"Waste my breath blowing on the coals / my movements are random / rabbits on the road / when your luck is gone / you won’t have to be told you will always know / I get tired / living here alone / try to sound normal answering the phone / my body is light / resting like an orange on the kitchen table..."
The stately moving, wistful bloodletting of "Rabbits" by Lethbridge, Alberta Canada folk rock band Starpainter, and from their 3rd album "Cayenne Flowerbed", gently pulls you tightly, the kind of deep embrace given to those you care about when their world may be showing foundational fractures. I am loving the sort of striding cadence, percussive drum work that underscores the ambling rhythms and forlorn bending slide guitar cries and droning Mellotron-esque orchestrations. The sense here feels pretty but sad too, a perfect moving framework for singer-songwriter Joel Stretch's vocal countenance that feels comfortably warm and caring as his poetry falls from his lips in a matter of factly sort of ways. His singing style is free of vocal gymnastics and better for it and the way he phrases his lyrical poetry is full of emotional breaths, rushes and pauses that feels organic and real in the way people communicate. When we speak, especially when our words have heaviness (existential or not) our words can be messy, unregulated, naked and I feel that here from Stretch's vocal aesthetic. So nice.
LINER NOTES (bracketed):
[Singer/songwriter Joel Stretch explains,
“‘Rabbits’ explores the ghost-like space certain people take up in my mind after they’re no longer physically present — friends, family, or artists I admire who have died, or even just people I used to be close to that I’ve lost touch with. I still live with their guiding presence and perspectives sort of looming over me even though they’re not around in my life anymore. I really love the parts everyone in the band laid down on this one. It’s one of my all-time favourite arrangements on a Starpainter tune.”]
"Rabbits" last vocal breaths structurally sound like it could have been a bridge but instead serves as a lyrical, thematic coda and I really love this songwriting choice. I certainly feel like I will visit this song often not only for how it makes me feel but what thoughtful personal emotional math problems it will help me to work out and I certainly have a lot of figuring to do.
-Robb Donker Curtius
LYRICS
My movements are random
rabbits on the road
When your luck is gone
you won’t have to be told
you will always know
I get tired living here alone
try to sound normal
answering the phone
My body is light
resting like an orange
on the kitchen table
When you talk it sounds like a poem I hear your ghost in the walls when the wind is blowing
It’s alright to go somewhere far from home just don’t expect a revelation when you get where you’re going
If things get worse
don’t take it as a sign
things go poorly so much of the time
If you’re looking
for a grand design
You will always find one
When you talk it sounds like a poem I hear your ghost in the walls when the wind is blowing
It’s alright to go somewhere far from home just don’t expect a revelation when you get where you’re going
Certain shades of different colours come back to me from across the years baby
Flowers the colour of the top of the sky
They’re coming back to me
They’re coming back to me now
The Chicken Wheel will take you to the AP Go Fund Me- and any amount is so appreciated!
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://www.facebook.com/StarpainterBand
https://open.spotify.com/track/1cTC2W0U5Gj2gSrGJQLScH
https://www.instagram.com/starpainterband/
https://www.starpainter.ca/
"I live on the last road at the very edge of Lethbridge," says Starpainter's bandleader Joel Stretch. "It's easy to head out into the country from where I live. That kinda sums up the Starpainter mindset musically: we're a town band, but we drift off into country tones any time we want."
Starpainter connects the dots between cinematic folk, fuzzy country rock, and richly textured pop. less
"I live on the last road at the very edge of Lethbridge," says Starpainter's bandleader Joel Stretch. "It's easy to head out into the country from where I live. That kinda sums up the Starpainter mindset musically: we're a town band, but we drift off into country tones any time we want."
Starpainter connects the dots between cinematic folk, fuzzy country rock, and richly textured pop. less
Starpainter, leader / singer-songwriter Joel Stretch, Lethbridge Alberta Canada, folk, indie rock, folk rock, storyteller songs, fuzz country rock, cinematic folk, "Rabbits", 3rd album "Cayenne Flowerbed",
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