Ships In The Night

  30th Sept Sunday Bittersweet at Berlin, Ships In The Night  live.  Philly's night. The night before was Crash Pop. Wonderful, and exhausting. And that's another fucking post. All that fucking shoegaze...in one night...from 6:30pm. It was a fucking marathon. Oh...whatever....I was into it....I was.  And its so weird that I can be into shoegaze like this but baseball can't really hold my attention. The Sunday after, is this one show at Philly's night. Here I gather my piss poor memories of seeing Ships. I hear the CD now a lot, and have since seen the videos on YouTube.
  So I caught the last song, and a piece of the one before. Enough for me to dance and take pictures. I hope she comes back.  Came home with the CD Myriologues and shirt.....a medium. I know....it will motivate me to work out....it will be one of those.  Ships In The Night does with Killing Moon what Hungry Lucy did with Blue Dress. Now, that got me all thinking about what happened to them...Hungry Lucy. They were great! And Ships In The Night reminds me a lot about them. Multi instrumentalist Alethea Leventhal SITN. She can play a harp....did I really see that. I don't want....to chase that video down.  She comes from Virginia.  From that last song I had to extract whatever impression I could of the whole show. It had to be everything.  That last song that struck me as dark, sweet and mysterious.....but that's kind of the whole fucking point of being here, soaking it all up. Even now I can't recall which song was last. This memory has all the right conditions for that German Expressionist treatment. I mean the fucking club is called Berlin...green skies over tornado ally.  So what did I see as she played? I recalled a group of about 8 dancing to the left of the stage.  They were dancing to Ships. I really did not look beyond that. I just pondered on her being here before Philly took his night the normal way he does. A small band, I was lucky to find when they orbited around from so far away, played before and made it the first awesome song I would hear that night.
  Philly's Bittersweet continued on after her set was done, and that whole set was great. I requested Ritual Howls and got it! From then on it was this cascading set of all shades of dark music, some that I am familiar and a lot that I am not.  All of it kept me on the floor.  I had the CD at this point and could have left it there, but managed to find enough for the shirt...a medium.  That German Expressionist self distortion allows for me to believe I will look good in medium. ....For me, its one of those rare finds. ....the shirt, the CD...and the poster....wow, right?  And how rare is it to catch the gig. I almost didn't so I went for whatever relic I could find and take home to definitively in stone remind me of this show, in defiance of the near miss. 
  Another legendary goth band they remind me of....early Switchblade Symphony.  No....no, I'm not just fucking saying that...... 'cause so what if Philly played Switchblade later that night....not relevant. Yeah....their beats....with the nursery rhymes....That's what separated them.  Innocence walking on dark waters, just like here with Ships.  Her plainspoken words glide and land effectively. The music is restrained, minimal but with a dancers mid tempo pulse. Minimal, dark dance, synth pop. I think that is more crayons than I am used to using. In Dark Places when she hits you square with that clear voice, you are a deer staring into the lights. But that dancers pulse moves you along.  There was a reason why we had this at Bittersweet. You can dance to this shit like its your favorite Book Of Love track. Myriologues broods over ripples of water and looks for a fuse that Alethea steps on. Her songs are simultaneously intimate enough for a bedroom, and dance floor worthy for....well goth clubs.
  Her set finished and I somehow not as bitter for missing most of it. Instead,

feeling good that I caught what I did and I still can buy her music. There was no fucking way I was just gonna hear this shit on YouTube. I gotta have the fucking physical CD.
  After time I can think about this show I caught on the after end of Crash Pop. Me and Philly went to that as well. Philly had me stay longer with each song on his set list. So as much as it is about her....its also about Bittersweet on the last Sunday of the month. It was a good time there, as fleeting times tend to be, too brief. Writing it down extends it for me. Serves as the building blocks for a more accurate collective memory. There is video, music, and this text, this culture matters to me and it should be enjoyed now and remembered later. 

 My impression of her music evolves and deepens.  I want to go back and say, revise what I wrote about the tracks I already mentioned, and ramble about further about the rest.  Deathless reminds me of some Zola Jesus tracks that specifically are about suicide.  And like those tracks there is no escaping clearly spoken words.  The video kind of seems to be about some one preparing herself to take her own life.....she takes a vial of something.  Another reason why I have to say the word dark over and over again. Its blacker than a long power outage.  World Turned Cold takes me back to and has the sweetness of The Never Ending Story. The entire album retains this feeling of smallness, intimacy. That makes the impact of clear words more resonant.  The songs don't telegraph each other. Each carves its own path in my head. They are different enough from each other that you don't tire of the artist.  I can hear the whole album. It makes seeing her more special. It makes fitting into this fucking Medium a mission that includes cardio, push-ups, and pull-ups.  When she comes back I'll get the big XXL. Zig