Any Heart In A Storm

Album: An Ocean Full of Islands (2023)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song is a track from the Scottish folk-rock group Tide Lines' third album, An Ocean Full of Islands. The song title is a play on the phrase "any port in a storm."
  • Names of locations fly 'round this station
    Passengers board for their own destinations
    You long
    To find your place somewhere
    Any heart in a storm, any soul when it's warm
    You'll find it somewhere down the line


    Singer Robert Robertson is in a state of uncertainty, grappling with a sense of being adrift and in search of his purpose. Overwhelmed by the vast array of choices and possibilities that lay before him, he yearns to discover a sanctuary where he can truly belong.

    "It's about a train journey but it's also about the wider story of life which I think defines a lot of the other song lyrics on the album," he told The Sun. "I came up with it one day on the train to London. It left Glasgow Queen Street early and I was shattered. I was dozing off as the announcer kept reading the station names and repeating 'Manchester, Preston, Wigan Northwestern.' When I woke up, that line was going round and round in my head and there was a tune attached."
  • Tide Lines recorded An Ocean Full of Islands in a disused Baptist church on the Isle Of Mull. The church sits in an elevated position overlooking Bunessan Bay and has views of the water. The album title comes from what the band looked out on from the windows of the studio. "It's descriptive of where and how the album was put together," said Robertson. "It also summarizes the stories in the songs which are often about individual lives which seem so small among the wider world."
  • An Ocean Full of Islands was produced by Australian producer Ross Wilson and the band themselves. It peaked at #13 on the UK Albums chart, their second record to reach the Top 20.

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