening to these days that you would recommend to our readers?
Nicolas Hill: Oh god. I have to check my phone. I reckon I'm a bit… I've actually had to put a ban in the house on a Adrian Lincoln and Big Thief, and because of that, I found an alternative outlet through Sharon Venetin, but definitely, personally, I'm speaking for myself here obviously, really just hooked on those intelligent, more often than not female, American, lyricist songwriters, who have a fucking great band with them, but I've got no really great hot tip for you this instance. What are we saying? Are there any UK artists?
Jon Supran: Are there any UK artists?
Nicolas Hill: Are there any UK artists?
Jon Supran: There's loads. We'd be lying if we actually said anything that we listen to, 'cause none of us really have much new music coming in at the moment. I'm pretty happy with the old stuff.
I was talking to this one artist who hunkered down in some Airbnb in San Francisco to make his last album, and what he told me is, he doesn't listen to any music in order to make his art; he has to have nothing else coming in so that he can know it's just him – and not him trying to rip off a song he heard recently.
Nicolas Hill: And I've gotten to that point where it's not like I just wanna listen to old music, I don't like new music, or the opposite, it's never been their attitude. I just wanna hear things that are honest and unadulterated, and there's plenty of great stuff that comes out now that I've just been rubbish at remembering, but there's always great artists that come, and they are fully honest with themselves and what they're doing. And you hear someone doing something that they've naturally gravitated towards, and they've got good at it, and they've done it with their cards on the table. I just find it just difficult with so much in new music, 'cause I just see something in the way, and there's been… You just feel like there's something blocking you from who that person really is.
I think I understand what you're saying. Listen Flyte, thank you so much for your time; it's been a pleasure. Congratulations on your new album, and I hope to have you here in the States again soon enough.
Nicolas Hill: Cool that can't come soon enough.
Jon Supran: Yeah can't wait.
Nicolas Hill: You too, mate, where are you, by the way?
New York City.
Nicolas Hill: Alright, yeah, well we'll definitely be in New York.
In better, safer, healthier times, let's all grab a drink.
Nicolas Hill: That'd be bloody great.
Will, Jon, Nick, thank you so much, have a great rest of your day, or a great rest of your night, and I really appreciate it, guys, it's been a pleasure getting to know you.
Nicolas Hill: Yep, you too, mate.
Will Taylor: See you later.
Connect to Flyte on
Discover new music on Atwood Magazine
📸 © Jan Philipzen
:: Stream Flyte ::
Premiere: Love, Synths & Bikes Embrace in Scandroid's "Afterglow"
Get ready an immersive synthesized experience: Scandroid's new music video "Afterglow" is...
Premiere: The Joy and Trappings of Being "Famous" with Manatee Commune
Today's Song: Waxahatchee's "Can't Do Much" Is an Apt Blend of Reality and Dreaminess
Deciphering the Message: Makaya McCraven on Blue Note and the Art of Remixing
Breaking the Record with Roan Yellowthorn, Part 26: Being Bold
Album Premiere: The Hazy Warm Wash of Shikoswe's Debut 'Back in the Tall Grass'
Previous article"Hopeful, Vibrant, & Vivid": Caoilfhionn Rose Blossoms on Tender & Smoldering Sophomore LP 'Truly'
Next articleToday's Song: Markéta Irglová Holds Death in Her Embrace with "Among the Living"
Debut, Music, Premieres
Premiere: Love and Faith in Ruby Force's Impassioned "Diamonds"


text:
OTHER CONCERTS IN TULSA
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in Concert
Chaka Khan Event homeBuy ticketsCustomer reviews Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in ConcertCeline DionCold War KidsJon PardiGrace PotterMandolin Orange
RIVER SPIRIT CASINO
Mike Epps (Jan 24, 2020)
Eli Young Band (Feb 1, 2020)
Foreigner (Feb 13, 2020)
Styx (Feb 20, 2020)
Trevor Noah (Mar 13, 2020)
Candlebox (Mar 26, 2020)
Beach Boys (Apr 30, 2020)
River Spirit Casino Please selectVenue homeLocation and directionsPre-theatre diningOvernight accommodationSeating maps Mike Epps (Jan 24, 2020)Eli Young Band (Feb 1, 2020)Foreigner (Feb 13, 2020)Styx (Feb 20, 2020)Trevor Noah (Mar 13, 2020)Candlebox (Mar 26, 2020)Beach Boys (Apr 30, 2020)
8330 Riverside Pkwy, Tulsa, OK 74137
Going strong after 40 years!
Why See Chaka Khan?
ConcertsContemporary Pop
She's every woman!
