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Lookout

by Kaley Lane Eaton

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1.
Neptune 05:18
Bodies aren’t enough to keep us happy And shelter’s not enough to make a home. The axis is enough to keep us spinning And Europa gives us hope we’re not alone. The biopsy reveals it’s all a cycle The follow up is going back in time. They say the worst is easily prevented, The quantum degradation should be fine! If I drink the herbs is that like killing Hitler? Is surgery a retroactive cure? With cells’ potential wild replication, Is medicine a shatter in the mirror? Lift me from this cosmic cycle! Take me to my sun’s arrival in Neptune. But only if I get to go alone. It’s not enough to merely stifle Everything I felt inside while listening To eagles tell me time is just a lie Does anyone know what we’re sposed to do now? Is middle age the calm before the storm? Do we sit at home until we see the doctor And the doctor says we’re never going home? And what if all it leads to is forgetting? The life you lived recedes into the plaque? Genetic disposition notwithstanding- You’ll never get your youthful wisdom back.
2.
The sequoia on Aloha Watched the hill become a cliff And the salty water flowed And made peninsulas from isthmuses The mudslides held together From the Himalayan fruit. She’s invasive - growing wild and getting Blood on our boots. The redwood at the high school Stands alone above the rail Growing rings at a clip But still slower than the youth jail. Dropping needles on the asphalt As developers stand by - Waiting for the prices and the children to get high. We don’t know how to live here Even though we were born here. Ancient seeds that were sown here 1000 years ago Risk suffocation From our atmosphere They can’t work hard enough to breathe away the mess that we create. The hemlocks of the freeway Just south of downtown Backlit by the mountain Sheltering my friends that need the Makeshift homes of plastic On a public patch of grass Branches more reliable Than property and cash. The oaks have always been here Even now they line the streets But the overstory’s growing back Growing back the habitat I’d give up all the concrete to the mushrooms and the roots If I knew we wouldn’t kill it all To make the dream come true. The forest in the front yard Full of firs and yews and spruce Planted by some hippie kids In 89 - and soon it will Replace the grey McMansion With mahonia and ferns. God will always win unless The flippers get there first. But the Douglas firs can see the future. They knew it all before we got here. Imagine how time moves when you’re 1000 years old And if you thrived before the hills were clear? A century’s enough to heal the wounds that we create.
3.
Jeffrey Pine 04:23
Step up real close and smell the resin. (But first put out your cigarette) You did this in high school while I Had numbers in my head Your pine named Jeffrey And mine ponderosa Turpentine for me. My lovers named for pines and castles Could only show me sapwood The heartwood too dark for me. I guess I’m nomadic The scorched earth behind me I wish you had told me you wouldn’t follow me. When I got to Lassen I thought I was north enough The scent of the bark betrayed me But the butterscotch we loved Is petrol Known to cause explosions if you set the heartwood on fire. The lover named Jeffrey The other with no name The man with the metal heart and death on the brain Everyone’s lying They all think I’m buying it But you played the long game Loved me the wrong way Like ayahuasca and magic My lover from the desert, my castle! Addicted to the resin But the compound too volatile for you What will you do now, alone? Im inheriting the earth As you’re stuck smelling pines on your own.
4.
Expectation 07:06
When I count all the table’s rings And the cracks in the sheen It tells me if I’m lost Or if this is all a dream. I don’t think it’s meant for me, That suburban domesticity; Because there is way too much to lose if I’ve got what I need. I know my plans will backfire As soon as I acquire a single family home and a 9-5 to define me The men don’t understand That this lot is made of sand. Forged between volcanoes And someone else’s land. Every stake in the ground And the old hearth the plumber found Can vanish in an instant If we walk too loud Because the cancer is waiting It lives inside my cells and it watches me pretend That i’ll see the end Of the century. CHORUS 1 Is this love, To imagine tragedy Because it can’t be this good? Cut me off From my childhood ecstasy I’d forget if I could Just to be free Of precedent And de-program My expectations VERSE 2 I told you you’d lose the trail But the markers never fail To show how far you’ve strayed And how much will (it will take to).. Walk to the other side Where the old growth still survives. Here just dying thistles And it’s too hot to cry. And the map won’t save you. It only shows the roads And the path we left behind Can we find our way back To the table? CHORUS 2 Is this life, Intermissions and dramas That last all night? Wake me up From my childhood trauma The wrongs that feel right Is this life, Intermissions and dramas That last all night? Wake me up From my childhood trauma The wrongs that feel right And free Of intervention. Should I defy Expectation?
