A Subzero Annual
1. Mid-Town Hibernation
2. For Otilia
3. Chamber Music for the Night Watch
4. Sacraments of the Street
5. Pond Skating
Gustav Holger, vocals, guitar, piano, bass, drums, synths, woodwinds, string-arrangements
Cover photograph by Max Libell.
The Stockholm Study
1. Introductory Remarks
2. Lucile
3. To a Friend
4. Ode to Teachers at State-Funded Music Schools (Since I’ve Got No Leverage Concerning Your Wages)
5. To Tranströmer
6. Radio Intro
7. Telegram From Coastal Town
8. 4th Floor, Grevgatan, Slightly Offkey
9. Radio Outro
10. Grevgatan
11. Metro Transit
12. The Edge of Strandpromenaden Is Fettered to the Sky, or Nocturne for Docked Boats in Gowns of Frost, or a Victim of Indecisive Titling
13. Methodology
14. Summary
15. Night Bus
Gustav Holger, vocals, piano, guitar, drums, harmonica, organ, tambourine, string-arrangements, bass, synths, stonaphone, sleigh bells
Alma Rosendahl, vocals (“Grevgatan”)
Nora Bergsgård, background vocals, reading of poem (“To Tranströmer”)
Cover photograph by Ida Larsson.
Lyrics
Mid-Town Hibernation
The iron pipes are frozen
‘Neath a trembling hand of snow
With the wildwood of the tin roofs
Sparsely dusted down below
And just north of the tollgates
The kids crusade the streets
Knitted caps with sticks in hand
And blades strapped to their feetAnd if you see their moments wearing out
Shut their eyes
If you hear their clocks are bleeding dry
Just let them tryAnd slippin’ through the turnstiles
Whilst adhering the mandate
The disciples of down jackets
With their middle part combed straight
Sheltered by the backwoods
Of these narrow, sunless rows
Whilst phoning for numeric port codes
As if pikers out in the snowAnd if you see their moments wearing out
Shut their eyes
If you hear their clocks are bleeding dry
Just let them tryThat down-an’-out jazzcat
Told me he moved here on a whim
But wounded in line of duty
This city sure wasn’t built for him
Now he's got a trade, and the pay’s too good
And he met some bird last year
He says he’ll fare for New York, one day
But I doubt he’ll make it thereAnd if you see their moments wearing out
Shut their eyes
If you hear their clocks are bleeding dry
Just let them try
For Otilia
With the broken shards of angels
Circling her eyes
The deep-set sleeping blue
Of the boreal skies
With the feathered mist of meadows
Woven through her curls
As though the passing spectre image
Of the endemic past unfurledWith the faintly singing sonants
Springing in her speech
The lyre-silver water
Held just beyond my reach
With the tailfeathers of Hesperus
Kindling ‘neath her skin
The slumbering horns of twilight
And her Suzuki violinWith the woodland stars sighing
To the tremor of her strings
And the dirges from the burrows
Of the resting pagan kings
With her twined flowers at midnight
As the ages interweave
With that northern, eddan angel
Flickering in between
Chamber Music for the Night Watch
The time tables mumbled as midnight prayer
Kindled butane igniting the air
Electrical lighting harnessed in pairs
As the embers still move ‘neath their handsThe etching of sound through passenger rails
Whispers of light in silvery veil
As the spectres of sleep wither and fail
And falter in softening huesCurls of tobacco adorning their heads
Their mourning veils in cartons o’ red
The wisp of the flame now depleted and dead
As they pass silent over the bridgeThe stars hang shrouded in submerging light
Chained to the skyway yet held beyond sight
As synthetic illuminance blossoms in height
Brushing the plumage of darkThe sermons of dawn yet sober in rest
Suspended in silence with flowering crests
As spark-gap transmitters of fleeting dreams nest
In the utmost hour of night
Sacraments of the Street
Boys lean out of windows
And breath nebulas of mist
The body heat they’ve woven
With the embers in their fists
And girls tend to their hair
In the bus windows at night
With their flickering reflections
In the periodic voids of lightHollowed metal carriers run
On spark-wires of steel
As beaded ropes of light unfold
And the pantographs kneel
And them light rail-pilgrimes
Sit trembling with dream
As their frozen breaths
Ascend in wreaths of steamAnd just on the flowery margin
Of mercury vapor suns
Stand creased paper-faces
With their newly solicited sums
While neat boys ask adventure
Of neon-nectar vialsWhile their deaths lay still sleeping
‘Neath the muted pave of time
As broad streams of winter stars
Float quiet between these isles
Introductory Remarks
I fold beneath the tension
Where the axes of my wishes meet my pride
And should regret know where I stand
Let my remaining time not quiver ‘neath its handGot so much to live up to
The delusions to which I tie my worth
Scorch my conscience in the snow
Agnafit, I’m comin’ home
Lucile
I let her wisps of smoke descend
The scent of them catch my clothes again
Her perishable breath
Shouldn’t have to yield with such ease
But I guess my mind does tooAnd despite that soft-spoken step of hers
And its intrinsic modesty
How her disregard erodes my words
I know that I could without her love
Without her loveDon’t weaponize that elusive spell
You know there’s no way I couldn’t tell
Or perhaps be more careful
With whom you lend your time
I guess I should be tooAnd despite that soft-spoken step of hers
And its intrinsic modesty
How her disregard erodes my words
I know that I could without her love
Without her love
To a Friend
I won’t dispute
The terms of her surrender
But I won’t upset myself
Hearing you defend herI know that she is your friend too
You’re bit by her contagious pride
And yet I expected more from you
You could’ve had the manners to play both sidesI won’t dispute
The terms of her surrender
But I won’t upset myself
Hearing you defend herYour forgiveness lends you grace
But chose carefully your pardoned
Look not to their condemned deeds
But to how they’re regardedI won’t dispute
The terms of her surrender
But I now regret
Having you befriend her
Telegram From Coastal Town
The nightly rains speak softly
The street lights toll in spite
The radio’s frantic drone is cut
As it’s tuned in to the night
Felted keys in ivory
Plays the midnight hour its psalm
And every note sends ripples
On the surface of its calmThe ancient facades shiver
Next to time’s abiding youth
Wishin’ once again to suffer
What old age works so to soothe
The women’s prior partings
Remain the last words from the yard
Where silent in the kerosene light
Sit the old men cuttin’ cardsHere man and weary weather
Have had lifetimes to reconcile
And weaves of clement sea mist
Are draped between the isles
Here the city’s gentle inlet
Acts a cradle for men at sea
And its dimly-lit concrete
Acts an old embrace for me
Grevgatan
My own qualms stand convicted
In the light of her selfless air
Amid cupidity’s silent culling
She is one it chose to spareIn my own manner
There is nothing but restraint
She seems but the musings
Of my abandoned love’s refrainAll must be ended
Despite conceivement without fault
But in this instant, always
I’ll live right next to her heart
Methodology
Can’t make out the thread
But I suppose it’s there
Through the woollen caps
And weathered courtyards
The overcast tedium
And ribbons of snow
Sculpted in the faint glow
And I know
I can’t really leave
Wherever I go
It points back here
Summary
Do not extend
My wait beyond my reach
Do not extend
My wait beyond my reachI’ve got no debts left unpaid
All music written and performed by Gustav Holger.
