PRAISE FOR DEAD BLUE
“Takes us back to a time when we all were a bit more fearless… here to make our bodies move”
- Mangowave
“Nothing but pure quality”
- Thoughts Words Action
“Tasty and nostalgic, this is brilliant... Amazing”
- Indieoclock
“Troublingly bleak observations with moments of pulsating pop exhilaration... unique”
- Rising Artists
“Groovy, pulsating pop hits”
- Sinusoidal
"Saturnian flux and heady Jupiter clashing... a noisy canto exhumed from the fiery depths"
- PopFad
“The Miller Test take us back to the golden age of rock and you can’t but love it.”
- YMX
An up-close and personal apocalypse - a true record for our times - Dead Blue was recorded at Big Jelly Studios, Ramsgate, in November 2020 and March 2021 with producer John Winfield (Jimmy Somerville, Paul Mosley, Delta Saxophone Quartet). It includes the singles Eden Gaol, described on its release earlier this year as “fun, ridiculous, and catchy” by Alt77 and a “toe-tapping, hip-hoppish slice of art-pop with echoes of Bowie and Funkadelic” by Jammerzine, and No Venus Moves, “outstanding indie rock,” according to Berlin on Air.
LYRICS
RIGHT ON
Heaven bound
Heaven sent
Heaven prayed for
Paid for sale or rent
Heaven knows
At heaven’s gate
Heaven’s angels
Rebels stayed on late
Slide on, slide on
Into position, take me
Side on, side on
With your permission, make me
Ride on, ride on
Ain’t no decision to decide on
Right on, right on
Mama see
Mama do
Mama paint no portrait
Ain’t for you
Mama no
Mama please
Mama sworn off
Sawn off to her knees
All alone
All afraid
All us trafficked addicts
Throwing shade
I won’t breed
Just don’t care
I can’t drink the water
Breathe the air
EDEN GAOL
In a plague one summer
Poison in the water
Every stricken quarter
Quiet playground momma
Empty of the children
Looking like we killed again
Don’t dream so indiscreet
Don’t walk the vampire street
Blue light there fading on your trail
Your body is a lollipop of wine
To toast a traffic cop
Where right is left
Like life is death
And Thursday, Sunday
Eden, gaol
Burn the safehouse daddy
Innocents and hunchbacks
Picking from the meatracks
Quite the playhouse baddie
Bourgeoisie and beggar
Going down there together
No clapping statues please
No buboed pubis intercedes
Blue light there flashing at your tail
Phantom nation gathers in
The hood of patients gatherin’
Where right is left
Like life is death
As Thursday, Sunday
Eden, gaol
Close the fleshpot honey
Patch it shut and stay down
Catch it on the way down
O the despot money!
Coughing China bat flu
Dollar coming back at you
A wild riot’s good
Don’t spare the fated blood
Blue light they’re shining through your mail
These shades come sharply suited
High on meth
Distanced
Polluted
Where Right is left
Like life is death
And Thursday, Sunday
Eden, gaol
NO VENUS MOVES
Put a sign on a singer
In front of a mirror where once her likeness stood
Plumb line from a pistol finger to a temple
Sentimentally shaped like blood
Heartbreak rending
Enchained, unending
Little bitty poison
Armageddon, man - it don’t look good
Why not have the heavens play a hand?
Philosophers’ll never understand
Martyrdom hard
A saint approves
Don’t know no Venus moves
Gone a round on a pitchfork
Digging up roots like skeletons from the soil
Underground with your shit-talk, mama
I’m-a-skinnin’ this snake
I’m-a-skimmin’ off healing oil
Wake up, my lover
Get undercover
Little bitty fire got me bringing it to the boil
Why not have the heavens play a hand?
The police here never understand
Astrologers royal
With sabre-tooths
Don’t know no Venus moves
All down with an old curse
1,000 years’ black water from the well
Downtown - could it be far worse?
The hospital impossible
Darkest hell
The choir singing on
Myself, I’m clinging on a little bitty spire
Come and kick it till it rings the bell
I wanna have the heavens play a hand
There’s no one else on earth could understand
Little boy lost to angel grooves
Don’t know no Venus moves
DEAD BLUE
Death don’t have no mercy on this land
The word was good, I hope you understand
Heart petition in a yellow vest
If it’s nothing to you, sister, could I get some rest?
A rat-claw scrabble for the bread we blessed
Dead blue
Death don’t have no mercy on this soil
The help is fled, we’ve traded lung for oil
Straight up sister, would the state allow
A little mercy wringing off a hanged man’s bough?
Probably a machine for that now anyhow
Dead blue
Yippee-aye-yo, yippee-aye-yay
Someone get a doctor quick
I think I see the lifeline slipping
Undead riding over me
Assholish engine saline dripping
One more time
Death don’t have no mercy on this ground
Orchard so unfortunately drowned
Gazing grass choking off that soul
Help you kid you sister round a Polish hole
Or maybe that was me when I was on a roll
Dead blue
Yippee-aye-yo, yippee-aye-yay
Someone get a doctor quick
I think I see the lifeline slipping
Undead riding over me
That tyrant eyeless needle dipping
One more time
Death don’t have no mercy on this bed
Orderly recording all we said
Sister, curtain up the area
Like for Does and the victims of malaria
Can’t be heaven, baby
This is scarier
Dead blue
TO THE WORM
Lonely
Tell me you’re lonely
Tired and stonedly
My one and only
Give up your secret
Honey don’t sweeten it
Mama done weep on it
Papa stop preachin’ it
Sister don’t worry
We’re in no hurry
They are the quarry
Tell ‘em we’re sorry
Picking up pieces
Looking like Jesus
Redneck caesars pin their pieces on a door
Where are my friends?
