Thank You For Last Time by Project Blackbird

"Thank You For Last Time," Project Blackbird’s new single, sees the band’s shapeshifting sound subtly moving in a dub-flavored direction. Echoing elements of spy-fi movie soundtracks, the band creates swirling grooves beneath a blanket of vocals that recall ‘60s French pop.

“It was just two words in my head: time, fiction. That was the jumping off point,” notes vocalist Ming Nagel. “I went back to Iceland a few years ago (after first going there in the '90s), and culled some of the lines in the verses and the spoken word part from a poem I wrote during that second visit. There’s a phrase in Icelandic that basically translates to ‘thank you for last time.’ It’s what Icelanders say when they bump into old friends. On the surface, the song is a love letter to Iceland; it’s an incredibly mysterious and inspiring place. On a deeper level, it’s about the elasticity of time and the process of grappling with getting older and meeting your past selves.”

As the song unfolds like a slightly funkified casual Sunday drive, a dreamscape travelogue emerges, adding an air of mystery that hints at multiple layers of meaning beneath the surface. It’s otherworldly and earthbound all at once, defying time and creating new musical fiction.
(Night Train PR)

Lyrics:

to everything that I adore
in this isolated world:
fates and furies, nights unfurled

time – fiction – time – fiction

mounds of graymoss in the fields
reptiles swelling to reveal
cracks of their tectonic scales

time – fiction – time – fiction

outer space must pale in comparison to this
other-worldly landscape of darkening bliss

I head to sands that are still belted by a sash of volcanic boulders
it’s strange to be back again - 20 years on and feeling much older
like looking in a mirror through a hazy lens, backwards over your shoulder
later we search for the cottage, on the coastline where I stayed

waters rich in alkaline
write a somnolent slow sweep
dreams tilt on the edge of sleep

time – fiction – time – fiction

each departure is a loss
each farewell is something gained
time stealing itself from time

time – fiction – time – fiction

outer space must pale in comparison to this
other-worldly landscape of darkening bliss

here it stands – Bakkasel, my age
I know that both our stories have changed
I walk past expanses of green and unused foundations
everything is dying or in a state of gestation
the corrugated slopes bleed into the sky like an impressionist painting

Credits:
Music: Varley / Read / Project Blackbird
Lyrics: Nagel

ALAN ROBERTS – electric guitar / EDDIE DUBLIN – drums / JAMIE VARLEY – bass guitar / JON READ – keyboards, trumpet / MING NAGEL – vocals

Recorded at Zephyr Studios (Leicester, UK) and Four Winds (Burrough on the Hill, UK).
Engineered by Dave Tidmarsh and Jon Read.
Produced and mixed by Dave Tidmarsh, Jon Read, and Project Blackbird.
Mastered by Michael Fossenkemper at TurtleTone Studio (New York, NY, USA).

This is the first single from Project Blackbird's forthcoming (2024) album, True Names.