1. |
Like a Dancer Unstrung
03:47
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Like a dancer unstrung
Cut your shadow loose
And run
Like a dancer unstrung
I don’t want things to thin
I don’t want to hang by a thread
Whatever we knew
In the here and now
Don’t matter
When it’s when
You got to choose
Cut your shadow loose
And run
Like a dancer unstrung
Like a dancer unstrung
It’s the only race you need to win
The only line you gotta cross
Whatever you knew
In the there and then
Don’t matter
In the end
You got to choose
Cut your shadow loose
And run
Like a dancer unstrung
Like a dancer unstrung
Like a dancer unstrung
Words by Steven Erikson
Music by Kit Soden
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2. |
Tuxedo Cadillac
03:53
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Tuxedo Cadillac
Grey Man’s Tuxedo Cadillac
Keeps on rolling
Past the smokestacks
Of whatever’s churning
Round in my head
You can stand there
Wearing your certainty
You can feel it
Driving you forward
Like a big black car, babe
Now there’s a line
I heard somewhere
About dogs
Clawing at the door
But baby it’s worth knowing --
Chains can spin
For eternity
Rings can glitter
With a life of their own
And on this road
Nobody wins
Without paying
The Grey Man home
So we stood there
In this crazy dream
With our thumbs out
On a bridge above a stream
As if we knew where we’re going
And when the last
Chariot rolled past
The last wagon rocked by
When the last greyhound
Chased the rabbit around
This caddy rolls up and the window rolls down
Now there’s a line
I heard somewhere
About black dogs
Clawing at the door
But baby it’s worth knowing --
Chains can spin
For eternity
Rings can glitter
With a life of their own
And on this road
Nobody wins
Without paying
The Grey Man home
Words by Steven Erikson
Music by Kit Soden
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3. |
Reapers Gale
05:27
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Reaper’s Gale
Crawl down sun this is not your time
-- This is not your time --
Black waves slide
Under the sheathed moon
Upon the shore a silent storm
Heaves up from crimson foam
A will untamed
A new age born
From your mountain nests
-- High mountain nests --
Your iron clouds
To leave the sea its dancing
Refuse of stars
On this host of salty midnight tides
Gather drawn and draw tight
Your tempest
The storm comes
Shouldering aside
The storm comes
In a marching wind
This reaper’s gale
The storm comes
On this wild ride (Nowhere to run)
The storm comes
Riding a black sail
This reaper’s gale
Words by Steven Erikson
Music by Kit Soden
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4. |
Caged Bird
03:52
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Caged Bird
And these things were never so precious
Listen to the bird in its cage as it speaks
In a dying man's voice; when he is gone
The voice lives to greet and give empty
Assurances with random poignancy
I do not know if I could live with that
If I could armour myself as the inhuman beak
Opens to a dead man's reminder, head cocked
As if channelling the ghost of the one
Who imagines an absence of sense, a vacuum awaiting
The cage is barred and nightly falls the shroud
To silence the commentary of impossible apostles
Spirit godlings and spanning abyss, impenetrable cloud
Between the living and the dead, the here and the gone
Where no bridge can smooth the passage of pain
And these things were never so precious
Listening to the bird as it speaks and it speaks
And it speaks, the one who has faded away
The father departed knowing the unknown
And it speaks and it speaks and it speaks
In my father's voice
And these things were never so precious...
Words by Steven Erikson
Music by Kit Soden
Album Artwork and Design by Emily Soden
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5. |
Bottomless Well
02:57
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Bottomless Well
No sermons on the mount
Climbin' the hill
Got loaves got fishes
Got blood got wine
Bottomless well
Bottomless well
Rhinestones on your crown
Can’t get your fill
You got needs got wishes
You got watches to wind
Bottomless well
Bottomless well
Wood on my shoulders
Weighing me down
I got flesh and fault-lines
I got bones to the ground
Bottomless well
Bottomless well
Pushin like a preacher
We’re lost till you’re found
Are these the ties that bind?
