Kingfishers Catch Fire's debut single.
FREE DOWNLOAD: https://kingfishers.bandcamp.com/album/a-fear-of-mirrors-dahlia

Bear to be alone with yourself.
Every day you must say, "I lament for all my faults."
At once so familiar, so odd.

How d'you define your life? By pain?
By amphetamines? By the men who are always around you?
And oh! when an old distraction fails,
Find another one, a newer one.

"So, how am I doing so far?"
Every day you must say, "I deserve to raise a glass
And drink, drink to deferred ambition!"

How d'you define your life? By pain?
By amphetamines? By the men who are always around you?
And oh! when an old distraction fails,
Find another one, a newer one.

Reason, love and productive work.

How d'you define your life? By pain?
By amphetamines? By the men who are always around you?
And oh! when an old distraction fails,
Find another one, a newer one.

Kingfishers Catch Fire - A Fear Of Mirrors

Double A-side to Kingfishers Catch Fire's debut single "A Fear Of Mirrors".
FREE DOWNLOAD: https://kingfishers.bandcamp.com/album/a-fear-of-mirrors-dahlia

Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3tz2gjwsTc

How, how everybody loves her!
And how, how everybody needs her!

I imagine, then, that she's hard to gauge
With twice your aberrancy and half your age.
When she lies down she's a work of art,
When she flies out she will break your heart.

How, how everybody loves her!
And how, how everybody needs her!

And Dahlia, does she turn around,
And, girl, you'll feel it when you hit the ground.
When she lies down she's a work of art,
When she flies out she will break your heart.
When she flies out she will break your heart.

Kingfishers Catch Fire - Dahlia

Taken from our debut release "Ballerina EP".
FREE DOWNLOAD: http://kingfishers.bandcamp.com/album/ballerina-ep

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SED9qeeH0rc

Mary's done so well to find her Romeo
Oh! in time will he his soul bare?
En avant sauté, she loves him,
Cavalier will find her some day.

Many an ethereal girl of idle reverie has wept
A million tears o'er the boy in the mirror as he pirouettes.

Mary's done so well, a prima ballerina,
Designer of worlds.
'Yond a gateway lain a meadow,
Her studio, a sylvan domain.

A rivulet curves, a bough bows, her tender arm shaping air.
Infinity variant form arabesque, he sees her...

Move through air faster than light,
Pull her soul from a void,
Flee from a tiresome plight,
Dance there unto the night.

Many an ethereal girl of idle reverie has wept
A million tears o'er the boy in the mirror as he...

Moves through air faster than light,
Pulls her soul from a void.
Flee from a tiresome plight,
Dance there unto the night.
Dance there unto the night.

Kingfishers Catch Fire - Ballerina

Beyond our woven limbs we share
A cigarette and a tear in our hands,
Uniform in our desire to disappear
From ourselves on to anywhere.

Late afternoon and the house is high.
Today the moon and I collide.
Something in our words entwine,
Something I can't define.

We rob the town of sleep,
And with your hair down, you look more like you.
But summer's over now, though once so welcoming,
Her withered arms out to anyone.

Late afternoon and the house is high,
Today the moon and I collide.
Pick me up, I'm coming down,
Throw your arms around me.

I can't remember how we arrived here,
But I couldn't care less.

Nests

And then I lost myself further inside me and at the limit of it all I can't remember what I did and I draw in experience as an ornament gathers dust and I'd do anything to feel them.

I'm trying hard to cry but can't.
I really want to care but don't.
And if I'm divided, which half am I, then?

As a performer I go through the motions though to anything around I'm bereft of reaction and though my senses are doing fine and well I've never felt so distant from anyone or you, boy.

I'm trying hard to cry but can't.
I really want to care but don't.
And if I'm divided, which half am I, then?

And I'd do anything for you, and anything for you.

Oh! the only drawback of dreaming is having to wake up.
There's nothing left to believe in or rely on.
And if I'm divided, which half am I, then?

Song From the Second Floor

I've deciphered what drives us to murder
When otherwise civilised.
A knife turns and twists all my insides out.
When everyone who surrounds you, has known you
Or thrown you hidden eyes
Finds you entirely divine, well then,
What chance have I to overcome an envy of your hitherto loved?
Reader, I like her, to me her heart she gave covered in gold.

I've deciphered what drives us to murder
When otherwise civilised:
A boundless resentment towards those you've touched,
Everyone who surrounds you, has known you
Or thrown you hidden eyes.
I won't require reassurance for ever.
What chance have I to overcome an envy of your hitherto loved?
Reader, I like her, to me her heart she gave covered in gold.
Reader, I love her, to me her life she gave covered in gold.

When the knife turns my soul burns from a wound of
Unrivalled agonising
Shame of myself, but for her I will endure.

