Still Water, by Bailey Miller

Still Water

by Bailey Miller

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weehawmans6969 Probably my favorite album of the year, also probably one of the best debut album I’ve heard in a long time. The production and instrumentation are so gorgeous, the way a track can start from a simple quiet banjo and voice to grow in to something with synth and other instruments is simply beautiful. I hope to hear more from this artist.

_cavstic_ Ridiculously ethereal and lush. A lovely mix of stripped down musicianship to expansive sounds and everything in between. Too many good tracks to list, a real gem. Favorite track: Wilt.

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Limited edition cassette and zine by Bailey Miller with new artwork, poetry and images. Limited to 50. Mastered by Sean McCann.

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Limited Edition Zine featuring lyrics, linear notes, and art.

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1.	Still Water I 06:56		buy track
2.	Something Rather Than Nothing 04:35	lyrics	buy track
how small can I be? how weak can I be? how quiet, how silent, can I be? can I, can I be? how needy can I be? how little can I see? ‘cause I’m at war with me I’m at war with me why are we so afraid? why are we so ashamed? why are we not what we want? why are we so depraved? carry, carry, carry carry me, carry me, carry
3.	Wilt 06:17	lyrics	buy track
my shrink sent me to the cemetary on assignment she said gently, time to stop living in confinement venlafaxine only did the numbing, it was violent all through my teens, I could feel the ripping, but I was silent shaky hands lazy feet clumsy limbs bone and meat mortality binds my mind endlessly, death abundant my heart, it beats like a timid squirmy thing, and I’m scared to feel it the world its grief, flowing never ending the place can seem so void of living did anybody decide it was okay to be born? if you see God would you tell him that I am afraid to wilt
4.	Then Holes 06:02	lyrics	buy track
you look so cold, you look so cold abandoned lobby, we enter in now you look so cold, you look so cold abandoned lobby you look so cold did you even feel it, or did you try to see the light that I, that I, that I, that I do the place has burned down the wick is up your face is buried now the wind breathed out you look so cold, you look so cold a vacated body, space we do not know I loved you and it hurt to see you go
5.	Hypnagogia 03:15	lyrics	buy track
I am driving in the quiet on a highway stained with blood oh I saw an angel layin carcass, deer trampled and stunned headin back from north Kentucky on the frozen Brent Spence Bridge passed up north to touch down Jesus cursing every trailer hitch I am speeding through the twilight all my seeing has gone blind car so weary drives behind me oh God, what’d I do this time? steady straight, it lasts forever many times I fall asleep tell myself I might just die here flashing lights startles in heaps I awake within a pasture legions of wild balloons lightheaded, sudden confusion I’ve been shot up by them too in my trance I saw a vision a man with disquieting eyes flashed intrusive like a viper on the ceiling, on the sky
6.	Into What 05:59	lyrics	buy track
(in no particular order) falling into what follow to I’m on a boat I don’t know where to go now heaven no where are we now I have known crying hurry hurry I’m crying out for what I don’t know where to go now through the dark
7.	222 03:10	lyrics	buy track
you put me as your emergency contact I thought we had a deal we knew where to put that piano and I knew it was real and I am far too familiar with this sort of questioning it’s like the whole thing is breaking for just one tiny thing you’re not only my lover but also my best friend yet now I lie here and wonder from where do I suspend? but I am not the victim as I have always thought for the light that burns inside you can not be based on ought
8.	Still Water II 02:03	lyrics	buy track
still water
9.	You, Softly 09:40	lyrics	buy track
two years two hands one blesses one mends I’m so tired of waiting for the right time to say it but I know I need to say it two years separate yet don’t seem to exist at all not of longing but of light but maybe there at the same time my soul rose to meet you when you stare in my eyes for minutes at a time and running up the stairs to kiss goodbye not one but four times releasing expectations all sense of time all sense of lying I don’t know how to say it but I want to be with you if you want to November, you were a hope a deep yellow mind with the best questions a numinous connection a bright light came to visit me a great release you were a sunlit absense in my life for a long time and I’m sorry for shutting out your kindness and I’m sorry for the silence then, I was a siren part of me lingers in our busy hands that transcended the words we said through the clouds an opening I didn’t see coming unfurling a swirling and something growing over and over again you, softly
10.	Parallel Place 03:59	lyrics	buy track
aftertaste, aftertaste see you in my mind, aftertaste time is good you’ll find, aftertaste this a parallel place the spiral of time, a line on the face or was it just a way to get to first base? I splayed out my heart, a letter erased why has it always felt like a chase? or a beautiful field with infinite space? I tried so hard to give you grace but how painful it is to be in a parallel place a parallel place erase me, erase me, erase me wrap me up in waves of longing (I know you are not with me, I know you’re just me) you’re so lovely, scorch right through me (I know you’re not here, I know you’re just me) open, open, clasp, engulfing (I know you’re not here, I know you’re just me) pierced surrender, weight upon me (I know you’re not here)
11.	Balm 05:58	lyrics	buy track
another’s love cuts so deep to the vein where soul bleeds and I couldn’t see how, how, how, how my own when will I have the breath to be abundantly? not hide my face from the sun or whatever tends to fall the light’s inside, take back your words, speak testify, though the sound meek and I don’t know why there’s lead on my lips come alive from the inside gaping arms, how they unnerve me tender spot sits unveiled, see? past safety first am I hardened to this? now’s not the time for deer in the headlights for throwing my hands up in the air, fading I wanna tell my friends I love them and not be tangled up in webs of my own making webs of my own making struggling to find anything but fear in another’s eyes seeing balm
12.	Emptiness, Rejoice 05:21	lyrics	buy track
I am prisoned I am free when I stare upon trees constant terrors wash over me I have begged let me be slips out of my hands we get lonely no matter what we do reach upwards from this point of view heed the lowly all of you to the ground I will be there too emptiness, rejoice lift your shallow, lifeless voice

