In ricordo della moglie Ann, scomparsa dopo lunga malattia, David Garland ha cercato conforto musicalmente nelle indagini strumentali di Verdancy e Vulneraries, condotte e condivise con il figlio Kenji nel corso di un doloroso processo di elaborazione personale. Ora a sei anni di distanza si sente pronto a riprendere la parola, e lo fa in un album dove ritrova la forma canzone a lui più cara: The Spark.
"What is there to say after your partner dies? In my case I had a lot to express, but words weren’t always the best language. I made instrumental music, I made photographs of sunlight. I grieved, I existed, I took care of my cats. And, tricky thing, I stayed alive and had new experiences. My wife Anne died (cancer) six years ago, and that’s a significant period of time. Enough time to learn to walk and talk, if you started as a baby. For me, it was enough time to start dating, which may be more challenging than walking and talking. Songs have always been a special place for me to talk about stuff, because they can address, express, and imply so many things at once. Ideally a song creates a poetic situation in which meanings bounce off one another, accumulating in a reverberence that coheres to the listener’s contours. A couple months ago these songs rather suddenly happened."