Stewart Lupton

This is new. nothing like this, i’ve heard nothing like this, from this province ( and it is the antidote to provincial, if ever there was one)  since…it’s been a minute. The arrangements, the heart, the refined attack and ferocious restraint, its as if the Gories and Pet Sounds wrote a short story in sound. To have grown to know these gents, and collaborate with them on occasion, is one of this year’s musical thrills. Having not played a “show” for over 9 months now, it is a truly gift to find expression through proxy by such like minded sounds and friends with such flare, such moxie …. And the sound  .. the sound is like…. those spiral gyroscopes of  punctuation one sees when lying flat on your back in the back of a flat-bed truck w/ yr eyes closed as passing streetlights map the veins in yr eyelids.Thats one blink of an  image that comes to mind when i hear this sound, when the back ups kick in, after you’re already sold by the lump in Mr. Moses’ throat during the first two verses..it’s hard to explain, as the best music should be. But the strangest thing happens to my mind, like some  conical ellipsis of phosphorescence that keeps progressing inward in spheres with  the progression and when the kick comes it turns outward inside itself, this phosphorescence   churns and churns ( yeah i know it sounds…how i write is how i write)  with such an organic , thoughtful take on love- panic,  this  violent kind of grace ,  the  down beat glare behind  a cloth covered face keeping pace with the pride and peace of a man gliding down  a Philly street dressed in batik (Mood and Dress) , the pace bobbing up and down in pockets of the deepest blue-black waters and…oh man the sound i give up. I have a notion that Mr Moses’ lyrics were bent on stirring some waters between east and west, in sound, mood and dress, and bidding the powers that be to  unlock their daughters and bid them sally forth, for a Laugh, for free,  from  Man in batik , From…..Laughing Man,  Washington D.C…..Mood and Dress

 .forgive all the spheres and cones and phosphorescent jive,  just buy the ticket, take the ride.. This refined attack and ferocious restraint…

It’s  been one of life;s richest pleasures as of late.

I dont write like this about just anybody, and im tryin my best to get it straight. All i know RIGHT NOW is…  dont miss this date. if ever the solstice eclipse conjured up  a  soundtrack, put the damn  headphones on, dont look back. look up  WaSHINGTON D.C.’S most heavenly band! Thank You Michael Andrew Harris, Luke Stewart, Brandon Moses, for givin yr Lovins up to this goldfish bowl of a town, and  keepin its ears on its toes-es.   

“In Dreams”,  writes Coleridge, ‘images represent the sensations we think they cause.’ This is the promise of †he sphinx that slouches in our consciousness. It is kin to Eliot’s prisoner in the Wasteland, iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuuuuuuuuuuuuuu(fell asleep on keyboard)            another fleshed out husk filled with Eliot’s own unlived, “buried life.” The sphinx’s presence prompts the prisoner’s impulses, triggering the thought-cylces and behavior-patterns that in turn lead him/ her to confirm their own cell, their own captivity, as it were,  by simply fingering the key in their  pocket.  We do not feel horror because we are threatened by a sphinx.; we  dream of å sphinx  in order to explain the horror feel…..it all began with the suspicion, perhaps exaggerated, that the Gods could not talk…..” -Abner Jay, 1915/56

this is as good a reason to sing as any  i’ve tumbled across in some time.