Books |
Kate Tempest
By
Published: Aug 05, 2019
Category:
Poetry
The program is archived, available all week, but I treat “Cavalcade” as appointment listening — on Sunday nights, you can find me writing with one ear on Paul Cavalconte’s exquisite programming. (WFUV. 90.7 FM, Sunday nights 8-11 PM) Last Sunday, when he played Kate Tempest’s “People’s Faces,” I stopped typing. What I heard wasn’t music, wasn’t poetry, wasn’t a monologue, wasn’t rap — it was something new.
New… and accomplished. Kate Tempest’s epic poem “Brand New Ancients” won the 2013 Ted Hughes Award for most outstanding new work. She was named a Next Generation Poet by the Poetry Book Society, a once-a-decade accolade. Her first novel, The Bricks that Built the Houses, was a Sunday Times bestseller and won the 2017 Books Are My Bag Readers Award for Breakthrough Author. Her CDs have twice been nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. She was nominated as Best Female Solo Performer at the 2018 Brit Awards. Her new CD, The Book of Traps and Lessons, is lacerating and addictive. So is its predecessor, Let Them Eat Chaos.
She’s about to make a small American tour, from September 24 to October 1: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Bellingham, Seattle, Brooklyn. It will sell out.
Why the fuss? Because: Kate Tempest is probably the most important voice in music now.
Hype?
Listen to “People’s Faces.” [To download it from Amazon for $1.29, click here.]
It’s coming to pass
My country’s coming apart
The whole thing’s becoming
Such a bumbling farce
Was that a pivotal historical moment
We just went stumbling past?
Here we are
Dancing in the rumbling dark
So come a little closer
Give me something to grasp
Give me your beautiful
Crumbling heart
Another disaster. Catharsis
Another half-discarded mirage
Another mask slips
I face off with the physical
My head’s ringing from the love of the stars
There is too much pretence here
Too much depends on the fragile wages
And extortionate rents here
We’re working every dread day that is given us
Feeling like the person people meet
Really isn’t us
Like we’re going to buckle underneath the trouble
Like any minute now
The struggle’s going to finish us
And then we smile at all our friends
It’s hard
We got our heads down and our hackles up
Our back’s against the wall
I can feel you aching
None of this was written in stone
There is nothing we’re forbidden to know
And I can feel things changing
Even when I’m weak and I’m breaking
I’ll stand weeping at the train station
‘Cause I can see your faces
There is so much peace to be found in people’s faces
I saw it roaring
I felt it clawing at my clothes like a grieving friend
It said
There are no new beginnings
Until everybody sees
That the old ways need to end
But it’s hard to accept that we’re all one and the same flesh
Given the rampant divisions between oppressor and oppressed
But we are though
More empathy
Less greed
More respect
All I’ve got to say has already been said
I mean, you heard it from yourself
When you were lying in your bed and couldn’t sleep
Thinking couldn’t we be doing this
Differently?
I’m listening to every little whisper in the distance singing hymns
And I can
I can feel things
Changing
But it’s so hard
We got our heads down and our hackles up
Our backs against the wall
I can feel your heart racing
None of this was written in stone
The currents fast but the river moves slow
And I can feel things changing
Even when I’m weak and I’m breaking
I stand weeping at the train station
‘Cause I can see your faces
There is so much peace to be found in people’s faces
It’s not enough
To imagine we’ll be happy when we’ve
Got enough
Stuff
All this stuff
Is blocking us
I’m neat with no chaser
I’m all spirit
But I’m sinking
Because the days are not days but strange symptoms
This age is our age
But our age is rage sinking to beige
And yes our children are brave
But their mission is vague
Now I don’t have the answers
But there are still things to say
I stare out at my city on another difficult day
And I scream inwardly
When will this change
I’m beginning to fade
But my sanity’s saved ’cause I see your faces
My sanity’s saved
’cause I can see your faces
It’s hard
We got our heads down and our hackles up
Our back’s against the wall
I can feel your heart racing
None of this was written in stone
The current’s fast but the river moves slow
And I can feel things changing
Even when I’m weak and I’m breaking
I stand weeping at the train station
‘Cause I can see your faces
I love people’s faces
BONUS VIDEOS
NPR Tiny Desk Concert
Europe Is Lost
Some of the lyrics:
Cause it’s big business, baby, and its smile is hideous
Top down violence, and structural viciousness
Your kids are dosed up on medical sedatives
But don’t worry ’bout that, man, worry ’bout terrorists
The water level’s rising! The water level’s rising!
The animals, the elephants, the polar bears are dying!
Stop crying. Start buying
But what about the oil spill?
Shh. No one likes a party pooping spoil sport
Massacres, massacres, massacres, new shoes
Ghettoized children murdered in broad daylight by those employed to protect them
Live porn streamed to your pre-teens’ bedrooms
Glass ceiling, no headroom. Half a generation live beneath the breadline
Oh but it’s happy hour on the high street
Friday night at last lads, my treat!
All went fine ’til that kid got glassed in the last bar
Place went nuts, you can ask our Lou
It was madness, road ran red, pure claret
And about them immigrants? I can’t stand them
Mostly, I mind my own business
They’re only coming over here to get rich
It’s a sickness
England! England!
Patriotism!
And you wonder why kids want to die for religion?
The anarchists are desperate for something to smash
Scandalous pictures of fashionable rappers in glamourous magazines
Who’s dating who?
Politico cash in an envelope
Caught sniffing lines off a prostitutes prosthetic tits
Now it’s back to the House of Lords with slapped wrists
They abduct kids who fuck the heads of dead pigs
But him in a hoodie with a couple of spliffs
Jail him, he’s the criminal
Jail him, he’s the criminal
It’s the bored-of-it-all generation
The product of product placement and manipulation
Shoot ’em up, brutal, duty of care
Come on, new shoes, beautiful hair
Bullshit saccharine ballads
And selfies and selfies and selfies
And here’s me outside the palace of me
Construct a self and psychosis
Meanwhile the people were dead in their droves
And no, nobody noticed
Well, some of them noticed
You could tell by the emoji they posted
