psalmships

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Grammar + tolerance.

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This Friday on Bandcamp.

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Next month I’ll release a new EP, recorded in April and May of what might be (possibly ought to be) the final year of the anno Domini era. Perhaps the next millennia will see a rapid deconstruction of the supports in place keeping us from expanding toward anything, and be replaced by a humanist approach to understanding and accepting that we’re all doomed exactly the same way (anyway) if we can’t figure it out together. Maybe we’ll fuel and enrage the sun so much that it will finally burn our ubiquitous skin to a reptilian umber, and the luxury of seeing others without their gauze gowns will be celebrated. And it’s possible, instead of marking time and counting numbers, we could listen to heartbeats as they vary and sing; we could accept “identity” as a temporary, ill-fitting nomenclature and not a contract constantly being re-negotiated and entered in as evidence of crime or misdemeanor; we could reach out beyond what we know into what we fear, and in response, offer everything there is to give.

A single off the EP called Vestiges will be available for free download later this week over on Bandcamp. Thank you for keeping on.

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The new EP will be released on April 27th, available for streaming, download, and as a limited edition CD that can be played on your parents’ system in their finished basements. Featuring six new songs created with long-time co-conspirator Allen Bergendahl over the Autumn/Winter, we based the bulk of the material around hard, loud rhythms and beats I was making in my spare time (jokingly referring to the collection as my “dance record” to loved ones), and my wanting to stray once again from performing the songs in a band setting. It could easily be interpreted as a sequel to any previous album, though I can’t claim to have been conscious of any intention to create such, and if anything attempted to make this one as independent an entity as the last EP (even if this shares more DNA with most everything else I’ve released). During the recording and mixing processes, so many songs that don’t appear on the finished version were considered - added, then nixed, remixed then added again - but I just felt so much more comfortable allowing the impact of the songs to be truncated and experienced succinctly; long-playing versions got stuck in the mud, the dynamics couldn’t contend with the impulse to get in, get out. Like Anchored to Oak, Hymn of Lions, Songs For a Red Bird, and Keep Your Words, the deepest wound comes from the shorter claw.

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I’ve been working on new recordings all Summer, in very limited time pockets, in my tiny corner where a box fan keeps my computer cool, in hopes of getting it out by Winter. The working title has been EULOGIES before I even started the process, because saying “goodbye” is a weird custom we have come to need and expect for many occasions, and it’s a theme to which I’ve returned over and over, even (and especially) in direct response to my chosen mediums of expression throughout the years. Music, photography, poetry, graphic design: they’re all modes I adopted happily, but have also needed to set aside at different times, like we do with anything. And the contexts in which those goodbyes are called upon - sacrifice, boredom, vengeance, inspiration, grief - are so dynamic and usually significant and unpredictably idiosyncratic (while also, apparently, universal) that I never stray too far from inspecting them; for content, for answers, for some version of balance. So that’s what this new record will sound like, perhaps. Eulogies.

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On May 18, 2012, Psalmships played PhilaMOCA to celebrate the release of Hymn of Lions (a six-song collection of folk+western about having strokes, stumbling around canyons, leaving for good, and getting home alone). Exactly seven years later, we return to make up/out/hay. We return to prove nothing to no one, to plea forgiveness and claim amnesia. We intend to be held, and in return, not hold back. Up. Out. Hey. Get a ticket.

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Eulonia, In Closing

Laid out like a triangle. The walls spit red. Keep your words until they’re gone. The mystics are dead or nearly finished. Or more alive, but anchored to oak. Fists in your mouth - what luck if you choke! What sounds would you make if the mountains stood still? How black is the night, how long will it take? In the moonlight we speak like curtains are drawn: pulled to reveal just a fraction of this, unafraid to conceal what we truly intend. Fill the sea with your sadness (that’s what it’s for). The ship only lists. The shore wears the stars.

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SPRING 2019.

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With all the words you’ve saved

This month is the 10th anniversary of the release of SINGS LIKE A PRIEST.

I worked with Ken to remix the eight original album tracks, and we both sifted through our hard drives to find an additional 17 songs that will be included in the download-only special edition: years of demos, alternate versions in and out of the studio, and a live performance from May 2008.

Then Allen re-mastered it. I created a new digital cover. Daniel shrugged. All of the images of graveyards and black birds, of starlight and train tracks, are intact. My guitar still kerrangs and Johnny’s bass still buzzes; Mike wraps the album in a warm pelt lined with steel, and Laura haunts deeper the edges of melodies. I can still see Davey’s hips decide the take is good. I can feel Daniel wait, ever-shrugging (but grinning). All of this, and the early morning in my voice, the fogs that so often accompanied those weekends-gone-too-quickly, is forever preserved below the dark flag of one of ghost folk’s fleetest vessels: the Sweetheart Parade.

Thank you for your years of patronage; the special edition will be released on 27.September, and downloadable for a limited time.

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Halloween Weekend House Show Massacre.