Written by: Eliza A. Kalfa

Aaron - Guitar, Vocals, Backing Vocals
Eliza - Ukulele, Vocals, Backing Vocals, Mandolin
Isaac - Drums
Laura - Backing Vocals

I came up from the valley
The smoke that had blackened our skies was gone
We climbed the rooftops to better see
The last of its tendrils climb up to the sun
 
The patron saint of the double-voiced
With broken courage and spider-black skin
She speaks in funny accents and tongues
She taught us how to fake it and grin
 
And each time I try to remember the same five or six memories gloat
In summer a cap, a shirt and chicken-white legs


Valley (demo)

A bedroom recording of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone's 'Scattered Pearls'. Towards the end are snippets from an interview with Rachelle Ellis, taken from the British Audio Library. 

[from interview: 'do you remember whether they used to like the theatre, or concerts? 'oh yes, my parents loved the opera' '...and, ah, lovely memory, my first opera that I ever saw was Hansel and Gretel, which was on at the Cologne Opera House... and it was a very special occasion, I had a very special dress to wear. It was green velvet, I'll always remember it.' '...so I'm pinning up my skirt and we're slowly rotating to do the dance—I was so proud of it! I felt like a million dollars.' '...but Grandmother, she's the reason that my parents...' '...because they couldn't leave Grandmother.']

The clasp broke at the disco, Mom, I'm sorry
and the older men who hit on Becky
nearly broke their necks on scattered pearls
and we searched the best we could
for two entire songs we knelt
and felt along the place where we had stood

But we only found 7 of Grandmother's pearls

And as we rode the bus home I thought, surely,
I'd wake up tomorrow just to find
that I had dreamed up everything
there'd still be pearls on a string
I wouldn't smell like smoke
and I'd still have the cash that I had spent on drinks

Oh, I feel as scattered as Grandmother's pearls

Mom, don't cry / they're only pearls
Mom, don't cry / they're only pearls
Mom, don't cry / they're only pearls



Scattered Pearls (Casiotone for the Painfully Alone cover)

Ca Plane Pour Moi! (Plastic Bertrand cover)

This Song Will Make You Fall in Love

Wherein we make a friggin' mess of a simple, slow-build-up track that's always a shit-ton of fun to play and sing—particularly when you get to the screamy bits. Instrumental live-recorded at musicodrom, voices added on a second take.

Summer

Aggi Can Swim is a guitar-driven indie rock band founded in 2014 by Eliza Kalfa (guitar/vocals/ukulele) and Aaron Dall (guitar/vocals). The uncompromisingly direct lyrics, as well as the patient crescendos culminating in dramatic hooks, give the pop-influenced songs a cathartic quality. 

Coming out of the Barcelona singer-songwriter scene, Aggi Can Swim mixes narrative-based songwriting (Daniel Johnston, The Decemberists) with the more visceral sound of bands like Beat Happening, The Vaselines, and Modest Mouse.

aggi can swim

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