Unstoppable even after four decades in the business, the Queen of empowering soul pop has released 22 albums and racked up ten #1 Billboard songs, seven RIAA certified gold singles and ten RIAA certified gold and platinum albums.
Since bursting onto the scene in 1978 with the immortal disco anthem "I'm Every Woman, Chaka as she is known the world over has broken record after record. "I Feel For You," is arguably her most famous song, originally written and first performed by Prince. This chart-topping Grammy-winner also made music history when released in 1984, as the first R&B song to feature a rap.
These days when not touring or recording, Chaka is heavily involved in social activism for autism and the protection of women and children under her Chaka Khan Foundation which she founded in 1999. She's also a savvy entrepreneur, having produced her own line of linen, perfume and "Chakalates" collection for the sweet toothed!
Performance date: 30 January 2020
8 reviews, average rating: (3.9 Stars)
P.R. Williams: "Chaka Up Close"
Show got started 20mins late. Strong fast and exciting once on stage.... more
Angie: "Chaka Khan"
All I can say is WOW. She was incredible we came for a show and we got... more
Sound good to you? Share this page on social media and let your friends know about Chaka Khan at River Spirit Casino.
Please note: The term River Spirit Casino and/or Chaka Khan as well as all associated graphics, logos, and/or other trademarks, tradenames or copyrights are the property of the River Spirit Casino and/or Chaka Khan and are used herein for factual descriptive purposes only. We are in no way associated with or authorized by the River Spirit Casino and/or Chaka Khan and neither that entity nor any of its affiliates have licensed or endorsed us to sell tickets, goods and or services in conjunction with their events.


I'll always say, "2016 sucked, but at least it was the year I got married!" (On September 11th, of all days.) Yes, we chose to make an honest man/woman out of one another on one of the most cursed days during one of the most cursed years. Good thing we aren't superstitious people!
Actually, I have always been a bit superstitious about weddings. I can very easily trace this superstition back to the day my older sister Jenny got married, when I was 14. Not only did I pass out in front of the whole crowd right during the vows, but Jenny's appendix sent her into surgery the very next morning. Something about weddings seems to make long-term health problems and tears of all flavors (joy, stress and anger about napkin rings) bubble to the surface.
For this reason, the idea of a wedding has always made me sweat a little. Not marriage, just the wedding. A part of me sincerely hoped that I would get my appendix removed before the idea ever crept up in my life.
Things did not work out quite in that order. Appendix still intact, Neil and I got to a point where calling one another "my boyfriend" or "my girlfriend" just didn't sound right anymore. We were more than that to one another, and it was time to make that official with the state. We skipped engagement, for the most part, and just decided to start planning a wedding.
We knew we wanted to get married in our backyard with close family, but we also wanted to have a party with friends. We fell in love with Bauhaus Brewery as a venue for that, and the only day they had available in our time frame was Sunday, September 11th. After we realized that planning a September wedding in March leaves you with close to zero options, we took them up on it.
We were trying to sort out some details on our own before announcing our plans, just so we could have our ducks in a row before we got relatives too excited. Then, my parents fished it out of me by asking for nine months' warning before I got married so they could join Weight Watchers.
"Start now," I said. They rejoiced.
Grandma Lil's diamond. Grandma Pat's necklace.
By some miracle, my mom found her late mother's long-lost wedding ring the day before we went in to order my wedding ring. That meant I got to use her diamond. My Grandma Lil was incredibly funny, cool and generous and this was a special way to feel like she was present at the wedding. That was exciting, and then I found a dress I loved, too.
As the day got closer, I began to feel struck by an intense gratitude for all the things friends and family do for you as you prepare to get married. People were baking, planning showers, drawing beautiful chalk signs, and ordering me lovely flowers so I wouldn't have to think about it. I even got a funky, handmade paper banner that said, "Future Mrs." backward ("SRM ERUTUF," which is more my speed anyway). I was really enjoying everything, and feeling closer to my friends and family as a result. Maybe, I thought, my wedding could just be a fun, simple day — no stress, no drama.
Well, I was not quite that lucky.
My wedding week was one of the craziest weeks of my life. On Monday, Neil's parents came over to help us plant flowers, and my friend Jen also came over to make sure I fit in my dress. (Before that week, my big drama was not quite fitting in my dress!) Right as I got the dress on, I got a text from my mom saying my dad had experienced signs of a heart attack and had been rushed to the hospital.
My dad, a fan of granola bars and biking, who I have seen drink a handful of beers ever, having signs of a heart attack? Now that's crazy. I looked at myself in my wedding dress and felt absurd. It was nice to have Jen there in that moment, as she is a strong and kind warrior who has been through a lot, and always knows just what to say. Neil's parents told me to leave the gardening to them and go see my dad.
