Clumsy Sunday from Slaught by Endless Idiot
The lyrics to this song can be traced back to the 1990s, when I wrote a deeply unenthusiastic poem about having to commute into Reading to work. Very little of the poem survives into the song, but its last lines were about a group of people at the weekend, "sad on clumsy Sundays, stumbling through the corn fields" - and that's what kicked off the song.
An oddity in this track is that it was recorded completely without a beat or click of any kind. The timekeeping and timing is literally "off the grid", which feels appropriate for a song about living deeper, smaller lives where we happen to be, and hearing and seeing natural cues, rather than measuring our activities with clocks and calendars and half-understood maps.
I wrote this on a resonator guitar, with a slide, but hardly any of the guitar survives on the finished recording - just a couple of single chords and a phrase.
Tracklist
| 1. | Clumsy Sunday | 4:49 |
Lyrics
On a clumsy Sunday
A single day to rest and heal
Trippers from a city
Stumble across a field
The furrows in the farmland
Hold scraps of ancient root and bone
New-bought boots are broken
Scuffed and scarred on stone
Gathered by the gateside
They find the path and line don’t match
Decide on a direction
Wander off the map
Wander away…
There’s birdsong in the bushes
The cries and calls all sound the same
Trees and hedges green and grey
None of them can name their names
The warmest feel it’s winter
Even though the month is May
The coldest soon turn counter
Walk back and drive away
If we must make a moral
It will say the same to you and to me
Our lives stay superficial
Where we have carved no history
The deepest tracks are trodden
Where we walk again our old life’s way
We grow in wit and wonder
When we walk our distance every day
When we walk our distance every day
Credits
License
All rights reserved.
Endless Idiot is a one-faced musical mash exploring different styles and going where the fancy takes. So far the fancy has led to synthwave, post-punk, hauntology, dark folk, minimalism, field recordings, and experimental and orchestral writing. DIY wherever possible, Endless Idiot has fronted or contributed to a fair few bands over the years, most recently punk outfit Who Killed Nancy Johnson?