Eel Song

by We Are Muffy

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about

Eel Song is dedicated to the wildlife of Birmingham's canals. The creatures and plants that live on the banks, in the depths, and in the ruins of buildings, populating the spaces the humans don't need. An underworld also inhabited by spectres of lost industries and their workers, along with the rubbish of generations.

The refrain is a sort of incantion or spell. It is a list of some of the flora, fauna and and industrial debris you might find along the canals, a chant that you can recite inside your head when the world feels cold.

lyrics

****************************************************

Let down the leatherette concertina blind, driver
Take me away from here
It's been a long day at Kalamazoo
Take me back to Cincinnati

On fresh avenues beside the locked waters
Where the ghost of the Futurist swims
Where the unloved bones and spent machines
Sunk in sediment and silence

The water vole, the dragonfly, the kingfisher
The pigeon, the starling, the rat
Listen together as the eels tell their tales
From the forests of the wide Sargasso

'We'll send cigarettes and sugarcubes and blessed cotton socks
If you lead us to the wild river Tame
Treasure grows like chickweed where we're bound beyond the Bourn
By the salty gyres that carry us away'

Coil spring, leaf spring, woodruff key
Cotter pin, knuckle joint, shim
Cinquefoil, fireweed, Oregon grape
Moorhen, stickleback, pike

Turn, stamp, cast, forge

Raw materials drift along

Turn, stamp, cast, forge

Small arms, heavy toys

Coil spring, leaf spring, woodruff key
Cotter pin, knuckle joint, shim
Cinquefoil, fireweed, Oregon grape
Moorhen, stickleback, pike

*****************************************

credits

released March 9, 2023
Exquisitely mastered by Simon Duggal

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about

We Are Muffy UK

While exploring the cover version as a form of folk music uniquely
defined by the era of sound recording, We Are Muffy fell into writing The Charcoal Pool, songs devoted to the peculiarities of growing up in Birmingham. Into the clear Cornish air they bring a whiff of the gasworks of Nechells, the drone of traffic on the Gravelly Hill Interchange and the splendour of the Chateau Impney. ... more

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