I got really familiar with the valet service at St. Joe's hospital that week. When I showed up, I wasn't sure what to expect, but my dad was laying in a hospital bed looking cheerful and happy, a bit bashful that he'd made everyone come all this way for what he was sure was nothing. After waiting with him for awhile, Neil and I finally left. We went to Buffalo Wild Wings, because we like to eat chicken fingers and do dumb trivia when we're feeling blue.
The next day was my birthday. 29! At this point, it was only 5 days till our wedding. We expected dad to get out of the hospital with possibly a couple stints in his heart. Instead I got a call from my mom saying they'd gotten bad news. He had a major blockage in his heart and would need open heart surgery the next day. He may not make it out in time for the wedding.
I rushed over to the hospital once again, canceling our reservation for dinner that night at 112 Eatery. I don't think food tastes very good when you're insanely anxious about your dad's open-heart surgery. That night I went to bed as early as I could since I had to get up at 5 a.m. to head back to St. Joe's.
The day of his surgery, I felt a little better. I tried to tie up a huge freelance project in the waiting room. Now that's a hard task.
At this point, my dad's mom, aka my Grandma Pat, was being rushed into the E.R. and back home on what seemed like a daily basis. We weren't sure what was going on with her, other than that her Alzheimer's was getting worse. We were a little worried about focusing on this in front of my dad, as we didn't want any bad news to get his heart racing. My uncle Terry and aunt SueAnn were able to take care of my grandma that week, which was a huge relief. They came to the hospital to be with us while we waited for the surgery to be over.
Luckily, my best friend since 7th grade, Angela, works in the heart unit at St. Joe's and came down to hang out with me. She slipped behind the scenes at one point to see if there was any news about how dad was doing. She came back gleeful, saying the word was that the surgery was over and he was doing great. At this point I got a major adrenaline high. He'd had a triple bypass, and he was going to pull through!
We weren't yet totally in the clear though, as Neil's family was having their own medical emergency that week. Neil's aunt Bonnie, who I had quickly come to adore, needed to have surgery on a brain aneurism the next day. This was yet another scary battle for Bonnie, who has been fighting multiple myeloma, aka blood cancer, all of this year. The next morning, I waited anxiously for news as to how her surgery went, and received good word around 2 p.m. Was it time to exhale?
Neil and I went out for my birthday dinner that night, and cheersed to two successful surgeries. 112 Eatery is so good y'all. You have to get the nori encrusted sirloin with ponzu, oh and the butterscotch budino. I was so glad we waited to have that fancy dinner until the surgeries were over.
The next morning, it occurred to me that I needed to scoot on getting ready for my wedding. I also got a manicure and pedicure with my mom, sister and my sister's daughter, Kaylee. The man doing my nails had just had heart surgery of his own, and was telling me about how it feels to be two months out from the procedure.
Dad was getting stronger every day, but he was a bit down from the shock of everything. Angela hung out with me at the hospital several times when I went to visit him, and told me that many people don't even remember their time in the hospital after a surgery. Maybe because of the drugs, or maybe because of the trauma.
Saturday was our small rehearsal dinner at Neil's parents' house. They recently moved into a beautiful place in Prior Lake on top of a hill, with a killer nightly show from the sunset. We ordered catering from Revival because it has the best fried chicken ever, and for me there's no romance w/o chicken.
Lining up for some drummies.
That night ended up being really hard for my sisters and I, as we weren't sure whether or not dad would get out of the hospital for the wedding. We FaceTimed with him and there were lots of tears.
Neil and I smeared some cake on one another, as his mom Darcy surprised us with a cake. I wish I could go back in time and enjoy that night more. Neil's parents and family really put on a lovely party for us.
The next morning I woke up early, ready to let my favorite hairstylist in to get started on hair. Before she came over, I got the bad news that my Grandma Pat had passed away in the middle of the night. I felt a lot of remorse that I hadn't had more time to visit with her in that final month, and that I had missed her birthday party that weekend. I'd had no idea at the time that she was in such bad health. Grandma has always been a super strong, healthy and sturdy person, living to the ripe age of 90. I was so sad that she hadn't been able to make it to my wedding, as it would have been wonderful to be with her that day.
Almost no one was over when the hairstylist showed up, ready to get started on hair. I had to explain that it had been a highly unusual week in our family.
My niece and nephew were pretty skeptical that I was going to pull off a bridal look at this point.
I did get some good news though. Dad was getting released from the hospital and would make it to the wedding!
Does this man look like he just got out of surgery??
