“I was the surprise,” says April Smith, the bonus baby her parents won late and whose moxie and dash astounded everyone she met. Today, she remains a welcome bolt: a loose-lipped, cocked-hip gal whose music and mien could buoy the Titanic.
The girl from Toms River, New Jersey, swears she cultivated her magnetic personality in order to impress her much older and “insanely talented” siblings. Watching her brother play with his band, and her sister paint murals on her closet doors, young April wondered, “How do I sneak into their world?”
Actually, “sneak” isn’t quite the word. April crashed her older siblings’ practice sessions, living room talent shows and parties. “I’d put on a show anywhere,” she recalls. At the “big, bad” shindigs her sister threw when their parents were away, our plucky heroine hopped on the dining room table to sing selections from her Cabbage Patch Kids tape. When her siblings held extemporaneous living room talent shows, she begged entry. Absent any raid-able events, she would belt out at the DMV or the supermarket.
As she took her place in the family, April developed a muscular, mellifluous voice and high-flying showmanship. Her mom adored Queen (”If you didn’t know a Brian May solo in the first few notes, you weren’t her child”) and her dad gave her his old 8-track tape player, letting her buy Elvis and Led Zeppelin tapes at yard sales. During summer vacations with Aunt Cricket and Uncle Fred, April discovered songwriters like Tom Waits and Kinky Friedman, stealing Fred’s cassettes and absorbing observational story-songs in a backyard tent. Waits so impressed April that she felt compelled to dress up - using Fred’s hat, pipe and Junior Mints (she placed them on her teeth) each time she played his music.
Looking back, April figures that’s how her younger self interpreted Waits’ fearlessness. “He’s not trying to be anyone else,” she says. “I really respect that. If you’re always honest in your art, you can’t fail.” She’d learn to blend this artistic nerve with her innate goofiness and the childlike naivete that led her to conclude that if John Lennon was in heaven, “he must be God”; and that the guy on Uncle Vinnie’s glittery postcard wasn’t Jesus Christ, but Robert Plant. Failing to “differentiate between religious Gods and musical Gods” felt right to April. Music was omnipresent in her life, and certainly uplifting. She worshiped it.
When she began to write songs, she incorporated elements musical and otherwise, some contradictory in theme or vibe - to anyone but April. Because she’d been so diversely inspired, it was a cinch to stitch together Queen’s majesty, big band’s sunny optimism, the terror and despair of horror flicks and Edgar Allan Poe writings, and the cottonmouthed wit and poignancy of Wes Anderson films. From this influential primordial stew came April’s new album Songs for a Sinking Ship.
The album’s sound was informed by the ’30s and ’40s, juke joints and cabaret, the Andrews Sisters and, of course, Waits. Smith covers a wide range as a singer and songwriter, from the heartbroken ballad “Beloved” to the cheeky tell-off “Stop Wondering” and the sexy swagger of “Wow and Flutter.” Her voice swoons and seduces, and then escalates to breathtaking peaks, backed by piano, upright bass, drums, guitar, horns, ukulele, accordion and even, when the occasion warrants, a suitcase used as a bass drum.
It’s the music of a precocious child that never lost her curiosity and verve, and of a beguiling woman who clutches music to her chest and embraces new twists to her character. She bounds between happy, anxious, sassy, seductive, melancholy, and murderous - sometimes in the same song. “I’m a little sarcastic and sometimes I’m a little bit creepy,” she says. She’s also silly and whip-smart, with a strangely sage outlook. “I judge people by how long they’d survive in a slasher movie. If I think they’d make it to the last ten minutes, they’re alright!” She knows it’s “kinda weird,” but “it all comes out just the way I want it to in my music.”
Her songs and her playful, confident performances - in which she’ll wear a tutu and impishly tease her band, The Great Picture Show - now win her fans everywhere. In 2008, she opened a national tour for singer-songwriter J.D. Souther (the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt). This summer, Rolling Stone branded April and the GPS one of “30 Bands to Watch” at Lollapalooza, while Showtime’s Californication featured “Terrible Things” in its season three promo and BBC 6 played “Colors” on Introducing: Fresh On the Net. She also appeared on the syndicated TV show Fearless Music and did sessions with WRXP-FM’s Matt Pinfield and WFUV-FM’s Rita Houston. It’s a helluva start for an unsigned artist who was, at the time, without a current release.
