https://faitheliott.bandcamp.com/releases

Galapgos

On 26th September 2016 Song, by Toad Records will release the debut EP by Edinburgh artist and songwriter Faith Eliott on cassette and download.

The majority of the songs on this release were written over the course of three months, whilst Faith was living in rural Nebraska. Much of the dense and often-surreal lyrical content reflects this landscape, which is pancake-flat and dotted with collapsing barns, rotting farm machinery and teeming with insects.

The EP consists of a diverse set of songs. The opening track ‘Pyrite Ammonite’ is poppy and dynamic, whilst the closer, ’Possum’, is a five minute spoken word track, awash with drones and the sound of screeching cicadas. The baritone guitars, mellotrons and vocal harmonies hint at something grandiose, but the songs retain a lo-fi quality.

At its most raw, the EP includes the song ‘So Do I’, which was recorded in a barn in Nebraska using a dictaphone, with howling wind audible in the background. The remaining tracks were recorded by Alan McCormack (of Now Wakes the Sea), who also plays on the record, and whose experimental approach to recording and composition brings unexpected layers and textures to Faith’s acoustic/folk sensibilities.

Faith grew up in Minnesota and moved to Edinburgh just over 10 years ago. Though they (Faith prefers gender-neutral pronouns) have taken part in numerous creative collaborations over the years (The Sea Is Salt, Withered Hand, Supermoon, etc.), this is the first time they have put together a release exclusively of their own songs. This has in part been down to the process of exploring outwards from visual art and poetry before fixating on songwriting three or four years ago.

These days, Faith continues to make visual art and exhibits regularly around the city. They are also part of Edinburgh’s Far Yella Collective, a loosely collaborative collection of visual artists, musicians and writers

Faith will be playing a launch night in September in the Happiness Hotel, Song By Toad's new warehouse recording space down in Leith, as well as at the annual label Christmas party on the 2nd December.

Unknown Album

Insects

Katie in you I see someone I recognize
you're cutting yourself and shoplifting wine
and I can't help but feel like i want to get close to you 
to tell you that every things going to be fine
but my darling that would be a lie
cause we're all going to die

I'm not who I thought I would be at age sixteen
I'm 26 now and the future still makes me dizzy
I'm still beating myself up over the petty stuff 
and for a week after a one night stand I'm convinced I'm in love
I worry that the internet is making me stupid
that the art that I make is trite and derivative
some nights I wake up feeling so paralyzed and useless
I can't convince myself that love is the purpose
of this collapsing universe

But I've cut down on the cigarettes at least
and I've learned to take my own bullshit
far less seriously
I'm trying to stop waiting for my life to be approved by
by some external entity that's somehow more real than me
meditating helps except when it doesn't 
and when it doesn't time still tows me along in it's current
and the rough patches smooth out and get rough again
but I try to remember how incredible it is 
that it's even possible to feel anything

I love my sister so much that it hurts
and my friends are amazing I'd tell them all if i could
I'm getting to grips with how pointless it is
to do things just because I think they're expected
or in accordance with the life I planned out 
when I believed to be interesting I had to destroy myself
And it's just as Ira Glass says
Great stories happen to those that can tell them
Cause a story is a great and beautiful thing
they help us communicate and give our lives meaning
but I think first and foremost it's important to recall
our experiences are legitimate simply by happening at all

So Katie I know your picking through the rubble of reasoning
for some diamond of truth that will end all your guessing
but you're not going to find it in the books that you read
or verse set in stone or some perfect geometry
not even if the author wrote in their own blood on rat skin 
in prison before perishing in some unspeakable fashion
but before you let your spirit be broken 
maybe there's fun to be had in the searching
It seems we're all struggling most of the time
and in that knowledge the only truth I can find
is in the act of being kind

Katie

they say
when the water retreats
there will be chaos like none of us have ever seen
cars caught in the branches of trees
buildings torn in two 
amidst an ocean of debris.
unimaginable things

as a child
it was a war in heaven
beasts of every terrible mutation
scales and teeth, a wormwood star,
bodies forged in fire and water
but now these monsters all take human form

Say, do you know how it ends?
what’s coming for us from deaths other kingdom?*
an old war in fleet of shining zeppelins? 
by violence or some silent deadly weapon?
do you know what’s gonna happen? 

so self appointed kings discuss
what is true and what is not
while at the edge of town
where the bindweed loves the charlock
and the brittle ghosts of old industry rot
seagulls dance above the landfill 
like a snow globe shaken up

*https://msu.edu/~jungahre/transmedia/the-hollow-men.html

snowglobe

Full download of 'Insects' EP available here:
https://songbytoadrecords.bandcamp.com/album/insects

Website:
www.faitheliott.com

Contact:
faith.eliott@hotmail.com

Faith Eliott

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