1. |
Strange Fish
05:01
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As I walked out one summer’s morn
I heard the thrush a’ singing
As I came over the top of Cop Hill
I felt the valley lifting
The canal spooled out like video tape
The road went down and up again
The smell came up so fragrant
I felt a strong belonging
As I opened up the shutters one morn
I heard my neighbour knock
He’s asking for my wi-fi password
For his illegal Sky box
His daughter’s doing her GCSE’s
I feel responsibility
He still owes me thirty pounds
So I do it for his family
If the Romans were here
For 400 years
And were never called ‘British’
Then what hope do we have
Of ever being more than
Strange Fish?
As I walked out one summer’s morn
I heard a lass a crying
By the time I got through the door
By her brother’s body was just lying
I held his stomach as I got out my phone
And tried to staunch the bleeding
And by the time the ambulance came
He was in the pub a’ drinking.
The newspaper headlines:
Brave mums and knife crimes
And standing in the way of the people’s wishes
Call me pal, call me buddy,
Don’t look at me funny
Like I’m some strange fish
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2. |
German Sea
04:23
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10 nights in a caravan down by the German Sea
My father said this was a special holiday for me
18 hours of daylight but we had to leave the light on
Grey sea and the clouds merge so you can’t see the horizon
Smell of manure from the farm, stench from the plastic factory
Looks like a photo of east berlin from the 1970s
Went to the beach but we didn’t go on it
Went to the sea but we didn’t swim in it
When all of your children they come back to claim you
You tried to make it perfect but somehow they blame you
Got bitten by a squirrel down behind the shower block
I tried to give it a bit of bread nearly bit my head clean off
6 hours in emergency, 10 stiches in my face
Dad said thank you very much for ruining the holiday
What with all the meals out and entertainment coz we’re bored
Dad said it would have been cheaper to have an all-expenses trip abroad
There’s a kid in a Ronaldo shirt says he lives here with his Mum
We start playing together searching through her boyfriend’s stuff
We find a box of fireworks past their use-by date
He dares me to set a match to it the explosion nearly destroys the gate
I catch a baby pike in the pond by the old bandstand
I didn’t bring a bucket so carry it home in my bare hands
Its flipping, flopping, trying to breathe, the kid says it will die
But when I get it home the little thing is still alive
I used to play with my brother here we used to climb the trees
But that was before the night my dad said that he had to leave
I saw something moving was it a sea monster?
I said what is that Dad he said I can’t see what you see
Keep all my memories down underwater
But sometimes they surface lie rotting on the shore
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3. |
Dark Red Blood
06:18
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I saw my red blood on a pure white bank
The card I carried just beyond my outstretched hand
I saw a pair of Vans and a bull mastiff
A cigarette stubbed out in a snow drift
I heard a chirp of grouse and the clop of hooves
And from a distance the M62
For heaven’s sake this town
A butcher’s gown
1,000 year frown
I was on my way
To tell you my heart
Was filling with love
For you
Never been to Manchester, York or Leeds
The next valley is another country
From my horizontal vantage point I see your name
On a street sign – Old Sykes Lane
For fuck’s sake this town
The Green and brown
The Rose and Crown
As I lay there in the snow
All I could see
Was you getting breakfast
For your baby
A saint is not someone who does good
They’re someone trying to be good
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4. |
Town Gossip
05:17
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This town’s full of gossip
People with nothing to think about
As I held him down my hands shook
Then I read about it on Facebook
He’s my son and I know what he needs
I know they’re talking about
Me
Me
Received the date for my appeal
If they think I’m gonna turn up and kneel
Well they can all think again
Victorian ruins by Victorian men
What I did on the bridge was for his good
Now there’s people who say I should
I should not
Be
Where do I derive my own pleasure?
At midnight, nine straw heads are warmly breathing
Monstrous justice heedless to the consequence
Innocent experience now sentences
One day they will redeem me
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5. |
Linthwaite Houdini
03:30
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He’d been planning it all for six months
The publicity
Had all been sent off
I told him it’s not too late to stop it
But he lay under a blanket
To demonstrate the air pockets
Tried to escape but he couldn’t escape
Practiced with pillows down in the basement
The crowd stopped their cheers and started to pray
A mechanical shovel pulled him out of his grave
The big day was finally here
Down on the green
A carnival atmosphere
He said I can see it all so clearly
Tomorrow’s headlines:
‘The Linthwaite Houdini’
Tried to escape but he couldn’t escape
He’d been playing it out in his head like a tape
Parents grabbed their children and turned them away
A mechanical shovel pulled him out of his grave
Down in London they sneer
About the things we do here
And put it in galleries
But all of our hurt
To escape from the dirt
And charging our cavalry
Tried to escape but he couldn’t escape
Parents blocked the eyes of their children too late
500 people could not turn away
A mechanical shovel pulled him out of his grave
Pulled him unconscious out of his grave
A reporter from the Examiner asked him
‘Why do you do it’?
