1. |
To Want
03:00
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Are you the moon? Are you doomed to repeat this process once again? Defeated winter, bipolar spring? Is that better than the boredom you’d feel otherwise? Are you okay? More so than you’ve ever been? Can I help in any way? Is it love, or should you act your age? When our generation marries young, it won’t be because of (redacted). It’ll be because we know that when it goes, it all tends to go at once. Some kind of desperate fatalism, cling to the first thing that doesn’t suck. So on starless nights, we close our eyes, we synchronize, you sanctify. In blinding lights behind our eyes, emerge some problems of the mind. Like ‘Don’t know if I want this’, ‘Fairly sure I need this’, and ‘If two months from now, my mind has changed, I promise I will take the blame as such’. But fuck it, who am I to judge? I’m inclined to say the whole thing’s a crutch for those who are not strong enough, to stand alone and to be tough, but I am weak and full of lust to be secure but free enough. And all of these things underlie, that this is what I (redacted).
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2. |
Diet Coke
02:45
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Have a diet coke, have another smoke, linger in that hate, have a masturbate. These are things you’ve learned to like. Maybe another day you’ll play with feelings, awaken yourself and pray in the church where you will one day be buried, with nanaimo bars as final rites. Oh! There’s a wall between us, and it’s too thick to be broken. Fundamental human incompatibility. Oh! I’m so far up my own ass! Just give me a minute, then we can move on. Eat breakfast for an hour, lose the morning; check the internet, lose the afternoon; go into work and lose the evening, over and over and over and over. Until eventually, you have a shitty screamo EP and the sense that one gets on the verge of a discovery. But no! I’m still just not ready! The walls are still too reinforced! I have no interest in anyone! Fuck all my old pop music for telling me to elope, never! I know better! I know better now! And when I don’t know how to deal, I go out and I do nothing! I go out and do something real! Then, I am filled with a sense of existential self-affirmation! Now I feel like lifting weights, but somehow I doubt that that’s the fate.
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3. |
30 Years
03:56
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Judy and Thomas have been married for thirty years, and live in suburban outskirts of a major city. They have a daughter, she ran off to college and became a communist, she don’t respect the establishment no more. They’re just glad she’s having fun. Judy paints the park, a fifteen minutes’ drive out from the house every day, in shades of black and red Then, Tom comes home from work like he’s got something to say. Tom said, ‘Judy, they’re out to get us. We need immediate action. Savage humiliation is just around the corner.’, she took a second to process. Then, starting to tear up, took her medication, and silently turned around, and she leaves the room. Judy takes the car, and Judy starts to drive with no destination in mind. She starts to ask herself important questions, like “Did I ever even really try to know you?” and “Have thirty years all gone to waste?”. And as she pulls away, she sees in the back mirror, Tom’s got out the gas can, Jesus Christ, he’s got the gas can. He douses the whole house and stares out, trying to provoke. Judy swallows the lump in her throat. All adorned in lilac white, all adorned in negative tiger, you’ve gotta get off your cloud. All adorned in red and white, all adorned in ash and smoke and fire. You’ve gotta get off that cloud.
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4. |
I Suck
03:25
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For the sake of the metaphor, several things I’ll ignore, for the time being: (for instance) to look, observe and listen to another person, while ignoring the act of seeing. There’s no conspiracy here, that would suggest that anybody knows what the hell they’re doing. I’ve salted all the earth here, we’ve all got those friends who fuck shit up, then take off on the booing. But other people aren’t a hivemind, and being decent takes a lifetime. And therein lies the problem, assuming that the world is anything like the things you choose to focus on. With the tendency to lash out, a history of excuses, justifications to get along. And that’s when it’s not fighting, for no real reason, just something to do. So, when I say that I suck, I don’t fish for compliments, I just owe you that acknowledgement. But oh well! I’ll get on pills and get out of hell, then wonder how it took so long! And I’ll take everyone’s advice, refurnish, make the insides nice, so at least then I can cease to be a hypocrite, and wallow in my own bullshit. Baby, you deserve the day off. You deserve to sleep til six PM, nobody can stop you.
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5. |
From L.A.
