Get all 4 Project Blackbird releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Thank You for Last Time, If This Is the End, Laissons cela entre nous (Radio Edit), and Endurance.
1. |
Aurora Borealis
06:47
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Home is the ferocious and unreachable light / indecision that splits us inside and out / Light is the crash and spark, the elements / the roar at a distance that comes / in draughts and whispers / (like summer cicadas playing their wings) / (like the sky having learned a magic spell) / The colours make us blink, shield ourselves. / How it blazes, this light. / How it lives. / How it stretches beyond boundaries / and dances its chaotic jig. / You are the savage and unreachable light. / You are home to the words / and the pause / and the dance. / You are the infrequent / and constant incantation: the viewer / the spectacle / the whole.
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2. |
Same Heart
06:19
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The station air is heavy with the heat / of commuters shutting down their daily lives / A rush-hour cologne of the bodies pressed together / Slick as seals that have landed on the rocks / Eyes stay fixed on tiny, glowing screens / A “like” away from human touch / But one man stares only at the tracks / Like he’s looking for salvation along the third rail // We share the same blood / The same blood / We share the same heart / The same beating heart // A woman turns around to reveal / the crow’s feet that line her tired face / She holds the man in her gaze from an arm’s length away / Gives an almost imperceptible shake of her head / Her mouth moves to form the words / But the sound is swallowed up by the train / She lifts her hands, reaching out to him / As he opens up his coat and steps towards the void // We share the same blood / The same blood / We share the same heart / The same beating heart / We share the same soul / The same soul
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3. |
Endurance
05:22
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On the moon-bleached peaks of the highest mountains / From abandoned fishing boats upon the tranquil seas / Through the tendrilled jungles and through the drowning / Sands of deserts, and the ceintures of cities / A ghost woman marched, sailed, and swam, determined / To slake the thirst of our enduring rage / And to use her voice, for as we have learned, it / Risked becoming subsumed on an earth-bound stage / Her heart was swollen, not with love but with anger: / Escorted by Luna and the pull of the tide / She was keen in her quest to find guidance and answers / To injustice committed against her own kind / When at last she arrived at her strange destination / The closest point that exists between land and the moon / She bathed throat and lungs in the illumination / And gathered her voice – to howl, and to fuel / Her call: “No more,” she cried; “no more mutilation / Of our sisters’ bodies and our daughters’ minds / No more insecure men who, fearing castration / Wield their weakness as a weapon against our lives / No more doubting our rights, no more guns for our brothers / No more of the deaths that shouldn’t have been / Of those of us killed because of our lovers, / By their hands, or at the command of our governments / No violation of flesh, no more no means yes / No removal of choice from the paths that we take / Mother, I come to unburden our distress / And to ask you to bequeath us some of your strength!” / The moon hung, suspended, in the vast blot of ink / In the still, sombre night and the silence of space / And tolerated the force of all of the torment / That this spectre, on our behalf, had unleashed / And her cratered sphere became pocked through with holes / As if moths had fed on a circle of linen / Then scattered, and sparkled like specks of pure gold / Each piece of the orb released from its prison / Of celestial logic; and freed, they flew / Dispersing into the dark sea of comets / Where, emboldened, each one held fast and grew / More powerful than all of the dizzying planets.
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4. |
Postscript
05:15
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Fifteen weeks before the earth fell in / I lost my nerve outside the gate / Inertia turns into the undoable / Like broken glass before it breaks // 900 miles / Our fingers disentwined / I sent your clothes back home // I watch my flight as it gains altitude / And send a message from the ground / There’s no reply. That night I dream about the bridge / I’ve crossed it now – and I can’t ask you to forgive this // 900 miles / I lost my sense of time / I had my fill / And thought that you’d stay still / And thought that you’d stay, still
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5. |
Selde
02:45
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6. |
Elevation
03:59
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You will never forget those first winter mornings as you stepped out / into the ineffable nation of a new life / Each day was like a fresh descent from the deck / and each day you asked yourself, What have I done? / How well I speak and walk and work / who I am, who I am perceived to be / could truly make or break me / become my undoing, or my reason to go on // Rise – we will rise // This is what you still think about, even generations after you have learned / to ignore those who question your citizenship, identity, or faith / that the hateful language you hear does not represent the true spirit of home / that “when someone is cruel or acts like a bully / you don’t stoop to their level” / Instead, you try to find dignity and power in the lessons they have never had to retain / because “When they go low, we go high” // Rise – we will rise // It seems so long ago now / But you will never forget that morning as you stepped out, lifted your chin / saw that it was spring - / and for a brief moment, mistook the buds of the magnolias / for hundreds of sleeping doves, their heads tucked into folded wings – / those Others who were waiting, who were dreaming / who would at any moment awaken and take flight
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7. |
Sunflower
04:33
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It’s a scene that I know like the back of my hand / “What I said”, “No you didn’t”, it’s all part of the drama / You walk away, I’m enraged, I just can’t understand / how domesticity can twist us into respective horrors / I lie in bed, rest my head, try to get some perspective / You do the dishes, keeping busy, try to gain self-control / We’re both ridiculous to think that we won’t regret it / if we just carry on repeating the same old, same old // You’re the thunder / In a field of flowers / We’re relentless / like a waterfall // But with time I always find that the skies are much brighter / We stop and listen, reposition and the edges are gone / I’m no fool; when we’re cool you’re positively enlightened / And it’s true, if not for you I wouldn’t be writing this song / On another day // You’re the sunflower / In the field of thunder / You’re the sunlight / In the waterfall
