deadmans hand

once again. the history of civilisation in a pop song
through the eyes of a tuned in, turned on, druid in a uniform, who can't drop out of the clusterfuck. 'empires got you by the balls,' every foot soldiers lament. 

this song leaves me breathless, it's a stomping rock song with penultimate musicianship and craft that is driven by steve's words and phrasing. let it speak for itself in this live recording. 

incidentally 'deadmans hand' refers to the two black aces and two black 8's wild bill hickok played when he was shot dead in a poker game. since then the hand has been revered by players who know their lore.

 

'night friends' from after everything now this

sometimes, just a single element has enough power to change everything, such can be said for david lane's contribution to the song night friends. haunting and simply perfectly in tune with its companion elements that fluid piano trickles along in the shadows, the after midnight atmosphere, like some old blues when the bar is empty and the floors are being mopped but no one is sitting on the piano stool save some old melancholy ghost.
it's from one of my fave church albums, 'after everything now this' where i feel steve's lyrics are now on equal terms with the greatest of writers. if he was good before this album he became greater for it. it's not a quantifiable thing, there's no real boundary but there's some kind of definitive point where a writer earns the right, hard work, blood sweat and tears conjured up in the sound of suffering. you can hear it in steves voice, in the music but it lies deep in the words. what is that, so effortlessly dripping from his lips, like breathing, emotion, sadness, melancholy, loss? 
like the magic realism of the south american writers night friends is at once ambiguous as it is meaningful, the listener is the observer in the quantum world of the church. 
this is a great exercise in poetic imagery, one can ponder the nature of these night friends endlessly and still know very little other than what steve chooses reveal. we know they are behind the mirror, waiting for a moment, we know they displace time. towards the ending the lyric ponders the power of hate and concludes only love can counter it.
let's face it, i have no idea what it really means only how i feel when i listen to it. i've looked in that mirror.  

so that love may find us -

love will find us when we find love

listen.
cosmic in scope, it's not music but a philosophical muse. it's beyond normal parameters of rock and roll, a quest for meaning perhaps. wherever this stuff comes from it's asking the right questions.
it may well be clutching at straws hoping for elusive answers but the fact it's stretching out in the first place, one single note in an ocean of noise, and when you hear it some kind of elemental explosion occurs in the brain chemistry or spiritual spark plug. 
i hear the history of western philosophy in this song.  

Paradox

You are a paradox to me, a senseless maze

I run around, I'm looking for you all of my days...

I cannot bear to share you, we can't be alone...

Opiates suck. Yet there is a purpose to everything and if you can't see it, you better find one fast--because even the shit that has no purpose.... the tragedies of ALL that should happen but doesn't... and the senselessness of ALL that that should never happen occurring everywhere.... is really happening––and for those who have been through the worst of it, they know there's always someone else––who has experienced more tragedy, more suffering, more loss––and the only purpose out there for them is to endure––to become a subterfuge––knowing that just to walk through this life takes a 100000000x more courage, more knowledge and therefore more suffering than you or I, hopefully, will ever need know.

Run out it's rough, too much is enough

And that's what it was

I cannot bear to share you, we can't be alone 

Suffering sucks. But we all suffer, but we don't all suffer the same. Karma, Dharma, Past-lives, Veaganism, Hedonism, Purgatory, Theosophy, Science and Seances are all bullshit. You either feel it or you don't, right? You either care or you don't. And if you care and you don't care too fucking much, then what's the point, right? Buddha, Krishna, Vishnu, Enkidu, Jesus Fuking Christ are all made-up–and-just as real as Santa Clause, right? How many times in the course of a single day in your garden variety dilemma, do you, does one, does anyone any of us actually know the "right thing to do?" So how then in the field of any perceived let alone any real or life or death choice, Goddess forbid, are we to know what the fuck to do?

You make me drift up and float, 

The more that I see you, the more that I miss you 

and fall like a stone 

Trust sucks. And that's because it's the only thing we got and we can trust no one. Know why? Because eventually we ALL disappoint one another––AND this is NOT some nihilistic, mumbo-jumbo, view-pointed, prophecy here I'm trying to project onto ya'll or any bullshit like that; BUT say we give the intelligent design folks a break here for 2 fukn seconds and suppose for a moment there were a single solitary creator being––AND this would be ONLY if such a thing through its own divine fucking inspiration both sacred and profane bestowed upon us some kind of understanding of its omnipotent, omnipresent or omniscient ways––AND wouldn't that be the cost of ALL existence? 

NO? 

