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Magical Realism

by Kelsey Jarboe

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1.
Bildungsroman (free) 04:11
You will see just what you've meant to me I still cannot believe you don't belong to me So take me now, you better scream my name out loud You better want to stick around and want me But I am stronger than I knew and it happened overnight Without a whimper or a fight I don't know when I don't know how but I've got a family now I've got a family now And they don't judge, no they won't judge, they'll share their skin They'll let you stay And if you don't amount to much, we will forgive Don't go away I believe in almost never to nothing And you know how I used to be someone with such strong views, oh Now I see why you must now be leaving And I thank you for teaching me that love won't see us through, no
2.
Tell me you were kidding if it justifies your plans I am not the kind of man to hold grudges Cause I can't please everybody and I'll never understand Everything there is to know, what do we know? I only seem to get older This never stops or goes slower And you should have warned me about this You could have warned me about this I want to know you, I want to know you But you don't follow through, da-de-da-de-da You don't follow through And I'd know what to do, I'd know what to do If all your words were true, da-de-da-de-da All your words were true Do carry on, carry on Do carry on with your animal instinct, animal instinct Don't let them tell you it's wrong What do they know they are so inconsistent, so inconsistent... But I want to know you, I want to know you And you don't follow through, da-de-da-de-da You don't follow through
3.
4.
Interlude 01:28
I wasn't blind to what they were keeping from me That I would not be taken seriously And I've never known just how to say no So I am left with very little to show I'm fine with wasting your time I know you won't say what's on your mind I start to think it all comes from one place And there's no part I can afford to retrace And I've never know quite how to go slow So I am left with very little to show You know just what this is about The time is mine but it's still running out...
5.
Never contented and the eldest surviving brother, he made a spectacle of himself in taverns, using roast chickens like hand puppets and throwing his voice to sound their little shrieks of horror as he sliced away at them with a carving knife. He missed his mother and hated his father. He made a pauper of his wife and children, all eight of whom tried, in their various ways, to shirk responsibility for his care onto each other as his health deteriorated. He was increasingly delirious. They thought, perhaps it was mercury poisoning from his days as a taxidermist in his father’s museum. Either that or he was a drunk. Ultimately, he died bitter and alone, leaving behind only his debts and his paintings. Over the years he had abandoned portraiture for the lowly genre of still life: bowls of rotting peaches, discolored cuts of meat, and wilting flora that vibrated with an uncanny embodiment. Expecting boredom, one engages the thing to find it is engaging back. They will leave you haunted by corporeality itself, somberly struggling to repress the limitations of your own fragile, ephemeral body. * Your still lives embody me We move through life, we sense, we see We touch, we take, we hold so dear We crush, we break, we pull too near And I was never really ready now Even in my hunger now and then This melancholy never taught me how I am bleeding from the blessings of your pen Raphaelle, this is your father Raphaelle, be the man...
6.
7.
8.
Lucid 02:27
9.
Heirlooms 02:41
Quit yer bellyachin, my patience is thin today and all of your complaining won’t change this shadow world of language This is not the version of the game that we were taught At our father’s mother’s kitchen table, shuffling the cards I know it’s hard to seize and accept It’s why we keep all the things that we’ve kept The photographs are all I have left, and the tapes I wish that my body could show you everything it’s seen And all of human history weren’t known through lenses of Vaseline This is not the version of reality I knew From the record keeper’s personal opinions on the news I know it’s hard to seize and accept It’s why we keep all the things that we’ve kept The photographs are all I have left, and the tapes
10.
Sometimes I see golden lights in the distance, but it is the front of a bus, going somewhere I don’t know about. I’m afraid that if I get on it, I won’t be able to get back. For years, I took the long way to avoid this dilemma. My fear has become about waiting, not choices. I didn’t know I had it in me to change so little, over so long of a time. But, whatever it takes. I cried at the bus stop from the sadness of knowing a thing which causes me to hate the other people who know it as well. Then, I thought that maybe a realist and a sleep walker see the same things but have different priorities. There’s a sadness, also, to loving you beyond all reason, and it’s always worse, left to my imagination.

about

Magical Realism is about collective memory, historical revisionism, and escapism, incorporating field recordings with songwriting, samples, spoken word, and abstract vocal improvisation. It attempts to evoke both familiarity and alienation: the uncanny of a home we have only seen on television or heard of in myth.

"Poignant, powerful, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes whimsical, “Magical Realism” expands significantly on last year’s excellent “Among Your Kind.” A real masterpiece." -- Love and Mathematics (loveandmath.wordpress.com/2011/05/28/kelsey-jarboe-magical-realism/)

credits

released May 21, 2011

All songs composed and performed by Kelsey Jarboe. Vaughn Cartwright is featured on bass in "Endangered Dog" and "We are all Looking for a Stable Past", and on vocals in "The Body of Raphaelle Peale".

Cover art by Cole Swavely.

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Kelsey Jarboe Boston, Massachusetts

Sound designer and electronic music trickster sprite.

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