Dark Sky Reservation LYR

• 1 Dark Sky Reservation 03:34
• 2 A Walled Garden 03:43
• 3 Blah! Blah! Blah! 03:46
• 4 Pray Silence 03:06
• 5 Where Have You Been All My Life? 03:23
• 6 French Cursive 04:23
• 7 Guernica Jigsaw 03:41
• 8 Eclipse 03:07
• 9 The Goldilocks Zone 03:11
• 10 Sirius Alpha, Sirius Beta 03:41
• 11 Under Artificial Lighting 03:52
• 12 Collared Dove 03:54
• Total Runtime 43:21

Info for Dark Sky Reservation

Dark Sky Reservation, L.Y.R.’s third commercial release, begins with the idea that the furthest points of light – stars – can only be seen in the dark. It’s a kind of contradiction that finds musical expression in these new tracks, the band always navigating towards sightings of hopefulness and constancy in an increasingly bewildering and storm-battered world.

The term dark sky reservation has its origins in environmentalism, and several tracks on the album deal with the messed-up weather of our contemporary planet, both meteorological and psychological, from descriptions of an earth deluged by thunderstorms to the soggy back-gardens of suburbia, and a climate crisis brought on by rampant urbanism. In that context, dark sky reservations are those regions of the landscape where light pollution is discouraged and even outlawed, to allow scientists and casual stargazers to peer into the cosmos and see the glory of the constellations, patterns of light that have entranced and mystified us for hundreds of thousands of years. It’s from those designated zones that human beings get a sense of their place in the universe, and experience the wonder of the here and now against a context of eternity and infinity.

An alternative to the hectic craziness of everyday life, so often virtual and synthetic, the dark sky reservation is a place of refuge and dreaming, and like L.Y.R.’s music, such spaces are earmarked for contemplation and thoughtfulness. Through the subtle lyrics of the title track the words take on another meaning, to do with doubt, uncertainty and hesitation – a questioning of the soul and the self. The term reservation also hints at an appointment – a time and place, a remote location, after twilight – where music and language might rendezvous and combine to make something harmonious.

However much Armitage’s lyrics nag away at the conscience and observe the shaky human predicament, Pearson’s hypnotic, mesmerising compositions and Walters’ ethereal soaring vocals always reach for beauty and melody. Or when minor chords are struck in the music, Armitage’s poetry steers in the direction of consolation and redemption. So lovers try to connect in the alienating world of commercialised art (Guernica Jigsaw); the heavens open again (French Cursive) and again (A Walled Garden); a litany of metaphors honour those citizens of the world without a roof over their head (Eclipse); a collared dove throws off the shackles of its own name (Collared Dove); daydreaming is celebrated as an art form (Under Artificial Lighting); and the human heart shines brightly (Sirius Alpha, Sirius Beta). Out of the gathering dusk comes forth illumination.

L.Y.R.

LYR
are comprised of author and current British poet laureate Simon Armitage, musician Richard Walters and multi-instrumentalist Patrick Pearson, the band is a nexus of diverse creative disciplines and one of the most thrilling musical prospects of 2020. The band’s debut album Call In The Crash Team (released in 2020) is an easy-to-love midpoint between poetic spoken passages, soaring vocal melodies, and instrumentation which gleams like a rough-cut jewel.

It’s also set to convert any previous sceptics of spoken word, thanks to Armitage’s accessible and evocative lyrics — as well as Pearson’s seductive bricolage of musical styles. The stunning lead single “Never Good With Horses” is an indelible first taste of the album’s ambition, scale, and lyrical prowess. Minimal piano builds to soaring and witful strings, with a sung refrain from Walters which recalls the heart-tugging power of Sigur Rós.

“A lot of the lyrics have come about from writing in a time of post-industrialisation, austerity, and the recession,” explains Armitage. “And yet, even through those years and those atmospheres, there’s still been an exuberance around, an exuberance of communication, information, language. I think a lot of the speakers in the pieces are expressing some kind of marginalization, and are doing so as if they’re almost hyperventilating.” With this in mind, the album title Call In The Crash Team — a standout lyric from the desperate and haunting “Zodiac T-Shirt” — easily fell into place. “It goes back to that idea of people in crisis, and us being the crash team,” says Walters. “The emotional crash team, resuscitating.”

The origins of LYR stretch back to when Walters, a big fan of Armitage’s work, approached the poet about the possibility of collaboration. Walters wound up setting Armitage’s poetry to music in his solo song “Redwoods.” “I really liked it,” says Armitage of Walters’ interpretation. “He was hearing the phrases and musicality, so that boded well.”

They were indeed on to something special. “Simon and I talked about the next step” — recalls Walters. “Instead of just taking words and me singing them, [we had] the idea of a spoken word project that had a bit more of a life around it in terms of the musical setting.” Walters thought of Pearson, who he had met in the early 2010s, as part of a short-lived, shoegaze inspired band called Liu Bei. Pearson loved the idea, and LYR were born.

For a record imbued with such intuitive and instinctive dynamism, it’s perhaps a surprise to learn that it was assembled by the trio working in isolation. Pearson and Walters sent a dictaphone up to Armitage, who lives in West Yorkshire. Luckily they are patient men; it was a while before the recording device was returned. “It was like an animal sittng there on my desk – it had a big furry microphone sock around it,” recalls Simon with a smile. “It sat there for two and a half or three years, sulking.”

“Then I had a free week,” Armitage goes on. “I thought, ‘I really want to get on with this now.’ I’d been putting text into a folder, and I read some of those pieces. These were either poems or lyrics of some kind which, even though some of them had been published as poems, had never really found their true destination.”

All but two of Call in the Crash Team’s songs sprang from that furry dictaphone (the warmly pattering “Great Coat” and “Never Good With Horses” were added later, when LYR came together to record the album). When Pearson and Walters first received the device, a clear starting point was “33 ⅓,” with its lyric which ominously talks of “The rope that he swung from/ […] A whirlpooling swansong.”

Armitage’s demo of “33 ⅓” was set to a haunting whirr which came from the run-out groove of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures vinyl. “Ian Curtis is definitely invoked on that track,” says Armitage, of the band’s frontman who committed suicide in 1980. Curtis was found hanging with a record player’s needle stuck on the final moments of Iggy Pop’s ‘The Idiot’. “That’s what I was thinking about,” says Armitage. “The crackly silence still playing.” The final version is a dark-hearted dance track with Walters’ emotive vocal wails and a clubby electronic beat, the result of even-handed creative communion.

I think my mindset was, ‘It’s not poetry with music underneath,’” says Pearson of the project. “We’d always talked about it as being a focused band project.” Walters agrees: “It’s definitely a universe, the record,” he says. “There’s so many people on it.” Armitage, with characteristic dry wit, is quick to respond, and jokes: “We might make a Broadway musical!”

Breaking barriers and building unexpected bridges between different worlds is embedded in the core of LYR — and is a galvanising philosophy for the band as they prepare to unveil their music to their world. “I think it’s open-ended as to what we can do,” says Pearson with an enigmatic smile. “There’s no set of rules.”

This album contains no booklet.