Southworth, John

Human Cry

Label: Barnyard Country: Canada

"Human Cry's supremely crafted, elegiac songs offer rare and intimate illuminations, artfully performed with seasoned precision and grace. "Wonderful, sylvan, sprightly, uber-bolangaire, peculiar and smart." Guy Maddin, Canadian film maker"John Southworth always sounds just like John Southworth, no matter how many different musical styles he's explored over the years."-Stewart Mason, Amplifier Magazine

"the first song was written on the day after arriving in the city with a mountain my throat & head soaked in glowing blemishes & blue fatigue all the songs were born there they contain the voice & birch & dew elixir of her royal mount silver drops from her healing cup no other city comes as close to matching nature's rhythm drink the cure from the local fountain & hearts swell to the size of moon tears the first winter was stripped solitary a barefoot statue stood in the snow i boiled the bark & oyster shells drank its black reduction followed stonemasons underground church bells were ringing we kissed without thought i ached knelt forward felt the old dream wrestle with the new life became unspeakable strictly anti-adolescent ritual feminine vast elemental a friend recently told me that all singing is a form of crying...when all is said & done when all is at its end when your every drop of rain has run the circle of cloudhillriversea that's when song=cry & when song=cry then cry=life & when cry=life then life=song & that's pure mathematics such song holds court in the soul unlocking the three golden tears releasing vision beneath the old town negotiating the demands of nocturnal gods defying the idiot drapery & conartistry which seek to lessen its beam for when the song is crying the beam grows bright again praise be the song says the soul"-John Southworth