about

Still Water is the debut album by Bailey Miller. The full album will be released on 09.02.22 on Whited Sepulchre Records.

To say that something invokes the uncanny is to describe an experience of something familiar, or even something secret, encountered in an unfamiliar context. The uncanny is effectively a kind of tension between recognition and its absence.

Producer, singer, and multi-instrumentalist Bailey Miller’s debut full length, Still Water, relies on just such a tension, and therefore achieves a sense of the uncanny in a languid hypnogogia. Over the course of nearly an hour, Miller’s clear voice gently and starkly plays against a spectrum of sounds: harp, violin, banjo, autoharp, software synths, pulsing drum machine –– all performed by Miller and often meticulously placed, never too densely layered. In certain cases, one version of Miller’s voice plays against another; the more intimate version appearing like fine, familiar stitching through a lush fabric of reverberant harmony. Miller’s singing is at times direct, declarative, with a lucidity that makes it feel almost spoken, recalling contemporaries like Karima Walker and Cross Record. When Miller sings: “my shrink sent me to the cemetery on assignment / she said gently, time to stop living in confinement,” there is a thoughtful, earthy directness. But a moment later, the scene is, however briefly, punctuated with a swell of lush,
reverberant voices.

The shuffling and juxtaposing of tactile instruments with otherworldly sounds finds a resonance with Shirley Collins’ recent Crowlink while the sheer height of that otherworldliness reaches places where
one finds Ian William Craig or Ana Roxanne. But like Roxanne, though Miller flirts continually with the cosmos, it is through a sense of close proximity that these songs are ultimately transmitted. Miller made
this work over three years, in five different homes, while undergoing one after another major upheaval. She joined and left an intentional community, started and stopped graduate programs three times, lived
through SSRI withdrawal and multiple career pivots, and suffered what she terms “a spiritual crisis.” This period of searching was perhaps sparked by a five-day silent retreat, after which Miller says that any word she uttered seemed to fall short. And during this time, Miller’s understanding of the role of music underwent upheaval too. The result was that “every song came from a place of great surrender.” This is
music born from a giving-over to the silent ground beneath everything, and however dream-laden it might sound, Miller herself is remarkably present.

A perennial resident of Ohio, it is perhaps no wonder that Miller’s songs rely on such tender directness, for though Still Water is shot through with reverberant swells and wistful spirals of sonic mist, the songs themselves are delivered with the kind of plaintiveness one learns while playing house shows in middle America. But that’s no trivialization. Such intimate spaces are just the place for self-reflection and heavy conversations about the biggest of things: mortality, God, existence itself. In those spaces, one might even feel pursued by such questions. Among her most crucial influences, Miller counts philosopher Simone Weil, whose work thrived on a similar tension between the worldly and the beyond. “Through the clouds,” Millers sings, “an opening / I didn’t see coming / unfurling / a swirling / and something / growing / over and over / again.” Bailey Miller’s Still Water is a record made over many places and through many changes, and it is all the more for this fact that it is an act of recognition –– of the familiar, the secret –– of what’s to be found uncannily within.

credits

released September 2, 2022

Music and Lyrics by Bailey Miller.
Produced by Bailey Miller and Isaac Joel.
Mastered by Sean McCann.
Cover photo by Vy Pham.

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about

Bailey Miller Cincinnati, Ohio

swelling strings, synthesized stirrings, subterranean spirals, and screeching stillness

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