No echoes no sound
Bottomless well
Bottomless well
Bottomless well
Bottomless well
Words by Steven Erikson
Music by Kit Soden
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6. |
Lay of the Bridgeburners
04:57
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Lay of the Bridgeburners
I have seen the face of sorrow
She looks away in the distance
Across all these bridges
From whence I came
And those spans, trussed and arched
Hold up our lives as we go back again
To how we thought then
To how we thought we thought then
I have seen sorrow's face,
But she is ever turned away
And her words leave me blind
Her eyes make me mute
I do not understand what she says to me
I do not know if to obey
Or attempt a flood of tears
I have seen her face
She does not speak
She does not weep
She does not know me
I am but a stone, fitted in place
On the bridge, where she walks
I am but a stone, fitted in place
On the bridge, where she walks
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7. |
Stand Alone
03:40
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Stand Alone
When can he not stand alone
Where in darkness no shadow is cast
Whose most precious selves deny the throne
When nothing held in life will last a moment longer
Than what is carved into the very bones
But this is where you would stand
When can he not stand alone
Where darkness bleeds so vast
Whose every yearning seeks a new home
While each struggle leaves the meek to the stronger
And the fallen lie scattered like stones
But this is the life you would take in hand
When can he not stand alone
Where in darkness every shadow is lost
Whose weary selves cut away and will roam
While nothing is left but this shielded stranger
Standing against the wind's eternal moans
But this is your hero who must stand
Words by Steven Erikson
Music by Kit Soden
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8. |
Song of old Friend
04:06
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Song of old Friend
My friend,
this is not the place
the cut flowers lie scattered on the path
and the light of the moon glistens
in what the stems bleed
in the day just forever lost
I watched a black wasp darting into the face
of a web, and the spider she dropped
only to be caught
in mid-air
footfalls leave no trace
in the wake of the hungry creatures wrath
you can only lie in hope
dreaming
she lightly touched the ground
and danced away
like a breath
hiding beneath leaves nodding in place
while the hunter circles and listens
but pray, nothing is found
so, my friend this is not your face
so pale and still,
never again to laugh
when the moon's light fell and then stopped
cold as silver in the glade
look back on the day
it's forever lost
stare into the night
where things confound
and the web stretches empty
winds keening
in threads of absent songs...
Words by Steven Erikson
Music by Kit Soden
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9. |
Bard's Curse
04:36
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Bard's Curse
Rage and tell me then
Not every tale is a gift
When anguish gives the knife
One more twist
And blood is thinned by tears
Cry out the injustice
Not every tale is a gift
In a world harsh with strife
Leaving us bereft
Deeds paling through the years
And I will meet your eye
Neither flinching nor shy
As I fold death inside life
And face you down
With all my mortal fears
And I will say then
Every tale is a gift
And the scars born by us both
Are easily missed
In the distance between us
Words by Steven Erikson
Music by Kit Soden
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10. |
Tales of the Fallen
03:41
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Tales of the Fallen
Now these ashes have grown cold, we open the old book.
These oil-stained pages recount the tales of the Fallen,
a frayed empire, words without warmth. The hearth
has ebbed, its gleam and life's sparks are but memories
against dimming eye - what cast my mind, what hue my
thoughts as I open the Book of the Fallen
and breathe deep the scent of history?
Listen, then, to these words carried on that breath.
These tales are the tales of us all, again yet again.
We are history relived and that is all, without end that is all.
Words by Steven Erikson
Music by Kit Soden
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11. |
One Thread
08:15
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One thread
I came walkin' in from the desert
On a cold October morn
And the clock in the tower spun backward
In that dusty prairie town
The weather vane on the steeple
Was a unicorn covered in rust
It’s been pointing north now
A hundred years (pretty much)
Now it spun a wild squeal
And followed me up the street
And I heard it say
I’ll give ya one thread for your blanket
Two threads for your soul
Ageless as the hills from where she came,
And nobody had ever heard her name
She’d watched the locomotives roll
Between piles of buffalo bones
It was an iron skull all the same
She lived in a house of rusty rail spikes
And sat in front of the door
Rocking wild in her bamboo chair
Something slithered in her eyes
Gaze tracking my every stride
She stretched out her hand
And gave me one thread for my blanket
Two threads for my soul
A man with silver studs was standing
Like Jesus Christ reborn
But there was change in his pockets
He wouldn’t give to no one
He never thought past his own opinions
He had no conscience to be torn
The heels on those cowboy boots
Well they weren’t even worn
He wished I’d just wither
Under his righteous regard
And he pointed a finger
Taking one thread from my blanket
Two threads from my soul
Now the sky looks big in this parta the world
And the sun it walks a slow slow mile
The wind it’s just God’s long breath out
And you’ll know how that never ends
But it’s talkin a blue streak all the while
When the devil under ground rises up
That weather vane spins 'round south
And the unicorn, well, he just smiles
While the twister ties one on
The devil will beguile
And with teeth’s he’s filed
Steals one thread from my blanket
Two threads from my soul
So now that town’s behind me a dusty state of mind
And this road’s the sweetest river
Through promises made of sand
There’s an angel with her thumb stuck out
Her skirt a white sail in the wind
I shivered before her warning smile
I even thought about taking a stand
Instead I just walked on past
And when our shadows crossed
God just nodded
And so tippin my hat
I gave her one thread from my blanket
Two threads from my soul
In this world and every other it’s worth remembering
What it is to stay warm
On a cold October morning
It’s only in your mind
That clocks run backward
To summers forlorn & gone
Try to recall it was this cold
On the day you were born
And she was there
Her breath so soft
Givin ya this:
One thread from her blanket
Two threads from her soul
----
Words by Steven Erikson
Music by Kit Soden
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Kit Montréal, Québec
October Gold, an acoustic alt-folk duo based out of Montreal, is the latest collaboration of singer/songwriter Kit and his partner in music (and life), violinist Aliza. This marriage of Kit's folksy roots and Aliza's classical sensibilities has created a unique sound that has been described as "painting your imagination with song." ... more
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