Songs for a Sinking Ship, incidentally, boasts fan funding through Kickstarter.com, an invitation-only website that helps musicians, artists, authors and other creators keep their work independent. By offering gifts of anything from homemade cookies to personalized songs and house concerts, April exceeded her $10,000 goal by a fat third, raising over $13,000. “It’s really nice to know that your fans care enough to help you reach your goal, but go further than that to help you make the record you want to make,” she says.
It’s because April offers them something that, ironically, is no surprise at all. In her music and her day-to-day, April is the same stunner onstage as off. No bells, no whistles. Just the tutu, and the very real menagerie in her soul. “If you want people to believe in what you do, you have to show them that you love what you’re doing.” What’s more, you gotta serve it straight-up, like her childhood sensei Tom Waits and recent inamoratos Dr. Dog. Not only is it clear that they love what they’re doing, she says, “they don’t sugarcoat it. It’s like, ‘Here ya go - this is what I made. Take it or leave it.’ I think that’s very respectable.”
Beloved
April Smith and The Great Picture Show Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
My heart will never know another lover
We two shall never share another breath
My will has faded
This longing it's an unrelenting torture
Oh mercy take me now to my beloved
You were the thrill that stilled my beating heart baby
But if I cannot have the real thing
I'll gladly settle for your ghost
And you can haunt these halls
All you want
And if I ever leave
I will take you with me
Da da'
This thing that beats
Is the one thing that keeps us apart
Well they say to say goodbye
But I'd surely rather die
From my broken heart
You were the thrill
That stilled my beating heart baby
You are the one I'll dream the most
But if I cannot have the real thing
I'll gladly settle for you ghost
I'll gladly settle for you ghost
In this song, April Smith is lamenting the end of a love affair. She accepts that it is over and acknowledges that her heart will never be able to love again in the same way. She pines for her beloved and wishes to join him/her in death. The pain of the separation has made her lose her will to live, and she can’t help but think that being with her beloved in the afterlife would be the best course of action. The idea of being reunited with her lover after death is the only thing that brings her comfort.
The second verse shows that she still remembers the thrill of being with her beloved and how he made her heart skip a beat. She dreams of him every day, but if she can’t have him in real life, she is content with having him as a ghost. She encourages him to haunt her halls as much as he wants, and if she ever leaves this world, she promises to take him with her. The song’s chorus is a repetition of the feelings she has shared in the first verse, where she yearns for her beloved and is content with his ghost.
Line by Line Meaning
I know it's over
I am aware that our love is finished
My heart will never know another lover
I will never love anyone like I loved you
We two shall never share another breath
Our love is truly over, and we will never be together again
My will has faded
I have lost the strength to keep going without you
This longing it's an unrelenting torture
The pain of wanting you is constant and unbearable
Oh mercy take me now to my beloved
I wish for death to end this suffering and be reunited with you
You were the thrill that stilled my beating heart baby
You were the one who truly made my heart skip a beat
You are the one I'll dream the most
I will dream of you more than anyone else
But if I cannot have the real thing
If I cannot have you in reality
I'll gladly settle for your ghost
I will be satisfied with the memory of you
And you can haunt these halls
Your memory can stay with me in this place
All you want
For as long as you wish
And if I ever leave
If I ever have to go away
I will take you with me
Your memory will always be a part of me
Da da'
Non-lyrical vocalization
This thing that beats
My heart
Is the one thing that keeps us apart
The love in my heart for you is the reason we cannot be together
Well they say to say goodbye
It is customary to say farewell
But I'd surely rather die
I would rather die than say goodbye to you forever
From my broken heart
Because my heart cannot handle the pain of our separation
I'll gladly settle for you ghost
I will settle for the memory of you
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Written by: MOHAMMED AOURANGZAIB, MUAZZAM MUJAHID ALI KHAN, NICHOLAS PAGE, RASHID A DIN, RIZWAN MUJAHID ALI KHAN, NEIL SPARKES
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind