1. |
||||
|
Saved some pictures of the moon
Because I'd love to go.
When the room spins from boredom,
I close my eyes and float.
A celestial perfection
Crafted long ago.
Pure as driven snow,
A ball of the smoothest dough.
A lunar day begins,
Separate from our sins.
Spinning to and fro
With breath held and eyes closed
Well it's quite a view from here,
Some two-thousand years of fear.
I wonder would it make you sad
If judgment day was near?
The context is obscene,
Taking psalms like dramamine.
The time melts right past
While the rain peels away the ash.
Feeling sick in reality:
Escapism rescue me.
Give me my own time
To grasp frantically at twigs
And to realize that I am
As rooted as they are.
I will pace these ten steps,
I will listen to these sounds,
I will wonder if they're here:
Up above, or down below.
That rumbling outside
Must be in my mind.
Can you hear me when I think?
If I offended you, blink twice.
Insignificant violent moods.
Seeing creatures file in twos.
Critical heartbreak ensues.
Throw the book and the spirit too.
When the window reveals too much,
and explodes through mental touch,
Lay down to avoid the rush,
Writing prophesies in the dust.
And in rare moments like these
I can picture with ease
Why they dreamed up this biblical goal,
Something that can save the soul.
I guess I've always felt this way,
Abroad or when locked away,
I know I'm only making a scene
For my sense of self esteem.
|
||||
2. |
In the Basement
04:41
|
|||
|
I used to hide
Underneath the
Broken couch
and watch through the holes
As my friends
Armed with flashlights
Cut the darkness
To look for me
Until I gave up.
Played in the basement
Until the morning.
It was enough was enough was enough was enough.
Feeling present
For all of forty minutes
Was enough was enough was enough was enough
For me.
The breathing crowd makes
Condensation
Beads that drip
Down the walls and
Into your hair.
I put aside the
Looming specter
Of my future
I just plucked the strings
Until the cops showed up.
It's still enough still enough still enough still enough.
(Though I mourn for it like someone who has died)
It's still enough still enough still enough still enough
For me.
|
||||
3. |
Everybody Knows Somebody
03:42
|
|||
|
People always said that I looked like a friend
Based on surface similarities.
A modern everyman, built upon the backs
Of these secondhand identities.
Everybody knows somebody who looks like me.
Everybody knows somebody that sounds like me.
To summarize the plot, a reaper comes to change my thoughts
And watch me suffer for morality.
He cuts down what I've become, attempts to change the prodigal son
to feel the weight of his mortality.
Everybody knows somebody who looks like me
Everybody knows somebody that sounds like me
He asks about my vices with a blank look on his face,
And which ones I would take with me.
Shuffling pawns on the coast of the carnal sea,
My useless palms and curling feet.
I said the main things I'd bring: paper and a pen,
And the luxury to never write again.
|
||||
4. |
Actress
07:44
|
|||
|
Forced into the fine arts room
Before I accidentally saw too much of you.
I was asked to stand and be introduced,
A single sentence to summarize my use.
And it sounds as creepy as the fan in "New Age"
I want to prove that I'm not the same.
It's ironic that I'm acting when
I'm speaking to the characters on stage.
When I tell you what I know, I'm really showing you
All I don't.
Everybody's watching me, when I just wanna sit
And watch you.
A velvet green material that draped and then concealed the second act.
A fluttering that caught my eye revealed all that lay in wait behind.
In a glance I thought I saw a glimpse of who they really are outside.
I dropped the act, I could not pretend, I was shocked back to who I really am.
Forced into a rehearsal room to study for a class
that I hardly understand, I'm an isolated man.
I can tell not a single actress wants to see me there in the crowd
But I'm too proud to notice, though I can't control my face. In fact,
I can't even adjust my legs without wondering how it looks,
And every time they interact I shove my face in my books.
Scribble notes while they give a few, to look like a know a thing or two
But I haven't thought a thing since I sat down.
Instead a single note repeats, a single note repeats, a single phrase repeats, and I don't care what it means.
|
||||
5. |
Kid Sampson
07:05
|
|||
|
Perched atop the concrete like a soldier on Hadrian's Wall.
The coastline is crumbling, this house is gonna fall.
The bricks will mix in with the swells,
Getting pounded by the swells,
To make the dirtiest, sweetest sea foam.
A future ruin or a monument,
But for this week, it's home.
But something flies above me like Kid Sampson on the beach.
I will be cut down
If I throw my weight around.
When everything is ending and my dust is on the ground,
I'd be the first to drown.
If I stay and wait around.
I could block a single street, make one-way traffic change its current.
Hang a sign around my neck like a doomslinging prophet.
But I am following the footprints to the quiet public beach.
In search of human contact that feels so far out of reach.
|
||||
6. |
Painter
03:59
|
|||
|
This odometer is low, and I'll admit
That I was dragged to all the places that I've been.
