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Volume Five

by Quietus

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1.
Eau Dormante 05:45
A scrap of paper, carefully folded goes quiet at one edge. That’s where we meet, that’s where we talk and touch. When there’s a night-storm split she’s the edge there made and that’s hard to explain so I say: Sugar, I want to understand you. How do you mean? The violence is easy once you’ve been handled. But you’ll find me, perhaps, unattractive: I’ve become an eau dormante. The lip forever splits, to even think of it: talking dryly to the humps. I don’t care about revenge, I just leave them with their friends. It’s not forgiveness. It’s how I mean. It’s the downward motion of the land of afternoon. We won’t care about revenge, we’ll just leave them with their friends. It’s not forgiveness.
2.
Pedagogy 09:24
Pedagogy I don’t know enough the names of the trees. And there’s not enough time to learn everything. A boy beat by a woman beat by men. A girl stood nose to the wall by a grandfather. Where did it all begin? It’s a hole in the yard. I subsist on sunlit wooden floorboards in an empty Sunday bar. Worried into the glass what am I to say? Live on almost nothing. Visit what you feel on no one. Occasional unwashed attention is not love. Kindness hides in a quiet one with books and maybe a frown, and a special outfit worn just for you. Of course, you’re anxious about being horrible. We’re all anxious about being horrible. A reach to the wrist, a laugh, they will sting. Tell each other. Tell each other. Tell each other. Then sleep with the weight of suffering gone quiet and warm against you. Don’t worry the wounds of the mouth, They are singing.
3.
4.
This life can be a wooden cupboard upended in an asphalt lot. Yellow flowered contact paper loosed, forgotten, and windstruck. This life can be sunlit hills turned onto their angry sides away from you and the teeth you bare, away from you and the face you make. How do I get this life to your life? How do you get your life to mine? This life can be a dog in a cage in a river flood. Afterward, no reflex of purpose, afterward no need for food, afterward no time for a nice chat, afterward, no sense of the body. Where are you and when are you coming here?
5.
Long have I measured my love for others by a violent plan of action in their defense. They’ve bent back his fingers. They’re teasing her sad face in public. The nice ones tell her she reads too much. The nice ones smile and talk over. I dream knockdowns. The breaking of eyes on the subway. I dream knockdowns. A quiet femoral stab. What more valuable gift, I’ve learned, than safety. What more valuable gift, I’ve learned, than don’t worry. What more valuable gift, I’ve learned, than safety. What more valuable gift, I’ve learned, than anger put to a loving use. I have confessed this to James Baldwin only. A talking of rage and slow suffocation, a talking of France, drinks and good sentences. Articulate menace and being yourself. The weapon of what you decide you are worth. The importance of work and his lovely silk scarves The importance of words and his lovely silk scarves. Oh, how I love him. What more valuable gift, I’ve learned, than safety. What more valuable gift, I’ve learned, than don’t worry. What more valuable gift, I’ve learned, than books. What more valuable gift, I’ve learned, than anger put to a loving use.
6.
Is it cheating if we just drink tea and feel nervous in a city park aching for trees, if our aging hearts are silent when they leap and no one notices the way your throat turns blue? Is it love for the stomach thus to ache like the week his mother fed him only cake as she smoked and spoke of the horror men make, curled her hair and prepared to leave him for one? Is it happiness to be posthemorrhagic and be willing to give up on all of it, to lessen what you need from those that you love to nothing, oh, to nothing? If you could calm the hive of the collar and hands for her, If you could unswell her saddened tongue with listening, If you could worry a pocket stone smooth for her to carry, If you could be the body and mind that get her tumult of anger, Why wouldn’t you? Is it enough to laugh only near the edge of the sea and otherwise protect the mouth from splitting its seams? It’s a quiet, nearly unspoken poetry that’s like fighting, but not to win. Just fighting. Is it beauty to listen to your body break through its center, and thereafter to talk and to love only from great distances? If you could break his mouth so full of entitlement and laughter, If you could abandon the family sick and begin whatever comes after, If you could secure a love for her, conversation and then a chapter, If you could sit in silence, safely near deep water, Why wouldn’t you?

about

"Don't worry the wounds of the mouth. They are singing.”

With Volume Five, their third LP for NYC’s acclaimed ever/never, Quietus expands the range and intensity of their languid kicking against the goads.

Unchanged, certainly, are the unstable sonic landscape and the conflict: a Spenglarian lament—“It’s the downward motion of the land of afternoon”—delivered as romantic chorus; guidance to past selves—“Occasional, unwashed attention is not love”—floated out upon a swirling mayhem. Lyrically, Bankowski is also still on an agonal search, wants to know: “Is it cheating if we just drink tea?” “Is it happiness to be posthemorrhagic?” Volume Five emerges a bit smoother than its predecessors, but its trust, even in the quiet moments, is always in the hiss and the noise. Quietus, it seems, will never relinquish the need to bare its crooked teeth from the ditch.

Volume Five is well-mannered menace, smoky, amber-tinged rock 'n' roll with a good vocabulary, right when you need it.

Recommended to listeners of Pink Reason, Dirty Three, Leonard Cohen, Spacemen 3

Credits:
Music and Lyrics by Geoffrey Bankowski

Quietus:
Geoffrey Bankowski: guitar, vocals
Joseph Harms: lead guitar
Dorian Foerg: drums, backing vocals
Steve Goldstein: guitar

Additional contributors:
Rick Parker: trombone, effects
Matt Brandau: bass
Tim Kuhl: synths
Eric Cecil: guitar
Nathanial Maynard: guitar
Tom Coyan: piano, keys
Alejandra Foerg: backing vocals
Christopher Santacroce: cello

Aaron Black: CD design

Post-production/engineered/mastered by
Ryan Mackstaller at Red Panda Studios
Produced by Geoffrey Bankowski, with
Steve Goldstein and Ryan Mackstaller

credits

released November 6, 2020

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ever/never records New York, New York

Record label located in NYC. Specializing in music for adults.

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