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Rating: "Cold House" is about time.
And thus about numbers too, since there are always numbers when it comes to time.
The album starts and I don't notice it, the first 30 seconds don't exist, every time it plays, I only perceive it when nearly the first minute has already passed. I wonder what those initial seconds contain.
Then there always comes a memory, one of those distant ones that you can never understand if it's truly yours or the image from someone else's story.
Here it is.
My mother tells me that the old woman from the landing across is no longer there, new tenants will arrive in about a month and, as she tells me this, I think back to when I encountered the old lady during her illness, which had been yellowing her skin for years, and I said something like "you're changing, you've grown" and my mother quickly corrected me, saying that old people don't grow.
I hadn't really understood at age 6 that at some point growth stops and that changes from then on begin to be a milder form of deterioration. And I was doing the math, counting - here are the numbers that always return along with time - it had to be identifiable, geometrically recognizable, this moment when I too would stop growing and start yellowing.
The Hood talk to me about this. Sometimes I find the freezing of that moment I was looking for as a child. It's the cold electronics together with the warm whisper of the throat, it's the mood traces drawn in pastel that have stopped and finally made it observable. Tracks like "You Show No Emotion At All", "Lines Low To Frozen Ground" tell me these stories.
"Cold House" has taught me not to worry about the consistency of our transformations.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
03 Branches Bare (05:55)
Remove that need
The orchids thrive
In the dark
I found the night awake
We found dried leaves
Pressed inside the book
Like a stark vision of time
I wish you were still alive
And will the memories be lost
When we lose you
When they clear the house
You lived so many years
No matter how far you are away
I see you in the distance
The distance
We spit in the pond to give the fish something to pray to
Sometimes the sunset doesn’t want to be photographed
We are no tigers in the picked-bone grasslands
Ela dear knows a dork in a thrift store hat
And that is that.
06 I Can't Find My Brittle Youth (03:11)
i can’t find my brittle youth
is it strong enough to hold on to?
just try it anyway
can’t let the years (without you know)
sometimes it’s just so hard
to find something that inspires you
your anger and hope
did you leave these things behind?
you said how you hated days that end so soon
cause it makes your life slip away
and move so fast to old age
you didn’t you didn’t you didn’t wait
oh god i feel life slip away
it ends so soon, so grab it today
why you can’t seize the day
why you can’t seize the day
07 This Is What We Do to Sell Out(s) (03:05)
i pray for evenings when
it’s clear across the land
when distant sun is lost
i walked alone but with you
it was five years ago
immersed in autumn days
we used to wake to the morning sun
oh don’t you ever lie awake at night
and think about your life as a child
and all your friends who have died so young
oh do you even think at all?
do you even think at all?
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