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Magical Floating Eye

from Way Out West by KING ROPES

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    Comes in a lovely gatefold with cover photo by Christine Sutton

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    High quality 180gram vinyl.

    Way Out West, King Ropes’ fourth album, is full of open spaces and jagged edges—from “A Loser and a Jerk,” with its brooding feedback moans, to the cathartic opener “Big Man on the TV,” with its mangled arpeggios and visions of a broke rodeo flailing amidst “the great wide open.” Guitars scrape and whine. Amps rumble. Rickety pianos rattle in and out of tune. Like the Treasure State itself, nothing is too refined. Perched uneasily between indie, desert rock, and ragged americana, it’s the band’s finest record yet. At the center of it all is Dave Hollier, a gifted songwriter at the top of his game, surveying a land haunted by doomed relationships and hypocrite ideologues in his odd, quivering voice.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Way Out West via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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about

”Magical Floating Eye” is a trippy pensive ride through the American West in the year of Covid. The first single off Way Out West, the song offers a tasty glimpse at King Ropes’ fourth album. True to the times, the song is hard to nail down. Dave Hollier, King Ropes’ singer and songwriter, rambles a bit when talking about the song, which feels fitting; the song rambles a bit itself.

"Sometime last year a friend posted an indecipherable diagram from her nursing school textbook showing a torso with a heart and an arrow and a disembodied eyeball. “A magical floating eye?”, or maybe, “keep an eye on your heart”? It seemed to mean something, but who knows what? Somehow that phrase resonated with the disorientation and loss of control we’ve all been feeling this last year, but with an unarticulated sense of hopefulness lurking beneath the confusion.”

“Sometimes the songs write themselves and you just have to follow them where they go. All these phrases were coming up that I didn’t have much of a handle on, but that seemed to be trying to say something.”

“I had a couple versions of the last verse. Neither one was really getting at what I was hoping to say. Singing one over the other seemed to work in conveying this sense of disorientation, and loss of grounding we’ve all been feeling. “

lyrics

keep changing lanes to see if one’s better
between the ice and the potholes and the goddamned weather
you quit lighting fires you quit wearing leather you sting like a bee and float like a feather
say something smart say something funny
walk backwards speak in tongues
make waves write letters
to politicians and trend setters (and trend setters....)
some kind of loner out riding fences thinking you’re smart acting defensive
life can be weird
the truth is deceptive
keep your head on straight keep things in perspective now your house is on fire the whole damn world is
(we're off on a bender) (the world is on fire) (the truth is deceptive) (but we still gotta try) (you still can't believe) (the world is on fire)
Say something smart say something funny
walk backwards speak in tongues
a magical floating eye on a blue plate hanging on a wall in a motel in deer lodge montana
might make you free
say something smart do something stupid walk backwards speak in tongues
step lightly do what you have to
to get free
misunderstand me misunderstand me misunderstand me misunderstand me
a magical floating eye that blue plate is pretty

credits

from Way Out West, track released April 8, 2021

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KING ROPES Bozeman, montana

When Dave Hollier spins records at a party, he plays stuff that’s all over the map. The Meters, The Knife, Boston, Bowie, Buck Owens. It could go very wrong. But it doesn’t. Finding the thread that leads from The Cars to The Beastie Boys to Van Halen to Prayers, he tells a long, beautiful, cross-cultural, multi-generational story. Hollier’s band King Ropes is doing much the same thing. ... more

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