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sleep​/​death

by The Man In Washington

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1.
Tapes & CDs 03:47
Lay awake I’m lying here wide awake Can’t get a finger in Around the edge of a dream But I wish I was asleep In repose like some noble beast To reflect upon To be reflected upon Statuesque brilliance Over ambivalence And I’m hanging on Thinking about what I’ve done Feeling a golden string That’s wrapped around everything Just one little tug upon And everything comes undone I sleep like a train set My arms and my legs are tired and wooden My mouth is a tunnel, a great cavernous thing And my heartbeat's the pulse that is pushing the engine So long to this gracious endeavour We'll al go to sleep, and I'll thank you whenever You are a troublesome, quarrelous thing You are the impulse pushing the engine
2.
When I am lying on the sofa Feels like I’m flying over the ocean But I have no desire to go outside It’s as if it doesn’t exist I am lying on the sofa Yeah you go on Forever I am higher than the tree-tops Forever forgetting what I forgot But I can hear you all start off wrong They’ve never been this high before I am higher than the tree-tops
3.
Gunwales 03:10
Monica was missed beyond expression And Louise just couldn't shake off her cold Henry, they thought, would outlive the lot But death was silent and quick when it took its toll I'm a sailor with a broken heart I use my sighs to fill my sails But just like Jack I was knocked on my back When the waves and reef broke open my gunwales And left me exposed Now the tide comes and goes Stella, please come back to me And Charles, the doctor said you were oh so very ill Hocke and LeFaux, oh how they go together They ended their days sharing a grave on a hill
4.
D.E.D 03:59
You used to pick up things off the ground and we all thought of you as 'that kid' Pockets full of wires and soil I don't know what you did with that shit You used to share a lot with me Every single thing but a birthday I wonder what you'd think of me I wonder if you'd think it was worth it But I hope I hope you're doing well When it's just me on my own I get lost You used to mean a lot to me I dream about you once every two or three years But lately all the images blur And you're not who I thought you were But I know I'm no good at keeping contact When it's just me on my own I forget to check in with myself Let alone anyone else
5.
The Beef 02:20
6.
You can think the pain away Care to trade? You'll only lose half your brain You'll be inside the system soon Don't worry they'll make some room Pushing out someone who's not like you And so it goes Nothing in this life will ever bother me I don't let it because I don't let anything in Until a flicker of memory turns my eyes to water And i'm counting the seconds until I can turn towards him And so it goes Fall prisoner to this homemade torture You're wondering where is your daughter She's been taken by the runaways They heard the stories so they ran away
7.
Loyalty 03:42
Well as far as I can see The worst thing you can do Is presume that when you’re gone The world is gonna weep for you I'm looking at a small scale Of the planets we can see It stretches out behind my back And it crosses an ocean And it reaches the continent And it finally comes to rest We find Pluto is just a tiny egg Only worthy of a tiny nest As far as I can see The worst thing you can do Is presume that when you’re gone The world is gonna weep for you ‘Cos we’re animals at best But I think we do forget that When we’re gazing at our navels It might look but it’s not that graceful I'm looking at a weather map There's a storm cloud coming in It's covering the country And there's nowhere left to run And it will knock on every door And it will ransack every cupboard And everything that man has made With dirt and sand it shall we covered I’m sitting by a fire escape In a hotel room I’m in And I’m wondering ‘bout what Johnny said And if he really meant those things Because I'm planning out the songs I’d like to play at my funeral But they're not sing-alongs They not anything to anyone A child of dust to dust you now return (nobody loves you like me) For every seed must die before it grows And though above the world may toil and turn (nobody loves you like me) No prying spade will find you here below
8.
Two Graves 03:51
I started thinking a lot About what happens to us all when we're gone I couldn't understand My grandmother is buried underneath that hill in the pouring sun A list of loves ones lies next to her and she is visited by everyone My grandfather, well no one really knows where he ended up In some cold corridor, never visited and only sung of As a lesson to the rest I started thinking a lot about what happens to us all when we're gone I couldn't understand Our histories are buried somewhere that they would rather not let us uncover for ourselves so they can feed us greater lies and lesser hells But it's not what we deserve I started thinking a lot about what happens to us all when we're gone I couldn't understand How can we exist? How can we persist? How can we go on when we treat each other like this? And there's two graves In two different names
9.
Godsears 06:44
We heard a noise not a noisy noise, but it was a noise nonetheless. "It is from God," that is what they said. "We just don't have the ears to hear it." We craned our necks, strained our ears Put everything we had into the hearing And what we heard? Not a word Just a buzzing that was ever disappearing We gave ourselves to the pursuit of this and pledged ourselves to knowing it For days and days we moved inches forward So they made us all build a tool, and then they told us they would interpret But that impossible soundless call grew neither in volume nor in purpose But there was no turning back We just couldn't stop what had been started And our leaders would not hold back from finding better ways to amplify it We beat our breasts, tore down everything Fed what was left to the new machine For days and days, we gave our resources We prayed and prayed and pointed it skyward The cities were flat We were flat on our backs with unending desire And then we heard it Oh yes we heard it And every child heard their mother's voice And every singer heard the perfect note And every pious person heard the sounds of gods and angels And all along the sound waves we did float But then the noise it grew louder and louder And it began to drive us to distraction And at the moment that it tore the flesh from off our bones Oh in our destruction we found satisfaction
10.

about

An album about two themes.

sleep - the inability to find it (Tapes & CDs), the warmth of finding it in the long nights at familiar places (Tree-tops Forever), the dreams we have of those we used to know (D.E.D), and the end of dreams of others (Bicycle Uncle). death - of strangers (Gunwales), of feelings (The Beef), of myself (Loyalty), of family (Two Graves), of everything (Godsears). Ground & Floor is just something to listen to when all's said and done.

It's an album that explores circularity in the music, many songs are based around simple, repetitive structures of a few notes or more. But it also has novelty; it's almost entirely recorded on piano barring a few exceptions - a bit of a departure from my usual process. I tried to keep it pretty pure, most additional production elements were tried, recorded and then discarded. During the writing of this album I challenged myself to bring only a keyboard to gigs, no guitars, so I had to play live on an instrument I'm much less familiar with, and couldn't be tempted to fall back on old habits.


tl;dr - themed, melancholic piano songs for fans of early Perfume Genius (think Put Your Back N 2 It), The Mountain Goats (as always), Thrice (i think, maybe the Earth from The Alchemy Index?), Johnathan Coulton, This is the Kit (I was listening a lot to Bashed out while writing this)

credits

released July 15, 2022

all music written and recorded by The Man in Washington. cover image by The Man in Washington

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The Man In Washington Glasgow, UK

TMIW is a story-driven, alt/folk/rock project from Glasgow.

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