There must be a reason
He answered with rare wisdom
Everybody’s got something
They want to escape from
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6. |
Bird Boy
05:34
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When I get home from school my Dad’s already into it
Wearing a white singlet, the word ‘Swag’ written ‘cross it
The letters they are printed ‘cross a sexy girls’ breasts
And I think about the girl before I get into bed
My Mum works in a nursing home she says she needs a drink
From her nights spent cleaning up 90-year-old shit
She says ‘Do you think I could go on Love Island, seriously?’
I say ‘Mum, you are not sexy enough for tv’
I walk up to the quarry
A flurry
Of ground pigeons move
From under my feet
Like the arrival
Of sudden bad news
The world splits in two
I love the summers you can play football ‘til after 10
A yellow moon rises above the terraces
Sometimes the bigger boys think they can really take the piss
But once they’ve played against me they no longer think like this
Everyone says that we’ve
Not had a summer
Like this
Since the last really hot
Summer
Of ‘76
The dog pants and licks
A grey heron
Staring
At fish down there by the canal
To me
It feels special
To everyone else it’s banal
Sometimes I
Think I’m
The only person who can see it
That it might be a
Ghost, or a
Phantom, an ancestral spirit
Paying a visit
Everything that will happen
Has already happened
We’ve been learning ‘bout reincarnation
In a past life I was a raven
My grandfather thinks there should be a war
And that is what wars are for
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7. |
Buddleia and Vomit
04:39
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Buddleia and vomit
Next door in the vacant lot
Black plastic flapping in the field
Sometimes my anger makes me ill
Sometimes it feels like I have died
But I haven’t realised
Invisible in broad daylight
A ghost haunting a former life
Here he comes like a fire in a stall
Cauterised, I don’t feel anything at all
Moving mouth, plucking reasons from thin air
I know his past. I sympathise but I don’t care
When we wake in the winter gloom
Wash his face get him dressed for school
Your vacant look your sullen grin
I hate how you’ve made me hate him
Cheesy chips and a can of European beer
Lying round like the clues in some strange crime scene
Passed out in the greenhouse once again
He was always good at playing the victim
He’s got your eyes
Nose and chin
And I see your face
Every time I looks
At him
Cauterised and a quarter of a wife
Numb to all, that’s the story of my life
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8. |
Blackmoorfoot
03:10
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My father asks what do I think abandoning my weaving
I say I’ve been up to Blackmoorfoot collecting peat-moss for the evening
My mother asks where have I been to get my skirt hems pushed round all widdershins
I say I’ve been to Blackmoorfoot to watch the summer moon a risin’
My friends stop me at the laneway gate I say ‘Do you have to ask it?
I’ve been up to Blackmoorfoot to gather mushrooms for my basket
My sister asks what have I done that evening when in bed
I say I’ve been up to Blackmoorfoot a countin Pheasant’s eggs
Enoch’s hammer came down on us
I wait for her at Blackmoorfoot behind the old bus shelter
Then we catch the bus back home while my mates all insult her
The clouds come in on Scapegoat Hill where they hung the martyrs
The past’s so close sometimes I feel it reaching out to touch us
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9. |
Pole Moor
04:51
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In loving memory of Clara Bamforth
And Heidi, daughter of the above
Died April 5th 1897
Of Dirker, Marsden, aged seven months
We held her for fifteen minutes
Long enough to give her a name
And then a raven dressed in a white gown
Came and took her away
Does hope exist so it can be taken?
Does sweetness lie in a chord of death?
The mobile phone tower blinks on Pole Moor
She put the pale thing to her breast
Saw her transformed into a stranger
As she sat in the neon glow
Where she was I just couldn’t reach her
Something quietly got up to go
You carve inscriptions to make sure it happened
You give things names or they never were
Her mother said that there was a history
Both of her sisters hadn’t gone full term
You think to you it will never happen
And if you did, how could you live?
But these electric trams and buses
Built on the bones of tragedy
It’s so easy to think that nothing will change
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Toby Martin Sydney, Australia
Toby Martin is a singer-songwriter from Sydney/Gadigal Australia, inspired by British Isles folk music and fuzzed out indie rock.
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