Some songs start with a guitar riff. Some start with a phrase scribbled on the back of something. Long Grass started with some very sad news.

Ian and I were both genuinely shocked when we heard that Mark Linkous had died. We were huge admirers of his work with Sparklehorse, and the news hit us harder than either of us expected.

Not long afterwards Ian told me he'd written a song.

He'd called it Long Grass, and said that what had happened to Mark had undoubtedly influenced it.

We started, as we often do, without making too much fuss about things. We recorded a scratch acoustic guitar and Ian put down three vocal tracks. On two of them he deliberately leaned a little towards the character of Mark's voice — although not that extraordinary high register Mark sometimes used.

One of the things we'd always loved about Sparklehorse was that the sound of the records was as important as the notes being played. Mark used old analogue equipment, distortion and all sorts of treatments on his voice. It could sound fragile and damaged one moment and strangely beautiful the next.

We didn't want to imitate that. There wouldn't have been much point. But it gave us permission to make Long Grass a little less tidy.

And then, as tends to happen with Universe of Birds, the supposedly simple song began collecting things.

We added orchestration. A twin-lead guitar part appeared. And towards the end we built up a small choir of backing vocals. What had begun as an acoustic guitar and three voices gradually became something much bigger, while hopefully keeping the vulnerability that had been there in the first recording.

We even took it out into the world. We filmed footage at Otter Lakes, and Anita subsequently put together a video to accompany the song.

Years later, when we began putting together Crows Bring Gifts, Long Grass came back into the picture.

At one point Crows Bring Gifts contained ten songs. That was probably stretching the definition of an EP to breaking point, and more importantly it wasn't really doing what we wanted it to do.

So ten became seven.

And eventually seven became five.

“We wanted five that belonged together — something that felt almost like one side of an album, and a good introduction to Universe of Birds.”

Long Grass became the opening track.

That feels right.

It isn't a Sparklehorse song, and it isn't an attempt to be one. It's a Universe of Birds song that exists, in part, because the work of another musician had meant enough to us that losing him stopped us in our tracks.

Sometimes that's how music travels.

One person makes something.

Somebody else hears it.

And, somewhere further down the long grass, something else begins to grow.

UOB