Tag: friends

Ray Osborn

Mercy Seat

In Memory of Alice Alsup, 1990-2014

Her heart was paired with
a strained will, itself itself,

looking for bits of water.

Her heart rang blooms

from witted country dust.
Born, Texas, from scoria
of course, no more

than flower-trash found

wilting in the void.

Totaled in absolution.

Those deep roots alone
might stand all lonesome,

swimmingly, across

some plank-skied wharf
that has never sought
anything but daydreams,

pressed bulbs, full of sea.

Dry it rams in streamings
through Texas, now brined

and sickened, flank of water.

–It is mimed –You, mine.

My buddy Mikey Avishay just released his first solo album, a chronicle of breakups with lovers and past selves alike told through deliciously honest bedroom pop. This album is desperate, drunk nights, the longing for safety, for meaning, for love. It’s the music of someone who has been backed into a corner—songs for waking up to grey hungover light and holding on to the glimmer of the future you see through the blinds, the hope that comes when you have no other choice. It is one of those refreshingly earnest albums that was brought into the world simply because the artist seemed to have no other choice than to birth it. 

(Also, if you’ve been following my blog for long enough, you’ll know that I am a Virginia Woolf and you can’t go wrong if an album that repeatedly references The Waves).

Mikey writes of “rings”: “I guess what I’m really trying to say is that this album is a breakup album — not just romantically but breaking up with the self, with the past, with the present; fracturing the whole so you can make new presence out of the pieces — but it’s also about putting yourself together again.”

You can buy the digital album or cassette here. Mail orders come with a badge and a tiny chapbook of Michael’s poetry.

 http://deathpartyrecords.bigcartel.com/product/avishay-rings-cassette

Source: Spotify