Ellery Stimulus

… A Bit of The Story …

We released our first real record in 2006. It was a beautiful and terrifying time, for many reasons, replayed now in dark and sobering images, and embedded (for better and worse) in the lines and melodies of “Lying Awake.”

That year yawned and sighed to a close, and found its way into new songs: some melancholy, some gentle, like Lay Your Head Down, which, when it came, sang like an answer to a jagged and jumbled mess, a good and gracious mess, everything at once. We were holed up in a cabin in the forests of Southern OH, a respite, a breather, someplace safe and I don’t know, holy. The screen door was open, the crickets chirped, locusts hummed, a guitar plinked like a sigh. The little tune nearly wrote itself. It set things right.

In the four years since that first record, several more songs came and set things right, or seemed to. Others have of course done no such thing, and deliciously, maddeningly so. Either way, they took their time, and we took ours.

(Songs can, after all, come out of nowhere and nothing, and given enough time, there are so many Nowheres and Nothings, one is bound to hear a tune playing.)

While we listened, we grew up, (a little of course), and I say this seriously and with a wink, because growing up is no achievement in itself, and because there’s no reason to say it other than that it’s simply- what IS…
having for evidence only the vague impression that things keep getting messier, darker, richer, colder; nuance, sighs, hairline fractures in everything, piles of letters, old technology, decade number four darlings, years, dates, chipping paint. Signs.

And songs.
We piled them up, a big block we whittled down to 17 songs last spring. We took them to Kingston NY, sat in the control room with Malcolm Burn, and played them, sang them, whittling, scratching, re-writing, re-learning, pasting 11 songs into something of a story.

Over the coming many months, without our noticing, those songs narrated our lives: Exhaustion, denial, inexplicable (and largely impotent) hope, monsters in pretty dress, panic, Questions, leaning towers of souls–
All of this sang along on familiar tracks while no one listened. It hummed out in life while we hunkered down in northern Kentucky. And eventually, that Kingston story named itself- a title that became a home:

“This isn’t over yet.” Good God, I hope not.
“This isn’t over yet.” Good God, brace yourself.

Now that it’s on its way out into the wild world, (and perhaps us with it), our hope is that its tracks tell the Whole Thing: The years, the mess, the hairline fractures, winking hopes, chirping crickets, screen doors…

…The french-press coffee in Malcolm’s studio, the whirring electric tea kettle, the warm organ and an upright grand to make a girl weep. Amps and guitars, swirling sounds and Malcolm’s, “Un, deux, un, deux, trois, four…”

…the long couch and the Himalayan, the drummer we love, the New York summer air, all heavy with rain and hilltop wind, the harrowing winter that followed, pregnant with God only knows what. The cautious, burgeoning peace.

Here’s to the whole holy mess that found us here, and you too.
Thank you for singing along.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 6th, 2010 at 11:26 pm and is filed under Communication. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.