Go ahead then and spend three-extra fucking minutes listening to someone you can't stand while you're strung-out––AND you tell me if you're NOT ready to push the button raining Arma-goddamn-motherfuckin-geddon down upon every last one of us? Thankfully, we've ALL got the chance to step out of this 2-D movie with no predictable happy/tear-jerker ending anytime we want. AND that's the only reason why we don't sometimes. AND don't you know it.

You are a paradox to me, a contradiction

You're a predicament for me, and a prediction

I've got a nickname for you, I call you... 

I AM a Lennonite just as much as I am Rimbaudian; HELL is certainly below us, and above us only sky**

Skybee** 2NGT Phoenix TheeB* @2TMR NGHTi Ibee** & WiilbE* (look for where those lights should be... look in that Phoenix 2night... now of that beast we're both set free... (& of the gOG, Ibee** know that beast) how it darkend... see thee Skybee** there before... no stars a black space between the stars . pulled away, no beast now... (INuit carvings) no beast now Skybee** (& of the AgOG, weeBEE* know that beast) 444 Ibee** & thee Skybee** AB OV 8*...

love philtre by the church from further deeper

'our minds are made up'

musically i don't know what's going on, all instruments blend into something with the complexity they say makes up a good wine. i'm not a drinker of the wine but i am a thinker of the wave, water or sound, and here is subtle tones filled with a sensual beauty that appears immediately elegantly simple. yet put your finger upon it and it's gone. like that quantum idea. the song is both particle and wave and you can only perceive one state. 

this is the church's new incarnation, and it's difficult to write about because it is very different from what came before. 
one has to adopt a cosmic view here. 
the church without mwp is a new church, everything changes because there is a new element we are unfamiliar with. it's neither bad or good. values like that are pointless. 
as fans we all invested in this band. we all think we are attached to the band and musicians whereas what we really are attached to is the music. this in itself is a good thing, all things must change and value cannot be quantified in terms of before mwp or post. it is what it is. equal but different.

our minds are made up.

in such a simple sentence such a grand idea. this is common in steve's writing, he captures ideas the size of a universe and reduces it down into a few words. i don't know if it's a trick or a skill, it always leaves me in some kind of awe. 

'june' from forget yourself

the floating world, disembodied we pass over the ancient lands into a youth filled body that looks out over the horizon, from towering cliff tops as the deep blue mediterranean breaks upon rocks below. a sailed vessel heads towards shore, the oars synchronised and the sail comes down like an elegant origami in reverse. brown skinned men working under a suspended yellow sun. possibilities bounce across the water in gleaming gifts as you speculate she may be on board carried by hope and sweat and toil and the energy of a peoples need for myth or truth, all are bound by beauty. 
the animal kingdom expects the best, eggs hatch and small beaks open for the first time, the flowers explode into vivid colour and their wondrous scent's drift in the invisible currents. you see the rabbits in fields, they move like erratic particles through the fields, you see the swallows above in some exotic formation, a school of airborne fish in choreographed precision. you hear the buzzing of cicadas, the bees and the crickets an insect orchestration to a fertility rites promise. 
and as it comes, as it crescendos to it's beautiful zenith, through your bones, through your flesh and into your very spirit it passes, for even june must fade out and the vessel heads away from the shoreline, the sail hoisted, the sun now sinking. the flowers wilting, for every arrival heralds departure.

DELIRIOUS

so the day breaks and 
 i'm fated to be seriously 
delirious

 it's not far 
with all my 
...heart

and i can even
 understand a thing or two
what you going to do?

***

if anyone thinks this is easy
 and everyone thinks it's
deliberately done

 these pieces are easy
but try to put them 
 all together
it's impossible
 do you think you
can please me?

***

deflated undersaturated 
 i'm captivated
delirious

 i hope so
with all my
...soul

 and i can almost 
comprehend 
 night from day
what you going to say?

***

if anyone thinks this is easy
 and everyone thinks it's
deliberately done

 these pieces are easy
but try to put them 
 all together
it's impossible
 do you think you
can please me?

***

the pieces are easy
  try to put them together
     try to put them all together

***

and i
 i can almost 
comprehend
 night from
day what you
 gonna say?

***

if anyone thinks this is easy
 and everyone thinks it's
deliberately done

 these pieces are easy
but try to put them 
 all together
it's impossible
 do you think you
can please me?


***

and i
 i can almost 
recognize
 wrong from right
almost
 but not quite

***

your delirious
 it's deliberately done
do you think you 
 can please me?

