1. |
Pseudocandor
03:39
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Pseudocandor
You’re giving it your all
Or so they think
They "know" your interior
Want to "protect" you
You flash your teeth
You love their love
But think "god damn they’re dumb"
You think you’re gonna blow it up
Act like a teenage fool
See if they stay on the ride with you
Love them and hate them if they do
Just a first class cage pacer
Funny line with a big rage chaser
Is decency a chore
Is it too much to ask
That my sages self-reflect?
Forgive me if I just can’t laugh
At thinly veiled contempt
(c) 2022 L. Alexandra Manuel
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2. |
Boys' Club Masquerade
02:29
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Boys' Club Masquerade
Nothing makes me queasier
Than feigned progressiveness
Unrecognized benefits
Open-mindedness only
Until it cramps you
A truly antiquated bile
Coursing inside your skin
It’s not up to me to be dignified
Any more than you
To drag your sorry hide
Out of your little dark age
You did what?
Aw dude that sucks
(But you’ll always be OK)
Hold unblinking smiles
While each other spouts madness
Women like piles of arms and legs
In a warehouse far away
(c) 2022 L. Alexandra Manuel
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3. |
Intimacy of the Hitman
02:09
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Intimacy of the Hitman
She asked "How do I know"
He said "You don’t"
You care
But would you have me
Killed out of convenience
In the morning chill
You switch on Fulsom or Bitches’ Brew
Not sharing yourself with me
But performing yourself before me
Pacing and expounding
Ladling soup for invisible guests
A never-ending series
Of laboratory tests
Was I even human to you
Expose me to stimuli
See what I’ll do
Let me make it easy
When there’s static on the intercom
I cover my ears
And I scream
(c) 2022 L. Alexandra Manuel
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4. |
Never the Twain
02:45
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Never the Twain
He once warned me sex and love couldn’t mix
In his ruined mind. My innocence
Recoiled, only to later find
I was just the same
I can’t respect you and still
Want to see you on your knees
I love you
Or I want you
There is no in between
It’s about the initial aesthetic jolt
Above all else
Where it goes from there
I wouldn’t care to tell
“I get my kicks above the waistline sunshine”
(c) 2022 L. Alexandra Manuel
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5. |
Glamorous
04:09
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Glamorous
I’m a glamorous boy of a girl
And they wonder what to do with me
I would never make a mother
Would never be a bride
But there must
There must be a place for me
In your organization
Well privacy is fine
But your suffocating church-picnic
Truth was never mine
No matter how shiny an ornament
I would have made
And there is such a thing
As putting out your own eye
Break out the Stoli again
How ‘bout a toast to not living a lie
I used to think the rules should be upheld
Whether or not I played by them myself
What hubris I had
Masquerading as concern
I nearly burst
With all I had to learn
Now I’m a quiet sort of a scream
And they wonder what to do with me
I may never pound the pavement
But I’ll dress you down in style
No there’s no
There’s no place for me in your organization
(c) 2022 L. Alexandra Manuel
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6. |
Calypso 58
01:44
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Calypso 58
(from Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle)
I wanted all things to seem to make some sense
So we could all be happy, yes, instead of tense
So I made up lies
So that they all fit nice
And I made this sad world a paradise
(c) 2022 L. Alexandra Manuel (music only)
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7. |
Yearning for Yearning
03:50
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Yearning for Yearning
Farewell all you fey mind-manglers
Who ruined my appetite
Farewell all you carrot-danglers
I could never be yours for life
For you I will always wander
If not in body, even still in mind
For you I will always be a stranger
Out of rhythm with the nesting kind
*
Always in and out of the cat door
I can’t feel things that rest in my hands
Or maybe they’re silk that slides right through
When this lack of friction bores me
I run on parallel tracks
One grounded
One in flashback
But lately I worry
I’m jumping way too often
In my default escape
I’ll probably get stuck someday
Decay inside a private bliss
Like the Caretaker’s crackling waltzes
So many years of non-descript want
Has (sic) compromised my taste buds
Forgive me, it’s not you
I don’t really want anyone
(c) 2022 L. Alexandra Manuel
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8. |
Don't Touch the Hair
03:20
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Don't Touch the Hair
Meticulous arrangement
Of manufactured parts
You would have been impossible to be with
You wouldn’t have split the damn check
And I would rather have died
Than drive you in my car
There would have been no learning together
Failing together
Laughing when the smoke alarm went off
You would have nudged aside my thoughts with yours
It’s not that he doesn’t check the switches and the sockets
And the freezer and the locks
(Let’s face it, I’m always gonna go for that)
But he lets me see him fall
And I’m never not allowed inside the Wall
(c) 2022 L. Alexandra Manuel
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9. |
Affliction #2
01:54
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Affliction #2
As a backwoods kid
I always felt both
Too cerebral and too stupid
Nothing worse than a faint
Undefined neurodivergence
The fear of being revealed
Bloomed in my brain
I didn’t even know I had you till today
I could be sick or just a prick
So stuck on what I need to cope
That I forget their needs
IT’S NOT ABOUT ME FOR GOD'S SAKE
Their lives are rich tomes on which I don’t amount
To a swatted gnat
And I’m more than fine with that
But the problem is in remembering this
When the foul obsession sets in
The nitpicking, fear, and loathing whirlwind
(c) 2022 L. Alexandra Manuel
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10. |
Practicing Sabina
04:51
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Practicing Sabina
Everything a bowler means:
The masculine parts of your ancestry
Flat rejection of any groupthink
The riot of being yanked to your knees
(Must it be?)
