Get all 17 Tyler Shipley releases available on Bandcamp and save 30%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Confusing Times, Feathers They Fall, Theory and Praxis, True Stories, Fall's Autumn, Every Glacier and Crevasse, Old Trees, Three of Wands, and 9 more.
1. |
Pigeon in Detroit
03:54
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Huddled against the wind, pigeon don't got a lot of friends. Her own fault, made a choice, checked a box that read 'pigeon in detroit.' In other words, we don't care. Someone had to take that job, life ain't easy, life ain't fair. So hold your talon in the air, if it's the only talon up there. Pigeon lives crash up against each other with such consequence, one day we're laughing in the snow, the next I'm in the hospital. Your bedside I don't belong I didn't know you very long, things got real so suddenly you're shaking with epilepsy. So hold your head together now, in over my head anyhow. Fill the air with platitudes about changing the world with our attitudes. Sometimes it's not good enough, the earth is made of crueler stuff: concrete, plastic, glass and steel, no easy place to find your next meal, so huddle close, you'll be a pigeon until you go. So hold onto your dignity. You don't got that you don't got anything.
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2. |
The Ocean Still
04:50
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Through a window north on indian with an old edition of The Idiot, reaching out and quickly shutting in, caught between the moon and what's lighting it. Ripping out the weaker part of me, holes so big I'm parted like the sea. Railline breeze will shake me like a leaf; is it pain or is it pain relief? Since I started treading carefully, burning slow and steady kerosene, boat I'm rowing flows so merrily; I've forgotten waves so harrowing. But the ocean still can't carry us; wind won't push us to the precipace; in the sea suspended motionless, take no action, cause no consequence.
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3. |
Candleflame
02:35
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Things I don't think enough about, candleflame don't fizzle out. My friend Scott lost his dad, house burned down and that was that. I only met him once I think. Went to a Jays game, had a drink. He worked out on the railroad. He wasn't particularly old. Scott's grown into a quiet man. I should call him, if I can. But time goes by and it gets hard and quiet men they grow apart. If we don't ever talk again, Scott, I'm sorry you lost your old man, and I'll think about you both, now and then.
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4. |
On the Horizon
06:40
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Some nights i confront an uncomfortable truth: my father is healthy but last year he turned seventy-two and each time i see him i notice a change, just a bit less mobile and a few more aches and pains. He can't go very long without a nap; when the light turns green he's slow to react. He's really mellowed out in his old age; it's for the better I think most people would say, but he's popping six or seven pills a day and he's lost his once intimidating upper body strength. I know every single dad in the world someday has to go, but I don't want to lose a man who, in some ways, I hardly know, whose nervous ticks and tensions and flaws I see in myself, who taught me how to hold a runner on base and how to pick one off, who gave me a model of a man you could depend upon. Thanks to him, in crisis situations, I have always stayed calm. Though I see it coming on the horizon I will never be ready to say goodbye. My mother will probably move to a smaller place and she'll be okay living out her days, but she'll hate being alone through the night, it's bothered her pretty much all her life. When she talks about him over the years, one minute she'll be fine and the next she'll be in tears. My sister's reaction is hard to predict, she's a different person than when we were kids, but she loves the hell of out my dad and I'm so goddam proud of her for that. I'm lucky to say I don't yet know what happens when a family loses the centre of gravity. Dad's still got a lot of good time, I should temper all this thinking about his dying, write his story before his memory fades. It's a hell of a life he made. Though I see it coming on the horizon I will never be ready to say goodbye.
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5. |
Deforestation
03:42
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I know a young man, I worry about him. He's got a youtube channel and a mental health condition. he reached out to me when I was thirty-three, I was ten years older and a figure of authority. He asked if I would go with him to "pimps and pumps." It's a club night but I don't go to clubs and I don't think its a good scene for him, he doesn't know how to relate to women. They're just objects that he wants to have, when he approaches them, he scares them half to death. But he's got a sweet side that comes out in song, yeah, he wrote one about deforestation. And his dad interrupted him at the end, but it's part of the charm: he still posted it. Well, I tried to help him, half-heartedly. I said, "your songs are really great," and we had a coffee. I said some platitudes, and that I had to go, and he began an impression of Al Pacino. Al Pacino said he hated Tyler Shipley and he was gonna fuck him up royally. Well I was torn between being sad and scared so I severed our relations but he's still out there and he needs a few solid friends to keep his shit together when he goes off his meds. But a couple friends can't change the world and the way it teaches young men that they get to have young girls. When I heard about Elliot Rodger, I thought of this kid and I shuddered.
