Beautiful song! deep story… A Lot Like Birds release new song titled “For Shelley (Unheard)” music video. This explains the “unheard” part of the title. So beautifully written/a wonderful homage. “For Shelley (Unheard)” recounts singer Cory Lockwood’s relationship with his mother who passed on March 19th, 2016 having never heard the song, hence “(Unheard)” being in the title.
For Shelley
“It’s so difficult to try and describe somebody this important to a crowd of people who have never met her. Even harder than that, it’s hard to explain that the reason she’s so immensely important isn’t just because she’s gone. Shelley Lockwood was the only person in my life who ever convinced me that the world was beautiful. Authentic and magical, pure and well-meaning. She lived fast and driven when she was young, something I think she passed on. She fell in love and married, reached for and easily grasped her dream of being a nurse and had two children, who she loved fiercely. She gave a love in a way that said ‘everything that is good is around you and everything good that can happen for you will happen for you.’
She died on March 19th, one year ago. The body that held her had gone through years of strokes and heart-attacks and, one night, while her children slept a thousand miles away, it gave up on her. Growing up had put us a full country apart from each other but we called often and I saw her a couple times a year. The previous fall, I flew out to see her. She had been hospitalized in a way that told doctors ‘call her loved ones, get them close.’
My mother was unfailing. For decades, she loved, spoke and acted in a way that made me think it was truly possible for angels to walk on earth. She was strong and gentle, smart and humble, nurturing and protective. My positive qualities are the most watered down versions of her own, and I am intensely proud of them at that. When I saw her that fall, I saw her in a way I couldn’t handle. She spent her life as my hero and I can’t imagine the agony she went through. To want nothing more than to see her children there, to have us there to hold. But in seeing us, have us see her. See her frail, see her cheekbones poke through her skin, hear the rasp of her voice as she coughed out how much she loved us, to see her bleed, see the nurses rush in as she sobbed, hear her ask ‘am I going home, am I going home, am I going home.’
That fall, I came home broken. I called her over and over, trying impossibly not to cry when we spoke. She didn’t have the same problem. I could always hear her smiling when we talked. I was writing a record at the time. I wrote about her. I didn’t know if I could ever bring myself to make it a legitimate song. There’s never been a problem for me with writing from a place that’s deeply personal. It’s just that, I never wanted her to hear it. I never wanted her to know that I was hurt, or worse, that my vision of her; this perfect, unbreakable version of strength and hope, had faltered. I kept the song to myself. Meanwhile, this new record had become something of its own. Circumstance and change and challenge had put me in a position to sing. I told her. She was elated. When I was boy, she had signed me up for choir in school. She sang, herself, and she would listen to me sing along to songs on the radio and tell me ‘you have a beautiful voice, you should sing more.’ I wasn’t convinced. And here we are, I’m singing. I’m convinced and all I want to do is show her. But she’ll never get to hear. She heard things in my voice that I don’t think were there, or ever will be. With this song, I’m so upset that she never got to hear the voice she had so much faith in. But I’m so happy that she’ll never have to hear my devastation.” – Cory Lockwood
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Song lyrics: A Lot Like Birds – For Shelley (Unheard)
Lyrics:
I remember proudly stepping over glass that you said could never cut me if I walked where you walked, kept my hand in your hand
So I clung onto you
I remember soundly leaping over rocks that you promised I would never trip on
If I kept my eyes up, nothing would surprise usI always wondered how you never seemed to fall, you never seemed to be out of place
Whenever we were lost, you’d end up happy there anywayI remember sleeping on a tile floor, felt the nurses gently wake me
‘Sir, you can come in now, she’s waiting to see you, I wish that she were well.’
There were rocks in your back, there was glass in your hair
You tried to smile but it wasn’t really there
You took my hand in your own, said ‘this feels like home’ and you begged me to take you thereYou never seemed to fall, you never seemed to be out of place
Whenever we were lost you’d end up happy there anywaySaw you fading, couldn’t take it on my own
How I hate it, that a heart so warm can end up coldI remember dreaming that this wasn’t real, that you’d be there as I’m waking
We both denied we were scaredYou never seemed to fall, you never seemed to be out of place
Whenever we were lost, you’d end up happy there anyway
You never seemed to fall, you never seemed to be out of place
Whenever we were lost, you’d end up happy there anyway
About A Lot Like Birds :
Emotional. Chaotic. Haunting. Intense…Now entering the grim anti-fairytale of No Place, the latest full- length album from Sacramento’s A Lot Like Birds.
The dynamic ten track album takes listeners on an eerie roller coaster of beautiful chaos, with arching cinematic interludes laced between destructive gut-wrenching, chill-inducing masterpieces. The complex construction of No Place sets one into a mesmerizing world of darkness and dread led by urgency, intensity and fear.
No Place will be released on October 29 via Equal Vision Records and was recorded with Kris Crummett [Closure In Moscow, Fear Before], who also recorded the band’s 2011 release, Conversation Piece.