Inside words and noises
Lurks misunderstanding
So self is the only slogan
Art is the only march
Always asking yourself if it’s time to break rank
Survival tactic turned fetish
The truth we’ve gotta be prepared to own:
We’re on our way to the ultimate alone
(It must be!)
*
It’s hard to reach out
When you were never taught to
My bullshit detector so fine
That I can’t cast my net too wide
Am I doing myself a disservice
With my aloofness, my great divide
You’re all out there keeping up with each other
This year’s opinions be hanged
I prowl the margins, a peeping Tom
Keeping quiet
Caring too much
(A little too prone to disgust)
My man’s like me
But more sure about it
Eyes firmly forward
Resolve in his heart
Living like this he’d be all I had
If I fell apart
(c) 2022 L. Alexandra Manuel
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11. |
Bad Faith
03:13
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Bad Faith
At night I ask the questions that do me no good
Like do you ever wish you could shake yourself free
Ever wish you could be like me
How much of what you are
Is sticking it to your parents--
And why were the ones I loved
Always so extreme
Will I ever again hear you say
How much you miss me
I’m just another orphan of the radio news
Puzzle pieces missing from me
In the shape of all of you
Scary that, as we all succumb to age
But it’s the no good very bad faith I can’t engage
(c) 2022 L. Alexandra Manuel
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12. |
The Very Same Poison
09:50
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The Very Same Poison
In those midnight rooms
Courses through my family
And through you
Your words are tributaries
That feed a toxic sea
Maybe there was love once
Now you deny the very core of me
For years the ugly weather gathered
Chatter whipping up into a squall
You stagger as the plates shift
Wrap yourselves in dark acreage
Fear of loss of order drives it all
It touched you early
The strong hand of some leader
Now the zealot changes clothes
And you’re frightened so you follow where he goes
Our loyalties have changed
But how I miss those days
When the freedom we both wanted
Looked the same
I’d rather heed the wisdom you gave me long ago
You said "Go slow and steady"
Said I’m “exceptional”
Guess I know what to do
Wipe my tears and save myself from you
*
Strange child
You’re gonna rocket out of there
The gusts will take your hair
Caress your open palm
Deep in the weeds of you
You’ll know that although pain made them cruel
You were always OK
Drive child
Push it to the floor
Drive child
They can’t shrink you anymore
(c) 2022 L. Alexandra Manuel
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Sold Kingdom Charlottesville, Virginia
Soothingly brutal bystander balladry
Sold Kingdom recommends:
ugly people write ugly songs
by Dandy From Home
Astute indie pop songcraft that shines either despite or because of its lo-fi production.
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Please Daddy
by Sarah Mary Chadwick
I like an artist who knows how to crawl.
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Song Cycle, Or Music For The End Of Our Times
by The Mañana People
There are artists who make a point of declaring how weird they are, and there are those who simply walk the walk.
go to albumIf you like Sold Kingdom, you may also like:
I Don't Wanna Lose
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Intimate pop; Bollinger's vocals sound almost confidential as she muses on relationship neuroses over woozy, breezy instrumentation.
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A moody, enveloping record from Zane Coppard, where dense and intricately crafted atmospheres cradle yearning vocals.
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Leaving Circumstances
by Daniel Dor
Hushed atmospheric music that goes from fragile bedroom folk to tastefully ornamented ’60s pop a la The Free Design.
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