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6. |
My Dad is a Humble Man
07:27
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Before he turned seventy, I took my dad to see the crumbled ruins of a city he'd seen in a documentary. We walked upon majestic ancient walls and my dad knew that he was small. In 1972 my dad's on a film crew sent to Afghanistan to shoot b-roll for the national news. Paramilitaries held American guns to his head and my dad thought it was the end. When he was seven or eight, my dad walked to his sister's house, it was late, outside of Mafeking, eyes of the wolves glowing in the trees. They followed him and he watched over them and that's why my dad is a humble man.
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7. |
Resting
04:38
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8. |
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There's a path under the Gardiner, no one can tell me why it's there; bare clay and asphalt pillars in the shadow of the condo towers. Under the Gardiner Expressway. There's a bit of green space to the north, where they restored the old Fort York: once proud home of the British Cavalry, such a noble host, such gallantry. Had to kill a lot of god's un-people, singing here is the church and here is the steeple, and now the fort is a museum when it ought to be a mausoleum. Yeah I know this was a lazy rhyme but I'm down here just killing time under the Gardiner Expressway with a guy that Canada threw away. His name is Oliver, he's got a blanket he sleeps down here. Nobody gives a shit, barely even notice him. Three middle-class people fly by, out for a leisurely bike ride. Gonna go out and get some exercise, such a wonderful day to be alive! Catch a glimpse of me and Ollie, and Ollie says something a little crazy. Out his mouth, a bit of fluid. Three cyclist days were ruined. Yes, people do sleep on the street or, in this case, underneath. They were making this when they built Fort York in 1793. If you believe everything you read, then Oliver is a beneficiary of a generous welfare state. If he's unhappy, he's an ingrate. We provide equal opportunity: you can sink, or sink, or swim, or sink. And if you sink, there's a bed of cold hard clay under the Gardiner Expressway.
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9. |
Fist Full of Glass
08:02
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Shaking hands, inside my door. Eyes rolling back in my sinew arms. Neck twisting right, fist full of glass, head on cement, hair in your grasp. Thirty-four years a war was waged; predators and gods upon you raged. You battled back, lied, stole, and fucked. You crossed the dark and made things to love. Your tiny heart carried through flame, you carry on but still it shakes. It shakes and shakes, you raise your steel, you swing the blade but it isn't real. It wasn't there; you made it up. Voice in the dark, you made it up. You're on the floor, it's real now. I can't hear you breathing, you're flickering out. Come back to me, there's still a little light. Come back to me, it'll be alright. Maybe that's a lie; you come anyway. Live another day, raise another blade.
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10. |
Sugar Ray
04:36
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What the fuck is with human beings anyway? Bewildered by the feelings I feel every day. I don't want to be alone, yeah, I miss my friends, having turned down all their invitations. And since I got this phone I haven't put it down. Is it the reason, or is it because, there ain't no one around. And if there ain't a new message in another minute I'm gonna lose my temper I'm gonna swear at it. But I won't put it down, not on the railpath, not on the 401, in the museum, or for the mailman. Like if I let go I'll lose gravity, float away from everyone like it was a science fiction movie. But who is it I'm so afraid to lose? Is it the people I walk by and I say nothing to? Is it the girls in cafes my eyes connect with and then I look away cos I don't wanna seem too into it? And then I check craigslist for a missed connection: early thirties with a button says "boycott the election?" Nothing there. Just an ad for men losing their hair. How do they know? Really how the fuck do they know? Did they data mine me? Is there a google search that pulls up our insecurities? I'm thirty-two years old but I say I'm thirty-three. I won't feel anything for several months and then suddenly I cry my face off at a Vancouver Canucks charity. There's things I can't explain: I don't know why I'm so afraid to feel physical pain. I don't know why I was born into a world with acid rain. I don't know why the fuck I still hear the band Sugar Ray. Will they ever go away? Will anyone remember the songs that I play? What kind of man will I be when I turn fifty-eight?
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11. |
In A Different Song
04:06
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A week before my dad was diagnosed I wrote a song about his getting old and I recorded it for my new record. But now I feel kinda fucked up about it. I didn't think it would happen so quick. It was my first real attempt to prepare for it and when I wrote that I wasn't ready, it wasn't just a line in a song I thought sounded pretty. In a different song on the same album, I said my dad was seventy-three. I just wanted a word to rhyme; now seventy is all he'll see. So I tuned my guitar back to normal but it don't sound normal to me. Yeah, I can still play a C, a G, and a D, but everything feels a little bit off tune. In a different song on the same album I said my dad was a humble man. He's a lot more than just that; he's the fucking compass of who I am. In a different song on the same album I wrote about him in the present tense. Now I don't know what to do about it, without my dad the world don't make sense.
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Tyler Shipley Toronto, Ontario
Tyler Shipley was the founding member of the Consumer Goods (theconsumergoods.bandcamp.com) and now performs as a solo artist.
Tyler Shipley recommends:
But We Don't Shoot Pistols?
by The Consumer Goods
Political pop rock from 2006-2011
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