5.
Methuselah 05:47
The bristlecone pines Wind their bark towards heaven They’ve seen it all Their cells are writ with permanence But here I am afraid That I don’t have long Here I am afraid of the “big one.” Take me down to the basin Or where the aspens are quaking Tell me I’m an animal Tell me I come from Methuselah. VERSE 2 We burn this shit down We make garbage out of all of it We’ll never know That our bodies are part of it. We eat and breathe our sins Until we’re all alone. All in the name of progress But there are ghosts in the fault lines. I’ve heard them talk to me my whole life. They told me don’t be afraid to die But don’t fuck up the time you have on this side. VERSE 3 this will never end. Your soul will come round again. As a member of our swimming pod or better - a needle on a pine. VERSE 4 A week before the equinox it snowed The bubble was bursting but we didn’t know All I could see was you crying As you turned into a whale Sometimes I ask you To give me a sign To show you’ll be around my whole life And then you tell the trees to talk to me No better mother than a redwood. VERSE 5 This will never end. Your soul will come round again. As a member of a dying herd or better - a needle on a pine.
6.
To incubate life Of a different kind And run up a tab Of things I didn’t try.... Daughter do you need to exist? Wish I had a mother to advise me on this. Not enough time To give you a life like mine. Still I face the judgment At the end of the line. PRE-CHORUS How many generations died Before I could make this silly choice of mine? CHORUS I’ll just lay around And wear my crown Of cedar boughs And all of the songs I gestated No doubts Will be found Among the thousand ways That my blood is creative. Not enough time To be tired The branches I’ve picked Could expire. What’s the difference between a story and a child? One you can lose and the other’s too wild To tell us the secrets on how to be When we leave the stasis Of the Holocene. VERSE 2 We have a home And an extra room And I’ve made a garden With food enough for two. It’s hard to justify The duplication of my genes When death came so early To the predecessors of me. PRE-CHORUS And I Can’t promise that I’ll be the woman You need And I Don’t suspect we’ll have the planet You need To survive CHORUS I’ll just lay around And wear my crown Of cedar boughs And all of the songs I gestated No doubts Will be found Among the thousand ways That my blood is creative. Not enough time To be tired The branches I’ve picked Could expire. What’s the difference between a story and a child? One you can lose and the other’s too wild To tell us the secrets on how to be When we leave the stasis Of the Holocene. I’ll just sit around And wear my crown Of cedar boughs
7.
Lookout 05:38
photos of the senior prom When we were all together when we all thought that we would live forever Life has changed so much that I forgot to call you when I Fell in love And had a child And thought we’d live forever Got a job And bought a house And promised I’d be better Why did I move out of town? I miss the smell of puget sound Before the gravensteins fall to the ground Is anyone home? Did anyone stay home? You only held my hand We talked about the weather But you were there when the Nisqually shook the river When the planes fell from the sky and hit the towers You were there Beneath the desks We thought we’d die together And as we lay you down to rest I think about the letter. Blue blotted ink on those college-ruled sheets Where you wrote everything down you couldn’t say to me. In ‘23 There is a photo I’ll see Where your handwriting never looked so dear to me! And I could never look you square in the eye because Those blue crypts and furrows are what I’ll see when I die, when I die, when I die When I die at least I’ll know that it’s my time to be free, To stand on the ridge, look out, and count every tree I came to know, every projectile seed they’ve sown, As my friend, as my mom, as my husband, as my own. As the clearest window we all have into the great unknown. Just look out!