A Gilded Heart

And I would never understand.
And I would never understand.
Nothing is nothing you can rely on.
Nature as idea in my asylum.
And I would never understand.
And I would never understand.
Nothing is nothing you can rely on.
Fated we stumble into emotion.

When I visited William, he had
A tray of buttons in his hand.

"How I like these," he said,
"Because they open things.
"And you don't need keys."
And he counted them on my dress
And asked me to tell him a secret.

And I would never understand
And I would never understand.
Nothing is nothing you can rely on.
Nature as idea in my asylum.

And when I visited William
He had a tray of old buttons.

"How I like these," he said,
"Because they open things.
"And you don't need keys."
And he counted them on my dress
And asked me to tell him a secret.

In vernal mourning another year has passed me by.
Shamed, ignored, my necessity caricaturised.
My innocence, long gone.
My innocence, long gone.
My innocence, long gone.

Buttons

Winter daylight's a lie,
A girl bestows a shiver on a room
Awaiting her lover.
An opening cold divide
Invades a warm silence of a fire.
Their seventh December together.

But I can't help but sing
You're all my everythings.

Lily on the grass, I'm delighted.
Lily on the grass, I'm delighted.

Under a wary gaze
A head-on collusion unifies.
This will be our moment for ever.

But I can't help but sing
Foreboding notwithstanding.

Lily on the grass, I'm delighted.
Lily on the grass, I'm delighted.

Something terrible is about to...
The game is getting old
But there's no easy way to say that,
No easy way to say no.

Lily on the grass, I'm delighted.
Lily on the grass, I'm delighted.


(Violin part written and performed by Gaz Cloud.)

Lily on the Grass

In the morning they rise, Emily and the sun.
In a dawning mirage of a moment she’s gone.
For in earnest, be it understood,
It’s ever so serious.

I’d sooner break your heart than ever deride you
Or the fables you impart of monsters around you.

With her eyes open wide, Emily carry on.
A horizon imbibed with illusion and song.
For in earnest, be it understood,
You’re an ever so beautiful thing.

I’d sooner break your heart than ever deride you
Or the fables you impart of monsters around you.
I’d sooner break your heart than ever deride you
Or the fables you impart of monsters around you.

Will I ever survive without taking your hand?

For in earnest, be it understood,
It’s ever so serious.
I’m rather taken by art.

I’d sooner break your heart than ever deride you
Or the fables you impart of monsters around you.
But you don’t understand, no you don’t understand,
No you don’t understand.

Emily Sees Monsters

April come she will,
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain,
May she will stay,
Resting in my arms again.

June she'll change her tune,
In restless walk she'll prowl the night,
July she will fly,
And give no warning to her flight.

August die she must,
The autumn winds blow chilly and cold,
September I'll remember,
A love once new has now grown old.

(© 1965 Paul Simon)

April Come She Will (Simon & Garfunkel cover)

Kingfishers Catch Fire 2008-2014

One autumn afternoon, not so long ago, songwriter William Robertson discovered a Victorian poem. The poem was by Gerard Manley Hopkins and was called “As Kingfishers Catch Fire”. Simultaneously, somewhere across London, his then partner and bandmate picked up a novel in a library. The novel was by Rumer Godden and was called “Kingfishers Catch Fire”. When that evening they each brought to light their respective discoveries, they agreed the happenstance was too great to ignore. And so the band name was born.

Over the next few years, members came and went, relationships formed and faded, until a line up was established of musicians – Tristan Irvine (guitar), Marcus Mozley (drums), and Darran Paul Smith (bass) – whose unique brand of jangle-folk, reminiscent of acts such as early R.E.M., the Byrds and the Smiths, well befitted William’s delicately impassioned vocal style. Venting dark lyrical themes through uplifting melody and dense vocal harmony, William called upon the heartbreak and loss associated with the band’s brief history to inform the processes of songwriting and performance.

Kingfishers’ two official releases, “Ballerina EP” and double A-side single “A Fear Of Mirrors” / “Dahlia”, received positive reviews and radio play from the likes of Tom Robinson and Gary Crowley.

Free downloads: http://kingfishers.bandcamp.com

Contact: kingfisherscatchfiremusic@gmail.com

"Powerful pop!" Gary Crowley (BBC Introducing)

"A pastoral opposite to the urban indie of so many bands, as if flowers and foxes have colonised a brown field site." Supajam

"Kingfishers Catch Fire's music makes me feel a Victorian picnic by a bubbling brook. A decadent garden party at a manor house. A place where Bright Young Things can congregate in the last hedonistic summer of their youth, where simply looking divine gives you immortality. Somewhere where people love and feel too deeply to survive very long." Condemned to Rock 'N Roll

"Damn good job. Damn good. Reduced my wife to tears. In a good way." Jim Murdoch (poet and novelist)

Kingfishers catch fire

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