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Our Life In The Desert

by My Bus

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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Limited Edition of 250

    Includes unlimited streaming of Our Life In The Desert via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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    edition of 250 
    Purchasable with gift card

      £15 GBP or more 

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of Our Life In The Desert via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 2 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      £10 GBP

     

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      £7 GBP  or more

     

1.
Esperanto 01:06
our life in the desert…
2.
seen the sparks blow out my weekend heart deletes these are the reasons to leave us here the landscape has changed stay or would you like to come and get away? once you were my lover for a single day now you’re loved by another sisters… saw us there all splashed upon the brightest sky looks like this might take us all a little while it’s not what you’re thinking no, no i’ve heard you’re on and off and off and on again i guess I always knew who you were in the end the two of us still walking in the rain oh, no…
3.
Ballerina 03:49
sting, sting, stings what will tomorrow bring? sting, sting, stings what will tomorrow bring? she sings the blues so quietly and licks the wounds that only I can feel she knows too much but still believes her eyes are phasing right in front of me days lift off in daytime let’s just stick on some tunes... baby
4.
Elvis And Me 04:27
once I caught glimpses when I sleepwalked through the park ended up somewhere I’ve never been since everythings backwards and forwards in time confusing I know but life is i’d like to go back sometimes… palm trees and big ships sail over our shoulders i’d give you a kiss but we’re almost here please come back to bed now, I feared that I’d lost you that’s too close for comfort this time of year i’d like to go back sometimes... you blink it’s gone there’s only love slept thru the night but these dreams that I’m having can only be described as out of place my life's ever changing, the ghosts never stop my mornings are getting much stranger now i’d like to get back sometime and you were the one that I always looked up to but sometimes in life things self implode you took a plane, ended up in las vegas i hope that you won the biggest hand i’d like to go back sometime you blink it’s gone there’s only love
5.
Moon Tempo 04:12
above the moon behind the sea here come the waves all over me inside the clouds the sun kissed trees just wash away all of me
6.
every morn we all give in to everything we’ve ever known the aches i have for you will grow all over again i love you there’s only so much more that i can break in two you feel so far away yet i am right next to you is it over? let’s multiply me by you we’ve come a long way in this world though this town can drag us down you’re still my best friend and yes the words cannot express this love that never dies it soars between the cracks of light between our eyes cos i love you hazel into green and back to timbuktu i’ll love you all the ways until our brightest of ends yeah i love you let’s multiply me by you we’ve come a long way in this world though this town will drag you down you’re still my best friend let’s multiply me by you we’ve come a long way in this world though this town can drag us down you’re still my best friend yeah you’re my best friend
7.
the sun wakes up another life her distant lips the ones I’ve always missed i’ll put the world back down between her breasts and then I’ll lift her up so she’ll see all of this through lorna's eyes that bend in time i hear those singing bombs botanic nursery rhymes we had the whole damn place and half the streets a little universe just sitting at our feet you know that I could love you you know that I could love you you know that I could love you but she was never there yeah this ship has sailed from the holy lands to the antrim road and up cavehill i’m getting all choked up guess I always will to arthur’s seat where we are still you know that I could love you you know that I could love you you know that I could love you but she was never there
8.
Angeles 04:08
it’s strange stranger still until expecting next the many and more it’s still as if it was before remember me to my mind with this is probable, possible, probable mumbled some such thing about trouble with loving and if I likely seem so am a lost soul in the afar from concealed tongue and if I seem so unlike a less, least, loose, lick, flick if love is an answer, a reason or even if love is love is love is loss a strange angel motion i turned into becoming other than myself, then tried to change back again to return but it never was and it was too late already i am only me as a mirror about now and what of it? what use words when the speaker changes forever and always? and who thinks words also change by themselves? beyond our minds contemplating the paltry limits of the conditional to my mind thoughts are only for preparing an entrance and an exit
9.
yeah we know we can't grow wings don't be silly behind it all we're a bit too old apparently that's all they say that's all slowing down, drawing frowns wrinkles will not touch the ground unless my heart is crushed well remember what they said that makes the heart grow fonder it only makes sense when you look upwards too many fists will go through walls, so many walls that keep us in i take no notice of that thankfully without the birds, without the bees, without the flowers, without the trees we won't have much more to live for i believe soft caresses in the rain i guess i've smudged your lipstick again especially when it's red and romantically said holds her heart and thinks of she could this be? could this be? the only thing that matters to me, just me, just me... have you ever thought “god…theres so many people in the world"
10.
we believe the sun will come and kiss our loved ones gone they’ve left us all too soon so now they dance at noon and in the twilight night so we remember why the love will get us through i’ll find a way to you we believe the sun will come we believe the sun will come yes, the sun will come
11.
(gary) on our way to heaven lights are flashing i regret and take back everything I’ve said until this evening it’s not quite feeling homeless or distressed, the best is yet to come how did you guess, I was a total mess, yes, a total mess and so you see people always get the wrong ideas inconclusive and theres no such thing as beauty, only things that look like beautiful and if you transpose this life onto that life i suppose every life has good and bad parts anyway... marble columns pierce the clouds round the entrance gates I can relate to them and in the future, we can wait here for friends if they feel alone or perhaps unsure we can wait and greet them pearly smiles and glassy eyed shimmering i know it’s going to be real fun oh even the trees breathe you sigh serene, I sigh peacefully i believe, don’t you believe? in fact it’s close to blackmail embarrassed I’ve forgotten whether I’m male or female asexual and you’re teeth look so white my clothes become invisible naked as the day I was born (joe) steal my heart, you’re safer with me just you and the pillows and me makes three and I’ll be there with bells on can’t you see that nothing else matters if the words don’t change we’ll put them in the water and they’ll think we’re strange but I love you, completely written on the blue sky you sent to me were words that even god would find hard to feel and I’m the one thats baptized, naturally your little box full of everything those words are like when bing sings oh I could sing about you eternally heavens not a worthy place for me to have to wash my face cos I’ll be using your sink, if you let me, if you let me, if you let me, if you let me… confessions won’t need to be my scene cos I won’t need no in between i can’t sin if you’re with me and who said love is all you need i think it should be decreed where do we sleep? So peacefully? so steal my heart, you’re safer with me just you and the pillows and me makes three and I’ll be there with bells on can’t you see that nothing else matters if the words don’t change we’ll put them in the water and they’ll think we’re strange but I love you, completely, but I love you, completely, completely, completely, completely… alice in wonderful sent to me alice in wonderful sent to me alice in wonderful sent to me alice in wonderful sent to me…. sent to me
12.
And Time 03:57
our loved ones and our dreams have gone to bed the clubs they fell asleep these past decades my esperanto slipped between the sheets now all we’ve got is john peel in our heads the mornings will break you a little piece at a time these rainbows yeah they are fleeting but i hope they'll find you in the end lavery’s and the plaza just echoes the people gone too soon all cared the most our bus late as always on the way home these ghosts won’t live forever on their own the mornings will break you a little piece at a time these rainbows yeah they are fleeting but i hope they'll find you in the end

about

Joe Cassidy’s first album in 18 years under the name of Butterfly Child, released in 2015, was named Futures. “A lot of songs are about past relationships,” he said at the time. “You rebuild and move forward, toward the future.”

Little did Joe know that, one year later, he would re-establish a crucial past relationship after more than 20 years, namely his former musical partner Gary McKendry, which would flower into their first official collaboration, Our Life In The Desert, over 30 years since the duo – calling themselves My Bus - made bedroom cassettes in their home city of Belfast.

The album also heralds McKendry’s return from a self-imposed wilderness that began in 1993, in the days when he called himself Papa Sprain. Anyone who knows Butterfly Child and Papa Sprain, restless parallel adventurers in the early days of UK dream-pop, will also know what a big deal this all is, especially as Our Life In The Desert is of the richest and most emotional dream-pop entities of any era.

The emotion comes from a friendship lost, renewed and remembered, or as Joe puts it, “a love sto-ry. One between two friends, the music they share, ex-girlfriends, pals who are no longer with us and the ghosts of old haunts long gone. It is a longing for a Belfast and a time that never really ex-isted.”

The album’s backdrop is grammar school in 1980s Belfast, through to shared experiences in Lon-don when Butterfly Child and Papa Sprain were both signed to fledgling indie H.ark! and then the venerated Rough Trade. When the latter collapsed, Cassidy moved to America and made numerous albums but McKendry returned to Belfast and went to ground. Not that Joe’s life has always been on the up, as the title Our Life In The Desert testifies.

Joe: “When we started the album, Gary sent me pieces of music, including a piece called ‘Our Life In The Desert’, which struck me immediately as the album title. The first Papa Sprain record was the Flying To Vegas EP, with a desert landscape for the artwork. In the early nineties, Gary moved into the desert, mentally. And when I moved from Chicago to LA, I just got lost there, it’s one of the most vacuous cities in the world. Our Life In The Desert seemed so appropriate as the album title.”