about

Avante-garde classical composer? Freak-folk singer-songwriter? Postmodern jazz interloper?
For artists like Kaley Lane Eaton who paint outside the lines, there are seemingly endless boxes to check, but few name-brand comparisons. Joni Mitchell, Björk, Kate Bush, Laurie Anderson.

From a young age, Eaton learned from her mother to not choose between her musical passions. She studied everything from piano concertos to guitar to vocals. And it shows. The boxes aren’t big enough to encapsulate everything in her music. Nor small enough.

On her latest album Lookout, Eaton regularly makes pressure-testing trips from the vast cosmos down to the particular details of home in the Pacific Northwest. In her words, “It’s a behemoth.” From the ever-expanding space of jazz cymbals, flute, and harp, down to the folksy pluck of her banjo — a prized recent acquisition — and the grounding chords of her great-great-great grandmother's piano, which shipped up the Missouri River to the family homestead in Montana.

There are no electronic instruments to be found here, but many trees. The sequoia on the hillside, aspens quaking, cedar, and Jeffrey pine.

With her experience in electronic music, Eaton’s choice to exclude digital instruments from the palette is immediately felt. It’s not that technology doesn’t exist here. It’s a conscious focus on human beings with time-tested tools. Ancient technology.

The feeling is akin to the English band Talk Talk abandoning their synthesizers for experimental pastures. It’s a tradition, passed down in bands like Radiohead and Fever Ray, and it continues here. For example, in the gothic soul and Dixieland jazz chaos of Eaton’s “Expectation.”

She shares space with other artists who dance between the natural and spiritual worlds: Sufjan Stevens, Weyes Blood, and Eaton’s most potent (but unstreamable) muse, Joanna Newsom. The classically trained harpist’s spirit rides throughout the album, from the galloping chorus of “Jeffrey Pine” to the Laurel Canyon lilt of “The End of the Line.”

Like Newsom, Eaton still refuses to choose a lane. She composes with the full command of her four music degrees and classical training, but there’s an American-ness that can’t be shaken on Lookout. A sorrow, wildness, and expansiveness, not of the European classical tradition, but of jazz, blues and folk. Kaley Lane Eaton is all of these things and more. And none of them precisely.

Written by Ian Shuler

credits

released March 15, 2024

All tracks composed and produced by Kaley Lane Eaton

Strange Moon Records 2024

Kaley Lane Eaton, vocals, piano (tracks 1-7), acoustic guitar (track 2), banjo (track 2, 5, and 6), electric piano (track 4 and 6)
Kelsey Mines, bass (tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7)
Kayce Guthmiller, viola (tracks 1, 2, 3); background vocals (track 4 and 6)
Chris Icasiano, drums (tracks 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7)
Heather Bentley, viola (tracks 1, 2, 3); violin (track 6 and 7)
Simon Linn-Gerstein, cello (tracks 1, 2, and 3)
Lily Press, harp (tracks 2, 3, and 6)
James Falzone, clarinet (track 4 and 5); bass clarinet, pennywhistle, Paiute flute, and bells (track 5)
Leanna Keith, flute (track 1 and 6); background vocals (track 6)
Ray Larsen, trumpet (track 1 and 4)
Alina To, violin (track 6 and 7)
Aleida Gehrels, viola (track 6 and 7)
Maria Scherer-Wilson, cello (track 6 and 7)
Tom Baker, electric guitar (track 1)
Rian Souleles, baglama (track 7)
Neil Welch, tenor saxophone (track 4)

Recorded at Jack Straw Studios, Willow Street Studios, and Raisbeck Auditorium
Engineered by Ayesha Ubayatilaka, with additional engineering by Kaley Lane Eaton, Barry Sebastian, Greg Dixon, Lily Press, and Simon Linn-Gerstein
Mixed by Kaley Lane Eaton with additional support from Trevor Spencer and Ayesha Ubayatilaka
Album Art by Alexandra Allen
Cover photo by Michelle Smith-Lewis
Makeup by Gina Bettelli
Special thanks to Rian Souleles

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Kaley Lane Eaton Seattle, Washington

Avante-garde classical composer? Freak-folk singer-songwriter? Postmodern jazz interloper?
For artists like Kaley Lane Eaton who paint outside the lines, there are seemingly endless boxes to check, but few name-brand comparisons. Joni Mitchell, Björk, Kate Bush, Laurie Anderson. Eaton’s “disconcertingly lovely” (Seattle Weekly) compositions are “unconfined by genres” (V13 Media). ... more

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