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Westonzoyland

from CLAPPER IS STILL by Way Through

/

lyrics

Westonzoyland

CHURCH
The last battle fought on English soil on an island in the grazing marsh. 500 rebels rounded up, treated with pitch and scattered afar. Hanging around the village,
Wooden angels staring down. Six bells hanging. “Get luck in the new life of heaven”. A plastic cavalry forever charging across the painted backdrop, flags flying, swords aloft, paper tents and model trees.

VILLAGE
Coppicing willow below the stooping microlights. Poppies erupting around the telegraph poles. Long driveways and muted bungalows lead you from the 70’s back to Sedgemoor. Dipped golden brown, wooden trellis panels, security lights and barred bay windows. A ditch too far to jump. Patchworks of tarmac and chain link fencing, pedestrian chicanes, solar panels and sheltering beehives. Alice Burton, happy 18th, feeding a giraffe. Washing up in the bungalow on the corner of Cheer Lane. The sweet scent of honeysuckle, threatening fresh rain. Chopped logs, cut grass, wet paint, sweeping up.

DROVE TRACK
“Unsuitable for coaches”, frothing drainage ditches, waterlogged crops, muddy trails of teasels. Surprisingly large, rasping grasshoppers creeping fast through the stinging nettles and failing Summer. A weakened sun folds behind a horizon line of patient, semi-detached houses, their windows watching over resting fields. A rebel musketeer in a civilian coat. “RIP Ashey”, a rainbow of leaching printer ink, trailing ivy and fairy lights. Keffiyeh, saluting. Linstock and powder horn. Meadowsweet and mallow.

BATTLEFIELD
Standing on the flat Langmoor, poorly drained and swept with gunfire and metal detectors, the wind is clustering the tall grasses, making partings for a fringe. Hear beating drums, hooves thundering across pitched battle on the rough pasture. Two giant poplars girdled in iron hoops, a roaring canopy of emerald and chalk guarding a paddock of metal poles and a spring-hinged gate, a place where something happened. Something marked the land, footprints and standing water, on top of ploughed earth, turning from pink to gold. On top of cannon shot, a thousand bodies below.

MEMORIAL
Four mossy staddle stones, the first missing it’s cap, the fourth, a reluctant addition to the 20th century. A non-partisan granite stone, the aftermath, the servitude. The dead of both sides “doing the right as they gave it”, lie buried in this field. Pylon hum and lyric snap. A jam jar of green water, a handful of carnations.

Throughout this battlefield, wrapped bales of shiny black plastic punctuating the landscape.
A mass grave of silage, heavy and still, turning into food. In their body bags, pro patria.

credits

from CLAPPER IS STILL, released November 11, 2013

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Way Through London, UK

WAY THROUGH are Claire Titley and Christopher Tipton, a pastoral punk duo originally from Shropshire, now residing in London. Informed by the field as much as the flyover, Way Through write songs which phase out with guitar, tapes, damaged drums and vocals. Using wrong-footed repetition, rapid interplay and free-looping happenstance the band create a ragged yet intuitive tapestry of sound. ... more

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