Walk a mile in my shoes, and I'll let you keep them
They look better on you anyway.
Now I can see the countryside with Claude.
He'll bring a Glass to show me how he sees.
Distorted, faded pictures fill pages one to three
And the spirit of the place is good enough for me.
I'm still a creator:
but I'd rather be a painter.
To focus on tone
And let the work stand on its own.
A mystified way to represent
With a cigarette and a refined accent.
Integrity and dignity that justifies itself
Comes with being painterly
|
||||
7. |
Losing Touch
05:08
|
|||
|
Unavoidable hissing,
Drowning in dark noise,
Feel cracks as the structure shifts.
Breaths with no definition,
Buzzing and ringing,
Flowing water and phasing fuzz.
Hear skin shed and settle
Like sand onto metal:
The soft patter of former flesh.
I think I'm losing touch.
I think I hear too much.
I think I'm losing touch.
Maybe I hear too much.
Read slower than ever,
Letter to letter,
Losing sentences to words.
Avoiding a climax
Developed a reflex
To give up and distract myself.
Sunk in cultural touch points,
It's not in a book but
Could be if you wrote it down.
I think I'm losing touch.
Maybe I think too much.
I think I'm losing touch.
Maybe I think too much.
We made these decisions,
Picking and choosing.
What am I losing
By only consuming?
Been having these visions
For over a month now,
I meet myself in a dream.
There's nothing to say but
I need to say something.
I freeze up and cannot speak.
My brain isn't working,
Frantically searching
For small talk that isn't there.
I'm losing touch with you.
I'm losing touch with everyone.
I don't talk the ways I used to.
It feels forced to speak to anyone.
|
||||
8. |
Stop Pretending
04:54
|
|||
|
A bug drowns itself in my
Glass of wine,
But it's drunk as hell so it doesn't mind
That I've swallowed it whole,
In fact, it's the trip of a lifetime.
It's a trip, that's what I've heard
And all speculation is absurd
And I won't know until I've observed.
So I climb inside
A red sea with buoyancy
That surprises me,
My extremities no longer belong to me
As I float from side to side
With limp fingers and toes.
She said "baby, stop pretending."
I said "maybe I will someday soon.
It's all that I can do."
Trust me, I'm not just lazy
Without these voices I'd go crazy too.
So I invented you.
It's all based on something else,
The nostalgia that I've felt,
So I blame the generalizations.
At the same time, it's all I've got,
A chain of who begot
The next big thing that I would love to be.
A sophomoric expectation,
A critical lamentation,
Clean divides of decades.
Though it's ended I can't help but wish
That their life was some type of gift
And they've found their peace in the rift.
A cliche of rock and roll,
To copy the Rolling Stones.
But who were they in the first place?
So I copy you and you copy them and
They copied someone else from somewhere else,
An anxious game of show and tell.
|
||||
9. |
Orange Girl
08:09
|
|||
|
A walk
With a Chelsea Girl I met
Who's much smarter than me
But God, I need a friend.
The trash
A cruel reminder of
All of the things
That I will never do
With you.
It doesn't bum me out
But it's awkward as hell
Avoiding these eggshells.
Our streets
Form a perfect block
Amidst the curves
And hills that force a swerve.
The "orange girls" don't blame me
When I speak a bit too bluntly.
The pages can't tell me that I'm no good
Though I can see why you would.
A glass
Left untouched.
I finish it off
After you walk back.
My guts
They don't churn so well
In this vertical booth:
Gin and dry vermouth.
The stacks
That sit at home
Don't ask for a thing,
Only my attention.
I'm doing a bad job of acting like myself.
|
||||
Chameleon Treat Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Chameleon Treat is an artist interested in neo-psychedelia and offbeat pop.
The band is
currently the solo project of Andrew Kruske.
Direct booking inquiries/questions to: chameleontreat@gmail.com
Instagram:
www.instagram.com/chameleontreat/
... more
If you like Chameleon Treat, you may also like:
Gorgeous psych pop as big and sprawling as a clear summer sky, with vocal melodies that swoop and dive.
go to album
Passenger Peru
by Passenger Peru
Brooklyn-based experimental pop duo deftly mix fuzzy guitars, nifty bass lines and sorta' danceable beats.
go to album
featured on Bandcamp Radio May 28, 2019
go to album
Dream pop jammers that skip from psych to alternative to indie pop and back again.
go to album
Sink Like A Symphony
by Fred Thomas
An indiepop classic from a decade ago, only available on sold-out physical media, is now available again, remastered specially for Bandcamp.
go to album
unreliable narrator
by the rutabega
The charming Indiana indie rock duo multiply themselves in the video for their earworm of a new single.
go to album
Sophomore release of gentle, spaced-out, folk music with a slightly tropical edge, from a trio out of Chicago.
go to album
