Spilt Milk was recorded in London with Jimmy Hogarth, the sought-after British producer whose recent credits include Duffy, Corinne Bailey Rae and James Blunt. Powerhouse songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and arranger Eg White – Grammy Awards Record of the Year nominee for Adele’s “Chasing Pavements” – co-wrote most of this material. Singer and pianist Ed Harcourt also co-wrote two, including the climactic “Far From the Country,” an especially poignant and personal conclusion to the disc, about the physical and emotional distances one must bridge to keep love alive
For inspiration, Train turns to Aretha Franklin – “There is not a song that Aretha has sung or will ever sing that doesn’t just melt me” – along with blues/R&B cult figures like former Stax star/Raelette Mable John and Bob Dylan-favorite Karen Dalton. Says Train, “I wanted my album to offer glimpses of my influences, not sound like my influences. Jimmy, Eg and I are of similar backgrounds, we appreciate the same music; we have similar tastes. The arrangements are just what we felt the songs needed, they give the songs flavor but don’t try to steal anybody else’s style. I hope the album is a nod to the music I love, while still being modern.”
Music has been at the center of Train’s world since she was a toddler, when her mother encouraged her to play the violin. Train took to the instrument, but, more importantly, she also discovered an innate aptitude as a singer, with unerring pitch and a preternaturally mature delivery from a very young age. Says Train, “There’s depth to my voice and I think it comes from a lot of different places. But the way I sound today is the way I always sounded -- except in a tinier body.”
As an artist, Train could never simply be described as a product of her times and that has allowed her, on Spilt Milk, to create music that can arguably be called timeless. Her mom, who raised Train alone, fashioned what some might view as a sheltered existence for the young Train, keeping her away from television and pop radio. But what she really did was provide a fertile laboratory for Train to freely grow as a young woman and a singer, apart from the vagaries of trends. Train took music and ballet lessons and listened to classical music and opera, along with jazz and blues. Her violin training definitely came in handy: Train has arranging credits on three of her tracks and overdubbed strings on two of them.
Though born in New York City, Train was raised in Savannah, Georgia, and southern soul and gospel, which she sang in church and school choirs growing up, has had the most profound effect on her work. Almost as significant was the moment when, as a teenager, she unearthed her mom’s tucked-away stash of vinyl albums from the sixties and seventies: Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zepplin. Say Train,” I remember hearing Janis Joplin’s records and thinking, what is that all about? We lived in downtown Savannah, in a house kind of like a New York City brownstone. When we had thunderstorms I would go up to the roof and scream at the top of my lungs because I wanted to make my voice raspier. God only knows what that’s done to me!”
By the time Train was 19, she was already singing professionally, albeit locally. A producer based in the south who’d spotted Train arranged to bring her up to New York City to showcase for Blue Note. The label chiefs offered Train a development deal – but her mom had other ideas. She insisted her daughter go to college first. Many a confident and headstrong young artist would rebel and go it alone, accept the deal and take their chances. But Train – reluctantly, she now admits – listened to her mom. She agreed to attend college in Athens, Ga., keeping her hand in music by joining a band and spending far more time rehearsing and gigging than hitting the books. And when she was ready to return to her career full-time, Blue Note was still waiting.
It was time well-spent, Train now realizes: “I know that at 19, I would not have made this record, which is the record I always wanted to make. This is the album that defines who I am. At 19, I don’t know what I would have put out. I believe everything happened for a reason. It took this amount of time for me to get here and to make this record. I always knew it would happen. “
Train made several trips to London over the course of two years, to write with Hogarth and White, but the actual recording moved quickly. In fact, Train was such a natural that some of the vocal performances they chose came straight from the song demos they’d originally done. Right before they were about to embark on their final sessions, though, a disastrous computer glitch during file back-up resulted in the loss of much of what they’d already completed. As Train recalls, “It was the perfect electronic storm.” Undaunted, she and her cohorts went back in and re-cut the vanished material with even more passion and determination, the setback turning out to be far more inspiration than challenge. Looking back, Train says, “I don’t think anything was lost. I don’t think there was this one magic moment that we could never recapture. I love what it is today.” And the experience provided her with an album title. “Don’t cry over spilt milk.”
Train’s confidence and faith in what she has created is part of what makes Spilt Milk so thrilling: “There’s just this magic thing that happens sometimes and you think, I want to sing this song for the rest of my life – I want to live in it, I want to bury myself in it, I want to wriggle around in it.. Every time I finished one, it was like, I can’t believe that, at this point in my life I finally have a song I would fight for, that I believe in 100% percent. And now I have all these songs together on an entire album that I feel this way about. For me, that’s my college degree.”
Pins And Needles
Kristina Train Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Pins and needles, is all,
I can feel, I can feel anymore
And I've become just a shadow,
A shadow with nowhere to fall
In the morning
Every morning on my own,
The silence you left is like thunder
The space in the bed is like stone
Pins and needles, that is all,
I can feel your love no more
Pins and needles
Pins and needles
When the feeling goes numb
And the dreaming, make believing is all done
You know I'll biting the bullet
'Cause you got your hand on a gun
Pins and needles, that is all,
I can feel your love no more
I got nowhere, I don't know where to go
Oh no, anymore, anymore
Pins and needles
Pins and needles
Pins and needles
The lyrics to Kristina Train's song "Pins and Needles" reflect the feeling of emptiness and loneliness that comes with losing someone you love. The singer describes how all she can feel now are pins and needles, a sensation that suggests numbness and emotional detachment. She laments being reduced to a shadow with nowhere to fall, which shows how much this loss has affected her sense of identity and purpose.
The chorus repeats the phrase "pins and needles," conveying a sense of anxiety and tension that grow in intensity as the song progresses. The second verse emphasizes the singer's isolation, as she spends her mornings and evenings alone, haunted by the silence left by her departed lover. The metaphor of "the space in the bed" being like stone is particularly effective in capturing the sense of loneliness that pervades the song.
The final verse brings a sense of resolution to the song, as the singer recognizes that the dream of being with her lover again is over. She says she will "bite the bullet" and accept the reality that her lover has moved on with someone else. The image of her lover holding a gun adds to the feeling of danger and loss that permeates the song. The last lines of the song suggest a kind of resignation and despair, as the singer admits she has nowhere to go and nothing left to feel.
Line by Line Meaning
Pins and needles
Feeling of anxiety and discomfort
Pins and needles, is all,
I can feel, I can feel anymore
The anxiety and discomfort is the only thing she can feel now
And I've become just a shadow,
A shadow with nowhere to fall
She feels like an insignificant, barely-there figure without any solid ground to stand on
Every morning on my own,
In the evening, I'll be sleeping all alone
She is without a partner and feels the loneliness most acutely at night and in the morning
The silence you left is like thunder
The space in the bed is like stone
The absence of her ex-lover is deafening and the space he left behind is cold and hard
When the feeling goes numb
And the dreaming, make believing is all done
You know I'll biting the bullet
'Cause you got your hand on a gun
When the emotions become too much, she will try to cope, even if it hurts her in the end
Pins and needles, that is all,
I can feel your love no more
The pins and needles feeling has translated to a loss of love and affection
I got nowhere, I don't know where to go
Oh no, anymore, anymore
She feels directionless and lost, without any idea of where to turn
Pins and needles
The song returns to its refrain, emphasizing the anxiety, discomfort, and uncertainty that permeate the lyrics
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: KRISTINA TRAIN, MARTIN JAMES F. CRAFT
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind