The Time Being | Steve Kilbey

backstage san från 15

touring is weird weird weird

i am drawn into its whorl into its whirl

and into its world

we travel  on the bus sleep in the noisy darkness of bunks

suddenly a lovely hotel room full of sunlight and white sheets

then the gig which is a lifeless cave by day

backstage its dark and quiet

i slip into reveries induced by sleepiness

as i sit here and type

tonight will unleash our music

for a short time i will be invulnerable to age or tiredness

the zeitgeist will have no hooks in me

bass guitar with stored energy will release as curtain goes up

words and notes will travel  and merge

spirit of rocknroll etc

and then

and then what..?

bb

well here i am back on hard nose the highway

valve bouncing down the fricking west coast

we play pretty good

it all goes by so fast

we play a record store and meet and greet

hello how are you

the ground still moves beneath my feet

the customs lounges

the bunks on the bus

the blisters on my fingers

the things i left behind

we walk on stage

i am off my face on music

yeah we are pretty good

we jump on the bus and then

we are gone

hype o conned react

such a warm night

today has escaped

tomorrow awaits

travel for almost a day

to play somewhere far away

pulled in every direction i am

to want to stay

to want to go

or let this night wander on forever

i never expected to be so lost in it

guess i’ll just sit here and think it all through

thatll do

hemming away

the oblong sky behind me

the purple sea before me

the undulating fields of elysium with waving grain

laying down silently beside someone long now gone

whispering those words in languages already forgotten

telling them about the glorious sunset of an empire expired

and how we loved one another through almost endless nights

telling them about the way the world looks now in a new light

with the muted dawn dappled upon a morning from antiquity

i stand up nearly young again an impossible reversal i know

look at those black black crows in that oblong sky

the shapes on the hillside like men from a distance

for a moment i freeze a frame in my mind

with a sensation of nausea i am able to zoom up close

i see the salt in the air eating the metal

i see the columbine wind twist among the gravestones

i feel my old wounds which split up time

the ache of the clamour of the blood of the charge

my boys rushing rushing into arcing dark darts

i thought i’d never see you amongst these tombs

i thought the moss and flowers had reclaimed you

i thought you had wandered away scattered as in life

i thought maybe it is me who has evaporated

nothing seems that real as when we were children i say

it could easily be a memory i am living in my own past

a cracked fountain against the oblong sky

its too warm to sleep but its too late to dream

in the hollow at the foot of my bed a cat spirit sleeps

in the arches of dianas temple a guarding angel watches on

in black marble mausoleum you will have your say

in white mist of morning you will go your way

oblong sky straight ahead

expect delay

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soft hue coming down on the swimmers behind the nets

perfectly twilight as the trees seem to drip down the cliffs

oh warm sea envelop us wash us cleaner than we ever could be

oh i languid and glide on the deep green side under leaden sky

breathing in through my nose out through my mouth

dragging myself through the briny billows

little wavelets crash into me and fly off my goggles back into their sea

so it will be for you and me entering eternity

even then a sun shines inexorably on behind all the clouds

its rays permeate the water of the harbour

illumination of its clear depths

verdant valleys of moss and shoal way below me

i try to remember the names of who i used to be

my rushing self is stilled

i have willed it to a standstill

darting schools of thought fly out of mind

ideas come unbidden into a garden prepared for peace

ripples from outside the whorls

marine films projected on the white screen of evening

fish on hooks screaming

everything you think is real

just seeming

hundred per cent chance of 1AM storm

the measurer of violet night is back on the scene

the trimmer of slack black evenings him alighted alight alright

with the tinkling faery bells knelling around airy havens

down the coast amidst luxurious pines he dines for six thousand a week

oh his lovely little bunnies do it for the monies and the fun

oh his sweet sweet tooth sucking on all that complete youth

in by jiminy shadow the last mad poet of the fall

the storm talks in its faltering thunder blowing clouds asunder

black cars in the rain contain tequila and dealer of cocaine

in a dense library though he knows the answer weird and plain

the chef hired for his brain delicatessen and to lessen hunger

among the shells he tells apart the sound of the sea

and the sound of thee

he spills no blood unleashing instead a feast of tears

the stars are white and bright set into the dessert of the night

guests and pests arrive to partake of this and the strange angel fruit cake

beneath the vaulted firmament a trellis of elysian grapes

between the banquets clamour and the silence on the stage

as age after age succumbs to a dumb urge to emerge from the page

surrender rendered in red wine gone to the head

dystopian glamour i was hoping they’d hammer me down

in walks little judy with her rude mannikin acting the clown

they must have busted the budget trust her to nudge it

the lighting and lightning heightening the slight dizzy crush

a rush of cautionary proportions

but

is he even aware of us..?

SLL in Bondi

(with as much objectivity as i can muster)

it was with total surprise and delight in 2012

that i first heard say lou lous debut single the uber-haunting maybe you

of course i had always wanted my daughters (all of and any of them)

to go into the music biz although it verily is a vale of tears..

nevertheless it is now 2015 and here we have

lucid dreaming

Say Lou Lous debut album

it features some tracks you may have already heard and some brand new ones too

it may interest you to know that i cannot tell the girls voices apart

i was asking miranda about this at christmas and almost every guess i had was wrong

it seems the singing and lyric writing are equally shared and no easy rule to tell them apart

one thing they can do is get a naturally chorussing effect on their voices

i do this in the studio by double tracking my own voice with itself

it gets this sort of silvery sheen

of course SLL get this naturally without trying because their voices are ahem identical

jesus i wish i had born a twin . me and my brother would have cleaned up!

another thought strikes me:

what would the bands namesake auntie lou lou made of it all..?

the girls are the diametric opposite of every one of auntie lou lous qualities

she was always old and frumpy and such a wowser!

she was against sex and drugs and rocknroll. she hated david bowie!

she was big and quite ugly and pretty rude and always making sounds of disapproval.

although she worshipped my dad and my brother russell

i had long ago fallen foul of her indignation

my mother did not dig her that much either

although it was only years n years later she told me that

we both sighed with relief and some nostalgia that her reign of mild terror was over

auntie lou lou had made a lot of people feel disgruntled

SLL did meet ALL once

when they were just babies

i was not there

their mother karin had kindly volunteered to take the twins into hospital in canberra

where, sadly, lay ALL  in her late eighties stricken with cancer and upon her last days

so karin arrives and walks in the ward

ALL makes a huge effort to sit up in bed and gets a good long look at the twins

and then she looks at karin and with one of those noises she made (i’m sure) she announced

“They’re both Kilbeys!” in a triumphant and challenging tone ie they were totally and utterly kilbeys

and karin had merely been a vehicle to convey more of ALLs genetic imperialism

(i guess ALL considered me more of a Bennett than a Kilbey..)

anyway this is just to give ya some background to the whole damn thing

also say lou lou were called saint lou lou for a while

but had to change back to say lou lou for copyright reasons

ie an austrian c+w singer( the mind boggles at this inanity!) had a similiar handle

anyway i imagine ALL would have liked SLL better than TC (the church, ha ha)

so lets have a listen to Lucid Dreaming (great title) then

1 Everything we touch

a sorta oriental beginning leads into pretty good elektro-pop song

this one definitely contains the lou lou sound which will recur several times on this record

superior melodic the song came with a video of the girls in gold paint

the girls are incredibly photogenic too

in the flesh i always marvel at how young and sometimes almost scrawny they seem

but on camera they are magically reinvented

their angles and their weird identicality which has its paradoxic differences

strangely enough (and i never would have thought this before in rocknroll)

i think their good looks have slightly obscured things

and in sweden at least they are approaching that certain celebrity status

man there is a tempting decision right there

which path to follow the looks and celebrity..?

or the music ..because you can follow both for awhile and they will

but sometimes you start out one thing and end up another

so they instantly crashed into the spotlight as a total package-thing

there is a lot of pressure and a lot of decisions

it truly is not all dancing on clouds i of all people know that

the first song is a good start to this record

trainspotters may note

this song has a line days of ashes nights of flame

i used the ash and the flame metaphor in one of my songs too

i’m sure they never heard that song

it’s an interesting look into the kilbey lyric writing

that we both went for that

2 Glitter

look this one definitely has some abba-esque keyboards in the chorus

the twins constantly evoke abba whether its deliberate i dunno

their vocals sit together like those other 2 famous swedish chanteuses

that silvery effect i myself love

the song itself is an bit of a head tapping toe tapping number when the chorus kicks in

all that glitter all that foreign gold 

what a fantastic line..so much implied but so little said

a lovely economy of words is used throughout the record

its never flowery its never vapid

it always contains some twists and turns

and ambiguity

look the girls are shaping up to be very very fine lyricists and melodicists

Glitter  is very cool and very sexy

it could have been used as a futuristic disco number in the film barbarella

3 Games for Girls 

i told one of em this was not my favourite track

and she said ; well we dont make music for you daddy!

its not a bad track per se

but it lacks the emotional oomph that all the other songs possess

i understand there are things about it i do not appreciate

however after seeing the girls perform this very song

at some glittering swedish award thingy

must admit i enjoyed watching their enthusiastic performance

they are grokking showbiz at an alarming rate

4 Julian

this sounds like minna singing at least in the first verse

this is another pretty good pop song like the first track

half rock half elektro

the twins rescuing some geezer fallen foul of the authorities

(after an hour in the car with both of them he might turn himself back in)

a well crafted and nicely ambiguous rescue ballad that i always enjoy

5 Angels

i dont who know that is singing the first verse i am confused: elektra?

then i think yes its miranda

a beautiful exciting chorus

its intentions are unclear

i like that; my songs are mostly like that

you hear the song but you can never quite figure out whats going on in there

you keep coming back for more

dramatic!

6 Peppermint

i cannot begin to tell you how much i love this song

everything about it is just so perfect

margot smith would have devoured this song

such a smooth groovy torch song

everything placed so well

the glissing strings the elektric piano

the b vox and the echoes which linger

very romantic but never schmaltzy

excellent work

7 Beloved 

miranda told me that her sister was singing most of this song

and in the first verse you can hear the difference between their voices a bit

but of course they can and do sing like each other too

it must be a fascinating opportunity to do vocal things

this is another torch song but more dramatic

once again somehow the spectre of ABBA is invoked there

theres a swedish sound and this is part of it

a moving and lovely song

8 Hard for a man

a good pop song with pithy lyrics and some good double entendres

its very much the lou lou sound that this record defaults to

the walloping e-drums the synth washes and the stacked vocals

interesting bit in the middle where it goes all echoey

and the backwards stuff at the end is cool too

accomplished

9 Wilder than the wind

this is my downright favourite on the record

its just a bloody great song and everything combines perfectly

gorgeous melody

medium paced

bubbling sequenced synths

so romantic and so romeo and juliet or something

the song should come with a hanky it brings a tear

with its naive optimism and sweet sweet singing

great breakdown bit at the end sounds like goth

instant classic

10 Nothing but a heartbeat

the next single

and mining their usual vein of sophisticated smoothness

romance and melody

exciting and very single-y

yes lou lou can do this well

and they have shown us that on this record

maybe this will be the elusive bona fide hit single

whether it is or is not

i think they have mastered this form now

and must elucidate more on their next record

whatever that means but they will figure it out i’m sure

11 Skylights

great rocking optimistic triumphant song

some great bombastic drumming and e-horns and strings

we got to stay strong  they remind themselves at the end of each refrain

a fantastic everything-but-the-kitchen-sink ending

and a great finish to this record

you’ll wanna hear it over and over again

i have listened to this record a lot

these 2 women are purveying a total pop world

of lush melody and sweet harmony

ugly words and discordant notes do not penetrate it

if sadness comes it is dripping in a honey like melancholy

say lou lou are the prime movers in their world

they encourage and criticise the people inhabiting their songs

they save people and admonish lovers

they notice small details and then they see the big picture too

they never labour the point

and they never seem to tell the whole story

its a shame the wonderful song they did with chet faker fool of me

isnt on here

and so too their magnificent take on that tame impala song

but it couldnt have everything could it?

as a debut it is a damn fine record

bravo!

i’m giving it four and one third stars.

on every level

it made me feel very very happy!