“I have always been prone to gravitate towards the more grandiose side of composing, to a nearly unachievable extent when time limits are involved, since day one of this band. From experimenting with a wide array of instruments (strings, horns, auxiliary percussion), to incorporating various programming (beats, synths, MIDI instruments), to a lot of effects and effect modulation, completing the vision on this album required a lot of hard work and patience. Kris [Crummett] embodied both of those skills, along with incredible diligence, and honestly to a point of near disbelief from the rest of us,” reveals guitarist Michael Franzino. “He genuinely cared about this, and without him this record quite literally would not have happened.”
No Place showcases A Lot Like Birds’ idiosyncrasies through dark, intricate soundscapes, that range from crazy and chaotic to beautiful and melodic.
“We lost our skulls into the nether realms creating this piece of work,” adds drummer Joe Arrington. “Hours and hours in darkly lit studios throwing my drum sticks against a wall and forgetting what time of day it was. People can expect something a lot darker and more serious this time around. It was worth it.”
Thematically the album revolves around a single concept, exploring the emotions behind rooms in a home. Guitarist Ben Wiacek elaborates, “The idea was to identify the emotional dichotomy of the “home” experience; the home is a place of serenity and/or a place of chaos. You’ll notice this album is much darker but more focused than anything we’ve done before, and I hope we achieved something that will be considered important and relevant to a lot of people’s lives.”
“It’s no secret that musicians can spend more time on the road than they do at home, but aside from that, a home had been a completely lost concept to me for the past few years,” adds co-vocalist Cory Lockwood. “And as I realized that I felt more at home while away from my “hometown” and felt more sheltered with no guarantee of shelter each night, I really started to examine the idea of home. What a home means to a person, and with further exploration, what each particular room can mean. We had already been discussing the direction of our next album and how we might want to try our hand at one particular concept. And so this was the concept I brought to the table: let’s build a house. Each song, one room. Important to itself but still a part of the whole.”
In regards to the album title, Lockwood explains, “I had been playing around with idioms regarding the idea of home, and while thinking about the phrase ‘…there’s no place like home…’ I thought to myself, that in our positions, no place IS home. We make a home of any place that we happen to be in at that time, and then we move on. So the title No Place stuck. “
Known for their wild live performances – which often include anything and everything from swinging from the rafters, spontaneous mid-set crowd surfing, and launching guitars 25 feet in the air, to simply focusing on the music – the six-piece band features duel vocalists, Cory Lockwood and Kurt Travis, who seamlessly intertwine, layer and harmonize while interchanging singing, screaming and spoken word duties, while guitarists Michael Franzino and Ben Wiacek alternate frantic riffs with ambient wails and bassist Michael “Butter” Littlefield and drummer Joe Arrington deliver driving grooves, uniting the band’s sound.
“Written word shaped me more definitively than any other interest in my life. I’ve been writing creatively my entire life without any real direction, outside of obsessively discovering new stories inside of myself and dragging them out. Music gave me a way to combine story and emotion and poetry with another love – performance,” Lockwood shares. “And when [Kurt] Travis and I met…we instantly bonded with each other and started to test each other’s role and how best to complement each other musically. It didn’t take too long for us to finish each other’s lyrics if we were struggling with something or figure out a cohesive call- and-response section or harmony. And best of all, we decided not to separate each other into different corners of the musical ring. He screams at times and I sing at times and vice versa. There’s such an amazing amount of room for us to create together, as long as we ignore the standard limitations of a duo like that.”
A Lot Like Birds’ constant musical evolution and entrancing live shows, combined with their down-to- earth personalities, proved to be just the right fit for Equal Vision Records, who signed the band in 2012. “Signing to Equal Vision used to just be a daydream for most of us,” explains Lockwood. “When we were growing up and still playing in previous bands, Equal Vision was putting out CDs by incredible artists that we admire like Bear vs Shark, The Fall of Troy and Circa Survive.”
Today A Lot Like Birds shares a spot on the Equal Vision Roster with the impressive likes of Saves The Day, Fairweather, Matt Pryor (of The Get Up Kids), HRVRD, and many more. No Place will be the band’s first release on the Upstate NY-based independent label.
“We are all very happy about it…there honestly couldn’t be a better home for us and what we want to do,” Franzino adds. “It means the world to be on EVR and we can’t wait to see what comes of it.”
Band members:
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Cory Lockwood: Vocals
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Michael Franzino: Guitar
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Ben Wiacek: Guitar
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Matt Coate: Bass/Vocals
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Joe Arrington: Drums
New album “Divisi” out May 5th, 2017.
1. Always Burning, Always Dark
2. The Sound of Us
3. For Shelley (Unheard)
4. Trace The Lines
5. Atoms in Evening
6. The Smoother the Stone
7. Infinite Chances
8. No Attention for Solved Puzzles
9. Further Below
10. Good Soil, Bad Seeds
11. From Moon to Son
12. Divisi