We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Pretty Music for the Mouth

by Luis Betancourt

/

  • Streaming + Download

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

      name your price

     

1.
Mercy, Mercy Alone 03:47
lyrics
buy track
Carved my heart out of an ocean this time...so much water stripping the surface of sky...can't remember what it's like to get high...carved my heart out of an ocean this time... Lost the connection, a cabin for skin...can't trade in the moon for a sunrise, a sunrise...dropped this anchor into a desert this time... Oh mercy, mercy alone will not save...
2.
Paresthesia 04:12
lyrics
buy track
You're aching, you're aching through...in spite of everything right there in front of you...you tell her, this much is true...that every time you try to run you cannot move... Everything real is a desert to feel in the absence of water...all that she needs is the air that you breathe and to bury the other...time to be now and to figure out how many lives you are living... Whenever, whenever you...imagine light it's curtains that light's passing through...however, however blue...it's the diffusion of a star that she once knew... Everything real is a desert to feel in the absence of water...all that she needs is the air that you breathe and to bury the other...time to be now and to figure out how many lives you are living...let in the sun, let it try and become your intention...your reflection...your connection...your inflection...your new eye.
3.
Jesus, Don't You Sweat My Situation 03:48
lyrics
buy track
Jesus, don't you sweat my situation, all of my sins are well accounted for...maybe you should put in for vacation, I'll attend to mine if you attend to yours...but for heaven's sake don't lock the door... Jesus, don't you stay my execution, you can relate to crimes worth dying for...leave this body just as I have used it, less a temple than a motel on the shore...staid and shuttered forevermore... A cloud repairs to sea and stares, upward wondering this change of state, the added weight and its shapelessness... Is this transfiguration...or simply transformation...would you rather be a window screened than one that's shade is drawn...upward to reveal the dawn...of your true self turning on?
4.
Out Here Livin' 02:07
lyrics
buy track
It's cold, it's wintertime, the snow sticks to my eyes...the air is getting thin, and it seeps into my skin...I'm just out here livin'... I'm holding onto grace, I'm carving out the space...the clutter of these times, don't occupy my mind...I'm just out here livin'... Let the hours just pass me by...let the earth absorb the sky... I'm just out here livin'
5.
Fine With Me 02:58
lyrics
buy track
If you lose that taste for sugar, be careful not to bite this tongue...bring this tree, to its knees... If by chance you start to measure, the highs with lines not fit to scale...tone it down, let it out... ...it's, fine with, fine with me...
6.
I Will Bury You Again 03:48
lyrics
buy track
Here I find you hiding in a dream...just beneath the surface of a swollen sea...someone told me that you are not dead...now I feel your weight inside my head...time is not the vehicle it seems...rather the accumulate of in betweens...it was you not me that got away...though these words are more what you would say... I will find you...I will bury you again... Here's a secret don't repeat it lest they hear...you are there and I am where you disappeared...bodies break and borders break but here I am contained...stranger still the distance built's the closest that we came... I will find you...I will bury you again... How many lives must one survive, must one survive...the morning sun won't close her eyes as I close mine...
7.
Unanimous Light 03:42
lyrics
buy track
Well I shaved my teeth and I cut my hair, and I took my time and I left it there, just to disconnect from the weight it puts on me... And I said hello for the final time, to the part of me that could not reside with the part of me that is less inclined to just be... So just open this feral heart up to release, the steam and the rot of what I couldn't eat... So I cast away to an empty room, where the ceiling skied and the lightbulb mooned, and the music swelled like a child inside of me... And I knew out loud that it would consume, my capacity to again resume, the uncertainty of another year at sea... So just open these chords and return me my bed, to sleep off the dreams that go straight to my head... Bind and tether these limbs to feather if for occasional flight... Tame this mind to be clear and kind, to accept unanimous light... Ground these feet let them walk with me, may these hands find hers once again... Sew these pages with revelations enough to steady this pen... Leave no space in between...
8.
When I Was Gold 04:55
lyrics
buy track
When I was young I thought I could remember, the way that I died on the 5th of September, but I never died so I settled right down and I waited...thought it'd be funny and moving to play, "I'm Set Free" by the Velvets at my own wake, but my head don't roll on the ground it just roams in the clouds... When I was gold, I was rare and confused, precious enough to pretend and amuse, that everything I ever wanted was fated and owed me...left it to chance, they anointed another, wept for my sister and I buried the others, cause sometimes them colors they fade on the darkest of days... The 10th of July, 2004, I dreamed her awake and awoke her no more, and all of my fiction distilled into my history...and for her memorial I made a playlist, a bounty of beauty but VU wasn't on it, in spite of the fact that I died I was actually alive... A head that's full of ghost, cannot attend to body...it swallows up the coast and leaves you where you found me...
9.
Atlantis 03:02
lyrics
buy track
So long, I'll be taking to the ocean...so gone, I'll be bubbly and blue...she said, one day you'll learn to tread above the water...so now, we will see just how I do... Wonder, wonder, to let go's not to go under, under... So far, I've been shouldering the hours...not sure, exactly what I'm gonna do...this here, map betrays the kind of movement...needed, to find a way out of this room... Wonder, wonder, to let go's not to go under, under...

about

Less a complete, coherent musical statement than "Humidity Lines" was, and more an accumulation of songs written and recorded in chunks of time. Tracks 1, 4, 6, and 9 were written and recorded in early January, 2018, above the Jalopy Theatre on a snowed-in sort of afternoon...the day the album cover photo was taken. Track 2, recorded In June, 2018, was to be a sort of continuation of the sound of "Humidity Lines" and perhaps doesn't belong here, but here it remains. One of those songs written as it was recorded. Tracks 3, 7, and 8 were written while vacationing outside of New York and recorded in an old Sears & Roebuck cabin from the early 1900s in Greensboro, VT, in August, 2018. The album was sewed together and mixed in the late autumn and early winter of 2018/19, in various apartments that did and did not flood.

credits

released March 29, 2019

All songs written, performed & recorded by Luis Betancourt.

Recorded in Greensboro, VT & in various dwellings in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
Album title inspired by a line in the poem "Orchestrina" by Marni Ludwig.
This record is dedicated in memory of Marni Ludwig, friend, teacher, poet.

luisbetancourt.bandcamp.com
soundcloud.com/luisbetancourt

For booking, press, and other etc: luis.betancourt.music@gmail.com

© 2019 Luis Betancourt. All rights reserved.

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Luis Betancourt image

Luis Betancourt New York

Luis Betancourt is a songwriter living in North Hero, VT. His songs incorporate a variety of guitars (acoustic/electric, baritone, bass), electronics/programming, and vocals to create a homegrown, intimate and sometimes experimental vibe. Elements of folk, pop, psych, & rock can be heard throughout. Besides his solo project, he also regularly performs and records with AVO and the Whiskey Spitters. ... more

contact / help

Contact Luis Betancourt

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

Luis Betancourt recommends:

If you like Luis Betancourt, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Featuring Riley Pinkerton (aka The Rat Queen) from the theatrical NYC rockers, Castle Rat.
listen now