With the release of his sixth studio album Positive Songs For Negative People, Frank Turner has bestowed upon us a beautiful story of lost love with ‘Mittens’, one of the highlights of the excellent new album. Opening with a story of buying a mile of postcards from “a thrift store that sold [them] by the yard” during a New York winter, Turner talks of an unnamed woman for whom he once wrote “ignored love songs” but who “never fell in love”. With the simple but beautiful analogy that they “used to fit like mittens but never like gloves”, Turner crafts a soft, almost pining narrative of “what if?” that soon explodes into an uncontrollable, pleading cry; “I wanna fit like gloves”.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nn7uPD128I&w=560&h=315]
Unlike 2012’s Tape Deck Heart, Positive Songs For Negative People isn’t a romance-based album, but that doesn’t mean Frank can’t still write an extraordinarily affecting love song. A stellar track, ‘Mittens’ is a song for anyone that’s been in love, or anyone who hasn’t quite got what they really wanted and, let’s be honest, that’s all of us.
Words by Amie Bailey
@amiebailey