Poetry

Make You Sing: Peter Bradley Adams

Posted by yseult on Feb 4, 2010 in Soulfood

I don’t know about you, but I personally am finding myself in a bit of a starve for good songwriter music at the moment. There really isn’t a lot of good albums about to come out (apart from the new Peter Gabriel one which I can’t wait to listen to), or that have graced us this winter. Sure, Brandi Carlile has released her long-awaited album just a couple of months ago and Sivert Hoyem has also a new album out that I like. But, I find myself delving deeper and deeper into the shuffle function of iTunes in order to discover older music that I haven’t listened to in a while.

Obviously, I ran across Eastmountainsouth sooner or later, since they keep being bumped to my shuffle list. I had already covered the group as a true songwriter jewel, but seeing as their only album never had a sequel and it doesn’t look like they ever will do music together again, I thought about posting a follow-up to Peter Bradley Adams, the brains and voice behind Eastmountainsouth.

Since 2001, he has released several albums with various female singers to contrast his ‘the dreamy-voiced Adams’ as The Boston Globe called him. Gather Up (2006), Leavetaking (2008) and the latest album Traces (2009) all hold more or less the same layered quality of harmony that was so typical for Eastmountainsouth and that drew so many in.

Out of the three I feel like Traces – a fitting title – has come back to those roots in a way that closes the circle while giving this artist more maturity and depth, even if I wouldn’t have thought it possible. There is a certain calm quality about the construction of his songs and the sound. ‘Even’, ‘polished’, are words that springs to mind, and ‘touching’ another one.

In May 2009, “Leavetaking” the IAP awarded Peter Bradley Adams IAP’s the award “Best CD’s of 2008″ for Best Singer-Songwriter-Male.

Even so, with awards and even with steady releases, Adams has never truly made it into the charts or has been featured in popular TV Series (usually a good way to get people to notice you).
This circumstance earns him a special entry in my series. I hope you enjoy.

Draw me a heart

Posted by yseult on Jan 26, 2010 in Poetry

Draw me a heart, my love,
to paint all over the walls,
over the airs of jealousy,
the hate and the flaws.

Draw me a heart the size
of your mountains,
your valleys and passions,
draw it large, draw it true,
and let me crawl up inside it.

Draw me a heart
to bury my fears in.
A heart for the future,
a heart for the past.

A heart in so many colours,
where flowers of blossoms past,
rain down on both our pains
and longings.

A heart so truthful,
it has no place in this world.

A heart so pure,
the sun would rival its glow.

Draw me a heart, my love.
Don’t leave me behind.
Let me paint it then,
over all the walls that keep
this darkness in.

A heart so pure, so truthful,
a heart so big, so bright.

It’ll be my world from now on.
We don’t need anything else.

A heart. It’s all it takes after all.

Chains

Posted by yseult on Jul 3, 2009 in Poetry

There are voices in this silence,
reprimand, anger, pain and frustration,
all come to speak without their usual words.

And every silence becomes a spectator,
of such a sorry display of refusal.
Their voiceless hardness is slowly,
ever so slowly, eating away at our sanity.

For silences are never alone.
Too quickly joined by symbionts,
death bringers and half-truths.

And the voices of these personaes,
so true they ring,
telling you you’re right,
telling me I’m wrong,
telling them they’re strong,
telling him he’s polite,
telling her the distance is wanted,
telling him he’s haunted.

By shadows past,
and feelings lost,
favoured heart, you’re letting it all be eaten,
digested, processed and forgotten.

And all because a crushing silence breaks more
surely than a true word ever could.

Morningstar

Posted by yseult on Jun 3, 2009 in Poetry

The world is at your hands and the sky is your playground.
You’re dancing among the clouds while we stay earthbound
watching your trail and you radiance to a new beginning.
Your blessings are so many that not even the stars could
start to guide your way towards that life that’s waiting just for you.

There are not enough words in any language to tell how you’ll see,
how you’ll grow and where you’ll land,
where your grace will spread into the brightest wings of human kind,
who you will touch and who will let themselves be touched by you.

So much, so less. So true.

If ever there was truth to be had in existence
alone: you’ll be its peak.
A life that once might be shared and truly lived,
protected, held and cherished.
In a new world. A new mind, a new me.

My beautiful child.

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall…”

Posted by yseult on Jun 1, 2009 in Poetry

This is the point of no return. The point of utter destruction.
This is the tearing of hearts, the breaking of pasts and the making of the future.
This is the turn of the wave of unrelenting pressure,
the hardest place you’ve ever visited,
the brightest star you’ve shot down to your own amusement,
the bloodiest dagger ever held,
the twisted heart and hardening carcass to throw out.

This is your ending and my beginning.
This is the cleansing fire of a thousand damnations,
and another hundred self-inflicted wounds of uncountable mysteries.

You, the fraud, the liar, the destroyer of worlds;
that egotistic excuse,
that twisted part of a lifetime,
that sorry solitude that made you,
that boneless cruelty you continued to spill into this world,
your terror, your tyranny…

Gone.

Make you Sing: Eastmountainsouth

Posted by yseult on May 29, 2009 in Personal, Soulfood

It’s time for another instalment of this series. Hope you like this one, because it’s a precious little pearl.

Eastmountainsouth will for me always be associated with my time in Paris. Forever will I see the snow storms and be reminded of the cold moments I spent in the city of millions, of the pain, but also of the exhilarating tension through which I lived there.

Their version of Hard Times (an old classic that goes back to the Civil War Time, or so it is rumoured) is such an uplifting song that even my solitude of the time couldn’t resist it’s charm.
Unfortunately there’s only a small bit of their version online to be found on Last.fm.

Founded in 1999, the group joined together the vocally astonishing Kat Maslich and the equally amazing Peter Adams. Both singers and writers had Southern backgrounds which can be clearly heard at some points in their album.
They only ever produced on album together under the name of their ‘band’ and which only came out in 2003, years after they had met and started working together. It remains to this day a perfect piece of music that unfortunately didn’t find any succession either by them continuing to work together or by either Adams or Maslich apart.

Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of videos that I could link here online, but you can listen to them on Last.fm or Pandora, their yahoo music site gives all the info you need. But if you trust me a little bit, then you’ll just go and buy the album. it’s worth it.

Not only are their texts of a particular clarity and a touching emotional expression, but their music has something timeless in it’s depths. Something that just can’t leave you cold. Something that can hardly be described other than that certain longing for completeness while valuing your own incompleteness.

I’ll leave you with one of the most amazing songs ever written: So are you to me.

Update:
Meanwhile, someone has put their version of Hard Times on Youtube: Enjoy.