Pride Before A Fall (Further Thoughts)

There are songs in dreams and you're sometimes here, and you may not know the song but it's there and it reminds you of this other time. I hear this song moving over the airwaves, over the hills and valleys of southern California moving eastward crossing the atlantic, echoing in some remote home in Edinburgh, through the streets of London, a bright DJ spinning a re-mix in Germany, it's playing a cafe in Poland, Prague, and Spain... and someone somewhere starts to wonder all over again, it's as if time/space has folded, this is the one... the one we all knew was there... the one the Exe's lusted after but could never have... instead you gave them everything else in between, and the difference would be hardly negotiable except for the fact... that music isn't a career measured in dollars... it's a compulsion driven by the hearts of poets and the minds of mystics and isn't regulated or accountable to trends of popularity which govern the marketed sales crushing and killing the economy of our spirits... compositionally, musically, lyrically this songs speaks to everything we know The Church to be, everything we have believed in, obsessed upon, and wished for... it's is a dream... an answer... illuminating hope while spinning a cautionary tale... telling us our limitations are real... but are efforts are not in vain... 

Pride Before A Fall


on tippy toe quite you go 

so not to wake the sleeper

and well you know 

now that'cha look

it goes further/deeper

pride before a fall

dark before the dawn

fall'n,  fall and fall

calling to you all

***

you face the blame 

graceless ashamed

but baby it's unclear

you fan the flame 

empty flame of fame

but it burns hot as steel

lust and anger, pride and sloth 

we two cut from the same cloth

all that envy, vanity

gonna be an end of me

***

on tippy toe careful and slow

find the news awake her

pride before a fall

dark before the dawn

fall'n,  fall and fall

calling to you all

***

seek light from the stars tonight

up on the night sky

live long as this song does

she's caught in the spotlight

she's home in the night sky

live long as this song does

On Angel Street

Where else do we go?

So many other places, but why go there? Where does it lead?

How many other times have I been here?

Esoterically?

Literally?

Meta-for-whatever reason-cally?

If you read these words you might already have an idea

what is said, unsaid, or left

undone..

othertime and places

familiar faces

so much and

so far to go..

after everything now this - numbers

obtuse lyrically yet the thematic narrative seems to portray a type of meditation on death, when your number is up, its up baby. there's no bargain one can make with the universe, no deals done, exchanges or plea bargains, no escape. you are born and die, that's the ritual i think steve hints at. 
and then within the chorus a stream of consciousness assault upon how we are all equal in death. privilege, rank and status hold no escape, even time because it's running out.

it's the opening song on a magnificent album of emotional and almost pathos-like energy combined with the melancholy  mood of steve's lyric. 
can i just mention that this music is absolutely magnificent on headphones, the guitars are mean and lean, perfect, the drumming has such an interesting feel, styles shift and morph from almost military to some sort of calamitous wall of rock and roll played by octopi, tim's drumming is outside any drum box i ever heard, i really think he's got a unique style of building rhythms, i can't really even begin to explain it because the process is a painting resulting in something complex and deep yet beautiful but difficult to describe. 
theres a brilliant keyboard sporadically thrown in the mix, it's barely accessible yet it give's the song a flavour that you surrender to immediately.  
the harmonies are perfect, the effects on the instruments indicate an ear for radiophonics and tone. 
i like the command in steve's vocals, he's got that sage like knowledge and the words fall out like they would some old roman god telling the us mortals the cosmic joke in answer to a dumb question we ask. 
'oh yeah...' 
someone said to me once, rock and roll is about attitude, and this song has an attitude, but it's not the usual anti authoritarian, rebellious right of passage angsty attitude, it's not political, defined by division, ironically it's the uniting principle we are all in denial about. 
this the ultimate fatalistic song, your numbers up, no one gets out alive, its a fucking brilliant song and its even better to hear it preformed live. 

i'm aware theres a prophetic notion out there about the song, it was written just before 9-11 and contains some imagery of events yet to pass but i think this is actually insignificant and incidental to the song, it certainly ties it to a time and event yet i think for myself its beyond an event, it's a song about an inescapable fate everyone of us faces, and in a strange way it becomes healing, uplifting and kinda glorious in the same way i feel about, 'block.' 
these songs seem to have a spirit within them that nothing can stick to, they can't fail to appeal to the element within me that is also spirit. 
these songs may appear dark to the uninitiated but they are made out of light and that's the spirit of the church for me in a nutshell, it's why this whole cd and the church as a band stand out for me, music made from light.