03:43
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You’re dressed like you’re from LA, and I can’t fucking stand it. You’re dressed like you’re from LA, and I can’t fucking take it anymore. Understand that there’s a water that you swam in, understand that it never goes away. Learn to die in the town that you were born in, learn to make a monument to something, anything. But you’re dressed like you’re from LA, and I can’t fucking take it. You’re dressed like you’re from LA, and I no longer call you my friend. Who’s the one who will get to mark your record? Who’s the one who will get to mark your name? Will you pretend you’re the one to make things different? Will you admit that some things never change? Oh, it’s all good. It’s all fine. It’s like it should be. All that time. All those days. The longest one of the year comes this way. Holding tight, carefully keeping your section, developing a cult, a language and a hearth. Will you celebrate each new change of direction? Or redirect your hands into the loamy earth? Suddenly, it seems to be fine either way, I’ll comfortably lie here someday.
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6. |
Your Dopamine
05:43
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Drag me down in the snow, like I would to myself when we were young. Thanksgiving. Television. Red wine. Movie marathon. First fall year, look out the window. The blue light reflected in changes who you are. Taken in more, suspect everything, take in less and feel the absence hard. All you are is dopamine and serotonin. All you want is dopamine and norepinephrine. Go outside, take your time. Take the drug to be suitable to others. Find the one. They’re your everything. Barely talked, you can just tell. Read the text, use it as delivery for chemical pleasure. You will sparkle and then you won’t care. Build your harem. All you are is dopamine and serotonin. All you want is dopamine and norepinephrine. I’m not a person, I am just a fairly lucky series of arrangements. Oh, to be people the way we were promised, people couldn’t fathom what the truth is. Am I just lying? Is this just trying too hard to sell a bad guy schtick based on signifiers of our shared insecurity? To let your guard down? I don’t know, but if I saw myself from outside, I know that the whole thing would suddenly be sure to me. So I’d better not talk to anybody ever again, it’ll always be mutually manipulative.
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7. |
Car Wreck
10:24
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In a dream, you saw all of your enemies. They were speeding in a car in the middle of the night. You traded glances, and it was knowing for the first time. 2015 can last forever if you let it, so you let them just keep going, out of your perception. Letting go, finally, of all your anger. They’re driving head on into a brick wall. A ball of flame and mangled metal, you heard them cry out, so you approach them. Shrieked apologies were all that you could hear, and you accept them. You dial nine, you dial one, you dial one, and you told the car to come. You looked them in the eye, and all you said was “I know, and goodbye”. When they said that everything you did was for them, they took away your feelings. You hope they still have them, you hope that the weight stays on their back, crushes in and compresses until their spine recedes. A life without pressure, a life without danger, with no source of sadness, if it was, were I to qualify? If i were, would my lack of issue be the problem? My tendency to starve myself and thoughts of my rapist, are they just a very complex means of wasting time? I only realized this recently, but but just as much as agony, ecstasy is the enemy. Ecstasy is the enemy.
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8. |
Red Arrow
01:47
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Dad said we were meant to be sentinels: rail thin, quick on the draw and the panic. Meanwhile, you were on a charter bus, watching the Swainsons’ and the kestrels. Floating over the highway for prey, truckstop talons, turkey vultures, pricks of needles. And the feast after the hunt, carcass shared and passed around. I’ll as much as admit, I’ve been convulsing in this ditch a long, long time. It’s made me tender, my skin hangs loose.
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9. |
In Heaven
03:24
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Back when I worked nights, you hit me up, needing time. I got off and grabbed a light, got on the train and had a bright idea. Up on that hill, watching fireworks go, drinking Asahi, singing the anthem. All my life, I’ve never felt so thankful. Can’t believe we made it this far. I don’t care what you do, I don’t care who you become, I’ll always kind of owe you one.
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Model Trains Calgary, Alberta
the old (2014-2018) solo work of aoife josie baker
Model Trains recommends:
one of my favourite albums, i always start crying at the beginning and don't stop til the end
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noah is a member of this band their grim hurtful solo music is some of alberta's weirdest/finest
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pleasehelpmebringmygraciehome
by Slut Prophet
righteous, clever rage
go to albumIf you like Model Trains, you may also like:
The enigmatic Frank Ene's solo record lives in a magical world where Serge Gainsbourg fronts Yellow Magic Orchestra.
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featured on Bandcamp Radio Nov 3, 2020
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featured on Bandcamp Radio Mar 22, 2022
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