As Gary recalls, he and Joe became firm friends at 15, bonding over The Velvet Underground and Bowie. They initially made music separately, but eventually started making four-track demos in 1986 fuelled by endless cups of tea and cigarettes, “a splendid way to block out the Troubles that were raging all around us,” says Joe.

The tapes gathered dust when Gary moved to London in 1989, to study English and History – a pur-suit set aside after Joe saw an ad in Melody Maker – “looking for bands to produce” - placed by H.ark!, the label run by Alex Ayuli and Rudy Tambala, AKA dream-pop experimentalists A.R. Kane. By 1992, Papa Sprain and Butterfly Child had released two EPs apiece on H.ark! before Rough Trade stepped in. The label released Butterfly Child’s debut album Onomatopoeia in early 1993, but the money had run out by the time Papa Sprain was ready to record an album (there was just one single, ‘Tech Yes’, for the Rough Trade Singles Club). In any case, “I just lost it,” says Gary. “I had a breakdown and I couldn’t function anymore.”

It was only in the mid-noughties, when blogs eulogised the brilliance – and lamented the absence – of Butterfly Child and Papa Sprain, that Gary and Joe reconnected. And when Joe flew to Belfast to visit family in 2016, Gary suggested they meet. “We talked for two hours,” says Joe. “And then Gary said, let’s make some music like we used to. I said, sure…”

The initial result was a collection of improvised sketches, “messy and silly, over crazy little beats, sound design stuff,” Joe recalls. “But each day I was in Belfast, I would be inspired by the textures and would write and record songs around them. And when I returned to America, I thought, I can do something with this mixing wise. Gary and I used to make up songs on the spot, so if we kept the same schedule, writing and recording tracks in 24 hours, it would be a lovely way to close a chap-ter.”

As it turns out, Gary had started recording again in 1997: “white noise,” he calls it, “my way to get through a creative block.” Going by his YouTube posts since the mid-noughties (search Gary Mar-tin McKendry: there are hundreds to choose from), he progressed to a form of digitised ambi-ent/post-rock impressionism (with matching graphics). “For Gary, songwriting, form and melody are passé!” says Joe. Gary’s response: “I don’t like things staying in time. I’d rather sounds play off each other.”

Combining Gary’s love of dissonance and Joe’s love of melody/composition, Our Life In The De-sert became, “the perfect example of an exquisite corpse of two clashing worlds. A lot like Ireland in the bad days,” says Joe. The lyrics range from direct to oblique (We’re both huge James Joyce fans,” says Joe), as the music spans oceanic drift (‘Moon Tempo’), full-on drama (Elvis & Me’), simmering pop tones (‘Tomorrow Will Be Ours’) and the stirring, multi-faceted ‘Goose Pimples Forever’, rescued by the wonders of technology from an ancient disintegrating My Bus cassette, with Joe adding a new vocal to Gary’s original. ‘Breakfast in Bed’ is also an old My Bus track, but newly recorded as the original was, “too horribly hissy”.

There is one new Gary vocal, on the exquisite, haunting “Angeles”, his spoken word matched to one of his more restful ambient pieces. “It’s an idea of confusion and uncertainty,” says Gary (“Our minds contemplating the paltry limits of the conditional to my mind thoughts are only for preparing an entrance and an exit”). “It’s where I still am.”

If the album’s predominant voice and lyricist is Joe, Gary is woven into every fabric, such as the Belfast landmarks in ‘She Was Never There’: “This ship has sailed from the Holy Lands to the An-trim Road and up Cavehill”: “we’d walk along and talk about music and how we’d make better records,” says Joe. Note that Our Life In The Desert and Belfast boy Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks share a track title in ‘Ballerina’. “Lyrically it just came out when I started singing to the music,” says Joe. “About the euphoria of a first kiss or hearing an amazing song for the first time.”

Our Life In The Desert will be released on Onomatopoeia Records, run by Nick Bourne, a huge Butterfly Child and Papa Sprain fan who had previously connected with Joe on Facebook, which “completes another circle,” says Joe. Likewise, Gary and Joe’s decision to donate proceeds from the album to a mental health charity. Proof, then, that even in a desert, life can flourish.

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released January 31, 2020

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My Bus Belfast, UK

My Bus is a new band formed by prime movers in legendary post-rock and dream pop innovators:

Joe Cassidy of Butterfly Child and Gary McKendry of Papa Sprain.

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