Neil and I decided we could both invite one or two friends to our backyard wedding. When they started coming over and drinking mimosas, it started to feel more like a wedding.
I feel compelled to point out that Kaylee is just miming a toast. We did NOT give a child Fireball.
We took Fireball shots and Angela wrestled some fake eyelashes onto my eyes. My mom and sisters joined to help me get ready.
A great ring "barrier" indeed!
He was our ring bearer, which he had misinterpreted as "ring barrier." He was sure his job was to guard the rings with karate and punch any robbers that interrupted our wedding. I gave him the rings tied to the pillow and he asked me which one I was going to pick: the black one or the gold one with the diamond. "The gold one," I said. He later came back to confirm which rings we had each picked.
We lined up to get ready, and then Neil walked in to pee. I hid behind my parents and told him not to look at me yet. Levi overheard this and ran out into the yard where everyone was waiting, shouting, "NO ONE LOOK AT AUNT BECKY! It's a surprise how pretty she is!" That of course made me cry with laughter, right as the ceremony started.
Kaylee, our flower girl, began to walk, using the careful pace she had so diligently practiced. Levi followed behind in a rush, shouting, "Hurry up Kaylee! Hurry up!" Again I was losing it.
She was actually walking at a perfect pace.
Our actual wedding was a breeze compared to the emotional ups and downs of that week. I was fully prepared to have as much fun as possible. Our family deserved it at that point! I barely cried, got my vows out ok, and our officiant James Diers gave a beautiful speech he wrote just for us. Then we had a champagne toast and rearranged ourselves into groups for pictures.
Our dog Josie actually peed on the spot where we got married right before the wedding.
Josie laid under this table most of the day, feeling very submissive because of her "I DO TOO" scarf. That was fine.
Our photographer, Nicole of Nylon Saddle, gave us a couple hours just to take photos alone, which was lovely. We went to the Guardians of Health water tower by our house and took some, and then went to her studio in Northeast and took some more.
The look on my face is pure relief.
Our reception was lovely, and featured food from one of my favorite restaurants, Hola Arepa. We even got extras to take home!
My dad went home to rest up, and my mom was a true champion, greeting everyone warmly. That was quite the week for her, and I'm still amazed at how strong she was.
Mom kept the party alive all week.
Neil's music fraternity brothers did their little serenade for me, which I thought would be mortifying but it was actually quite sweet. The best part was that Jay Gabler joined in, pretending to sing along, which cracked me up. The night went by fast, and turned into a little dance party at the end, featuring All Tomorrow's Petty. More James Diers, what up!
After the wedding, we stayed at the W Hotel downtown, which sent us a complimentary bottle of champagne. We stayed up late laughing, eating room service, toasting and even opening a few cards. It was a truly magical ending to a great wedding and a tumultuous week.
Your wedding day is exhausting. You will need a bowl of chicken tenders at 2 a.m.
It had been hard, but it ended up being very special. Most importantly, I beat my sister by having a more dramatic wedding than hers. Just kidding.
Our wedding week was really hard on our family, and I wish in some ways that I could go back to that day and be more present. I bet everyone thinks that about their wedding day though. Looking at things positively, my dad is now on the mend, and so is his brother, who soon after had his own bypass surgery. I hope my Grandma Pat was watching from her own special perch, with the rest of my grandparents.
People always ask what I think of getting married. Overall, I found the experience to be one full of gratitude. So many people went out of their way to do really nice things for us. When I put on the ring, I felt like the act of getting married wasn't just between Neil and I, but something that connected us to our whole families in a great way. I know that's cliche, but it's true.
Being married doesn't feel terribly different than not being married, as we had already been together for five years and lived together for three. But I had a blast through the whole process, and we got to enjoy a lot of thoughtful presents and a killer honeymoon in Japan.
Whenever I look at my wedding ring, I think of that scene in The Simpsons when Marge says only two people in club Simpson have "special rings," and Bart & Lisa get all excited and blow their whistle rings.
If you're thinking about getting married, that's my take on it.
Make sure everyone gets a health checkup at least a month beforehand. Oh, and when you're standing up there, DO NOT LOCK YOUR KNEES!
What a wonderfully written synopsis of all that you and Neil and your families went through the week of your wedding. I'm so happy that your father's surgery was a success and that he was strong enough to be there to walk you down those steps. Perhaps all of those bike rides and granola bars influenced his recovery? I wish you and Neil every happiness in your marriage!
I remember praying and praying for your father and family. When Jen told me what was happening, I was stunned and thought you guys needed night and day prayers. I am so happy to read how everything turned out. Praise God. Continued blessings on all of your many family members and great work in this world. Let's have a "Mom and Daughters" date again sometime soon.