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8. |
Underneath the Ramparts
05:05
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As I lay down on Burrough Hill / The sun burned red and air grew still / I closed my eyes to take some rest / ‘Til a blackbird lit upon my breast / He sang his tale so soft and low / At first my senses did not know / If I were dreaming or awake / By what enchantment could he speak? / “I’m brother,” sang he, “to one who toiled / On this hill-fort’s most fertile soil / She worked the land by ridge and furrow / And every night she drowned her sorrow / For Mother killed me, Father fed / Upon my bones when I was dead / You’ll find my sister’s broken heart / Underneath the ramparts” / “Blackbird,” I said, “how well you sing / Please sing that piece for me again” / “No, I’ll not repeat my sad refrain / ‘Til you give me your golden chain” / I took the chain from round my neck / And put it round his feathered head / He bowed to me and sang once more / In a voice so plaintive, clear and pure: / “For Mother killed me, Father fed / Upon my bones when I was dead / You’ll find my sister’s broken heart / Underneath the ramparts / For Mother killed me, Father fed / Upon my bones when I was dead / We had so much and so much lost / Underneath the ramparts”
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9. |
Lighthouse
03:40
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10. |
The Old Whim-Horse
06:19
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He’s an old grey horse, with his head bowed sadly, / And with dim old eyes and a queer roll aft, / With the off-fore sprung and the hind screwed badly / And he bears all over the brands of graft; / And he lifts his head from the grass to wonder / Why by night and day now the whim is still, / Why the silence is, and the stampers’ thunder / Sounds forth no more from the shattered mill. / In that whim he worked when the night-winds bellowed / On the riven summit of Giant’s Hand, / And by day when prodigal Spring had yellowed / All the wide, long sweep of enchanted land.... // But the whim stands still, and the wheeling swallow / In the silent shaft hangs her home of clay, / And the lizards flirt and the swift snakes follow / O’er the grass-grown brace in the summer day; / And the corn springs high in the cracks and corners / Of the forge, and down where the timber lies; / And the crows are perched like a band of mourners / On the broken hut on the Hermit’s Rise. / All the hands have gone, for the rich reef paid out, / And the company waits till the calls come in; / But the old grey horse, like the claim, is played out, / And no market’s near for his bones and skin.... // He is limping still round the old, old track. / Now he pricks his ears, with a neigh replying / To a call unspoken, with eyes aglow, / And he sways and sinks in the circle, dying; / From the ring no more will the grey horse go. / In a gully green, where a dam lies gleaming, / And the bush creeps back on a worked-out claim, / And the sleepy crows in the sun sit dreaming / On the timbers grey and a charred hut frame, / Where the legs slant down, and the hare is squatting / In the high rank grass by the dried-up course, / Nigh a shattered drum and a king-post rotting / Are the bleaching bones of the old grey horse. (Here comes a light – it’s glowing)
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11. |
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Blow wind blow // Didn’t I drink the ocean / Didn’t I show you empathy / Didn’t I set the fire / when the wolves were circling? // Blow wind blow / I will stand before the wilderness // Didn’t I build a shelter / when you had nowhere to hide / Didn’t I withdraw the arrows / that would have bled your psyche dry? / Didn’t I make you virile / acting out your fantasies / Didn’t I bear the burden / of your child strapped to me? / You will not be what defines us / To my pain I’ll not be bound / I will stand before the wilderness / At the house that you blew down // (She awakes in the gloaming, as if from a deep sleep / Mouth open, tongue lolling over pointed teeth / Her eyes are bright amber; her coat has become dense / She can smell the heat and the tang of her scent / She feels her heart racing; her mind begins to quicken / But is emptied of words; she has no more need for them / At first wary, her sinews attune to the magic / And lengthen her stride through the forest of ashes)
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12. |
Nearest Relative
07:29
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I don’t want to hear the hammer / I don’t want to see your eyes / With their centres out of balance / Telling stories of the wild // I know this is not you / But to you it’s the truth // If I live to tell the doctor / She could write another script / Give you all the best lines to memorise / When the meaning starts to slip // I know this is not you / But to you it’s the truth // As the hinges start to buckle / And the static fills the line / How can the voice coming through stay so calm and serene? / “Please state your address one more time”// I know this is not you / Disco lights of neon blue / Dancing around you / But to you it’s the truth
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13. |
Brother
01:23
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14. |
Blackbird
02:56
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Rest your wings a little while / They work so hard to give you flight / Stalwart heart, I won’t leave your side / ‘til you decide that it’s time // you never know what the sun will bring / my love // I had a dream I was falling from / A sailing ship in the sky / Falling towards oblivion / I worked so hard to find you // you never know what the sun will bring / my love
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Project Blackbird England, UK
The "extraordinary" Project Blackbird, as BBC's Tom Robinson has called them, offer an atmospheric and genre-fluid listening experience that draws equally upon intellect and emotion. "Imagine a party at Ronnie Scott’s," one fan suggests, "where Sade, Björk, Jeff Beck, and David Byrne meet Portishead and then go for a late night curry to exchange ideas…sublime”. ... more
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