The album opens with the tape-hissed acapella track ‘scoliosis blues’, a sad song about back pain that very much sounds basement-recorded (in the best possible way). Then we get ‘Navy Blue Ford’, a folk song like those The Parade Schedule have made their name making, a song that seems to be from a different time or place entirely. It sounds like an old song you catch on the radio at the edge of the reception boundary, the edges speckled with interference as it’s beamed through the night. The lyrics are gentle recollections (“She’d pick me up every Saturday, in her navy blue ford”) and suit Kinder’s trademark vocals perfectly. ‘Little Eyes’ continues in the same vein, this time with harmonica and ramshackle percussion, seemingly detailing struggle in a difficult place or relationship:

“He tried his best to stay afloat
in the water that was boiling up
he was not like a frog at all
he could feel the temperature rise
and it was hot it was hot it was hot
it was hot and yet he stayed”

‘5 AM’ is a break-up song with a plaintive and melancholy air (“something about all the fish, all the fish in the sea / but to think there are more like you, well honey that’s hard for me to believe”), while ‘The Master’s Will’ sounds like an old-timey spiritual country song. ‘Gold’ sounds like a long-overdue conversation between former childhood sweethearts, of returning home to explain yourself twenty years too late:

“I heard your mom through the wall
telling you I was bad news
So I let you go
that time around
cos it seemed like the right thing”

Closer ‘The Spider Sleeps’ is almost a folk retelling of incy wincy spider (“The spider sleeps under leaves, he don’t know where to go when it rains”), and is much more poignant than that sounds on paper. It’s a strong end to a very strong release. Are Bruises Warm? proves a worthy addition to The Parade Schedule’s catalog. Like all great folk music it excels in the art of storytelling, each unassuming line imbued with the gentle sadness that seems to constitute much of day-to-day life. Listening to The Parade Schedule feels like looking at an old photograph and finding meaning in the mundane details, a sort of sepia-tinged nostalgia for people you never even met.

You can get Are Bruises Warm? from The Parade Schedule Bandcamp page. CD and cassettes are available at live shows and will be up for mail order soon.

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You can buy a digital copy of the compilation via Bandcamp, and you can also get a download code plus a themed Christmas card from the Flannelgraph Records website. If you like what you hear, I would also recommend checking out the two previous volumes (Volume 1 and Volume 2), which feature bands such as Dolorean, Dirty Beaches, Drekka and Sleeping Bag. This really is a good cause and certainly a very good way of making someone else’s holidays a lot less rotten.

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