Lights out and the tracks on
Tallahassee moon shine on now to Jackson
Bless you, baby, I’m beginning to burn
Mezcal Mary, what a terrible term
Drink that bottle to the worm
Reasons
Gimme your reasons
Count ‘em in legions
Kill ‘em in seasons
All the illegals
Working up evils
Running on diesels
In the cathedrals
Places we’ve sallied
Chances miscarried
Blows that we’ve parried
We should get married
Picking up pieces
Looking like Jesus
And the leaves blown in like wreaths heaped on a floor
Drinking till we get stinking
Then we get thinking
Of an unlinking
Gonna be trouble
Burst of our bubble
Down in the rubble
I’ll have a double
Pissing out bleaches
Over the beaches
Bleedin’ horse leeches
Oh the poor creatures
Picking up pieces
Looking like Jesus
Things they teach us
I am speechless, mon amour
Bless you, baby, I’m beginning to burn
Mezcal Mary, what a terrible term
Ain’t no messing there’s a lesson to learn
No bottom-out dollar when there’s baht to burn
Drink that bottle to the worm
SOUTHEND VIC
We got our kicks at Southend Vic’s
Fooled around behind the label
The dogs forsook their tender sticks
To lick our fruit under the table
Clean smear
Write it tender, bring it here
Lean pier
Crumble softly
Tier by tier
My dear
Threw a dollar on the bar
Hunchback came and poured us coffee
He struck a chord on his guitar
The living dead chewed on their toffee
Drones’ pleasure dromes
Exiles seeking alien homes
Dreamier
Nothing happening
No place here
My dear
Sometimes I feel, my dear
Like I’m oh-so far from land
But I’m just here on the sand
Fixing on a monkey gland
Hope you all understand my world
Sky was closing out the land
Trains all parked past the funfair
You take my scarf and hold my hand
Walk back with me
It’s only thunder
Lean Teen
I can see her peering through the screen
So clear
Wipe away that raging tear
My dear
B.O.T.H.
My oh my!
Better the big beat so high
My mistake
Better the big beat no wake
Make like the albino
Run out the casino
Suburbian Reno
Curtains for El Nino!
Why oh why?
Better the big beat no lie
Everything capsizing
Why ain’t the sun rising?
Jury is arriving
Blood on the horizon
God on the horizon
Stood on the horizon
Flooding the horizon
Blood on the horizon
Now
High on life
Better the big beat, no knife
Cry away
Better the big beat I say
Sudden for no reason
Sunshine out of season
Dollars are high treason
Some people no pleasin’
My advice
Better the big beat come twice
My oh my!
Better the big beat so high
My mistake
Better the big beat unwake
Blistering unholy
Solstice in Nairobi
So what if it’s only
Fixing itself slowly
Why oh why?
Better the big beat no lie
FAIR’S FAIR
Built an empty castle
On an empty plain
Empty vessels calling out my name
Emptying my heart
I wrote an empty page
Empty-headed songs for an empty stage
Sweet magic of the crowd
‘Tis broken, we are bowed
Is the dream of girls allowed?
I’m not aware
Stop telling me I don’t care
Fair’s fair
No coin from an empty pocket
Disappear into an empty plate
Somewhere doesn’t empty out till late
Empties on the tables
Empties on the floors
Empties washing up on the empty shores
Sweet magic, make it true
‘Tis broken, how aren’t you?
Pick me up and see me through
I declare
Sweet nothing but a nom-de-guerre
Fair’s fair
Set an empty heart down
Took up an empty view
Nailed it - now we’re all empty too
Empty like a coffin
Wherein my empty soul
Empty to the bottom of the hole
Take aback society
‘Tis broken, how aren’t we?
Rip it off and run with me
Don’t despair
Promised everyone there’s nothing there
Fair’s fair
Take magic from the sky
‘Tis broken, how am I
Still to love here till I die?
I still care
Still dancing on the poisoned air
Fair’s fair
BLUE BY VENUS
Rushed my sorry goodbye
Ruthless exile, foolish duty bound
Only one sobering light on my shifting horizon
Swimming in drink - bad juju!
They’re chasing us down
Left her to a blacked-out room
Sleep in wine, sodomy in verse
City moving through her again
I can see a mark rising
Just say it won’t kill you
No, not until I get there first
Couldn’t sleep tonight
In that planetary light
All arced from stars and ribboned space-time
Brushing off your flesh to burn mine
Earth-night air
Blue by Venus there
Crowds lovers frozen in the doorway
Streets contracted point me your way
Innit like love - friendly heavens betray
Innit like love - shrink the world to make the wordplay
Innit like love - kick you when you’re meaning to stray
It ain’t right love to die and leave you feeling this…
If I find you on a runway
Trembling glass reflect a morning star
Don’t shiver at my trespassing now
It ain’t nothing surprising
We’re one in this world
Love forgive me, but that’s how we are