#2: Recent Scars February 5th, 2006
Download mp3 (3.6 MB) (or subscribe)
This one was written about a year and a half ago. It’s pretty much the same six-chord pattern the whole way through, but the lyrical line is shorter than the ostinato, which I hope gives the song a nice forward momentum and saves it from feeling overly repetitive.
On this recording I managed to get the pronouns wrong at the end of the second verse, so for best results imagine a nice, deliberate, dripping-with-portent “but they…have…too” instead of whatever I sang.
It’s the way that you sit so you can reach everything from there
All angles and eyelashes, beat-up shoes and scruffy hair
It’s the things that you say
It’s how you make me concentrate
That I might catch the edge to every inside joke you makeIt’s the way you speak in riddles and how you choose your words:
Hesitate a little, so I know you thought them through
as much as I will
And I’m sure the others wonder what it is with me and you
Well, let them wonder more
I’ve been wrong before, but they have, tooGlitching live heartskips we both pretend to concentrate
These days, who cares?
What’s maturity anyway?
Leaving here with recent scars
From each miscue that got us this far
And I’m glad you know me well,
but I wish you couldn’t tell I try this hard
At 12:53 am on February 5th, 2006, unbottled soul » Blog Archive » yay for Saturday night wrote:
[…] [Edit 02:50: In still more news, Lindsey Kuper just posted her second podcast on Shoebox Full of Tapes, called Recent Scars. It’s a potent, concentrated song. It speaks to me. I’m not sure exactly what it says, but it speaks to me and I like the feelings it describes.] […]
At 11:29 am on February 5th, 2006, unbottled soul wrote:
Kuper kudos…
I can’t write right now. I also am having trouble forming coherent thoughts. However, I do love Lindsey Kuper’s latest, Recent Scars, and think it’s her best song. Of course, I have finally worn out on her four non-Shoebox songs [link currently b…
At 10:14 pm on February 6th, 2006, Will wrote:
I like the lyrics and I really like the music (it doesn’t seem repetitive because I keep wanting more), but I just don’t feel a connection between them. There are moments where they go together (mostly the end of the second and third verses) but they generally feel separate. I think another instrument might bridge them although I’d hate to lose the current purity of the piano.
At 11:13 pm on February 6th, 2006, Lindsey wrote:
Will — hmm, yeah. It sort of — goes in and out of phase of fitting together and not fitting together. Then again, that’s sort of the point, with the eight-beat line and the twelve-beat ostinato and the places they intersect and don’t. If I broke the lines according to the ostinato, it would go like this:
The last line still breaks the same way. So maybe that’s why you feel like the last lines of the verses are where it comes together.
But having said that…the first line of the song seems especially…forced, doesn’t it? Geez. It’s been a long time, but I think I wrote the lyrics and music separately and only put them together later. In fact, now that I think about it, I’m surprised that it ends up working at all.
At 3:50 pm on February 7th, 2006, jes5199 wrote:
Oddly enough, I prefer the recorder lyrics over the transcribed version
and the first line… is a problem
and I can’t decide if “glitching live heartskips” works or not
but the whole thing comes together well enough that it’s in my XMMS playlist this week, along The Eels and The Shins and some quiet bits that I cropped out of some Nine Inch Nails tracks
At 3:53 pm on February 7th, 2006, jes5199 wrote:
i typo.
1s/recorder/recorded/
At 9:54 pm on February 8th, 2006, Lindsey wrote:
Jes — thanks!
Yeah, the more I think about it, the more the first line seems wrong. There has to be a better way to phrase it. And regarding “they” and “I” — it’s funny, because that was how it was originally written — “they” first and then “I”. I changed it to make more sense (ending with “…I have, too” kind of contradicts the whole verse), but I guess it sounds better the original way — which was probably why that’s what came out when I finally recorded it, even after months and months of doing it the other way. Maybe I’m trying to tell me something.
At 11:46 am on February 10th, 2006, jes5199 wrote:
Well, it’s okay for the verse to be self-contradictory: doesn’t that fit the character’s state of mind?
At 8:17 pm on February 10th, 2006, Lindsey wrote:
Aw, but let her have one verse of unequivocalness. Believe me, after a few more weeks of my self-contradictory lyrics, you’ll long for that one tiny shred of it. Heh.
Nah, you have a point. Let the record state that the, uh, that the record is ambiguous with regard to the second verse.
At 11:04 pm on February 10th, 2006, indigo wrote:
hey, lindsey:
I think the problem with the first line is actually just the phrasing of the first half - the second half is great, and speaks to the person’s intent in their positioning. keep it! Can I suggest, for the first half of the line:
‘Huddled in a tangled mash… you can reach everything from there.’
it’s a nice rhyme with ‘… eyelashes’ as well.
liking the podcast!
At 12:35 am on February 11th, 2006, David Pukin wrote:
Hey Lindsey. You might be interested to know that someone had been asking around for your cover of “Home” at Netphoria of all places, a place I never post on anymore. This person raved about it, and continued to do so when someone posted a link to it. Meanwhile, the other netphorians reactions were at best ‘mixed’, as you would expect.
This sudden interest in your music prompted us to recall that we still had not put up your cover of “Soma” you did with Tanny. It’s now up for download in 56 kbps preview form at the Act IV site.
Meanwhile, our myspace
is back up again. Since we are deciding to be cautious
about putting covers on there for the time being, we
decided to put original songs. For this week only we
have your original demo you did with Tanny, “Try
Not To Stare”. I hope that is ok with you. If that is
not, let me know and we will remove it.
talk to you soon,
David
P.S. did you get my last email?
At 1:40 am on February 11th, 2006, Lindsey wrote:
indigo — Cool; thanks for listening. I really, really dig the idea of having an internal rhyme with “angles and eyelashes”, although I don’t know if “tangled mash” is quite what I’m going for. Hmm…
David — Heh, I just found that Netphoria thread. They’re dead right about my singing being bad at Act IV ‘01 — I was 19, nervous as hell, and that was the first song of my set! Anyway, it’s cool that you put “Try Not to Stare” up. And yes, I did get your mail, but I didn’t want to reply until I had a chance to really sit down and tackle the CSS issue, so that’s why you haven’t heard from me yet. I’ll get back to you soon.
At 1:54 pm on February 11th, 2006, David Pukin wrote:
If you notice, Steven tried to give an explaination for that, saying it was first show. He also had posted a link to the Ghost Children cd previous to you, perhaps you missed it. But they didn’t seem to dignify it, even with a ‘oh that’s sounds a little bit better’ or ‘that sounds just as bad’ ;).
At 12:40 am on April 19th, 2006, unbottled soul » Blog Archive » recent fool with new and old scars wrote:
[…] - Lindsey Kuper, Recent Scars […]
At 12:44 am on April 19th, 2006, unbottled soul » Blog Archive » still a fool, still with scars wrote:
[…] - Lindsey Kuper, Recent Scars […]
At 5:31 pm on September 1st, 2006, WaltDe wrote:
Keep up the great work on your blog. Best wishes WaltDe
At 11:38 am on August 18th, 2007, Shoebox Full of Tapes » #24: Recent Scars wrote:
[…] was a little astonished, today, going back and listening to how this sounded a year and a half ago. I used to actually sound like that? You people actually listened? Man. Redeciding hourly if […]