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The Sinking Man // Come On

by Joshua Barton

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1.
The Sinking Man came by this way Took his hat off and made to fade away I told him then: pull up a chair and stay All his puke and piss and his chardonnay The Sinking Man, can't recall his name It was something long and from far away Kept his papers all in his wooden leg Kept his friends in mind, kept his eyebrows raised There ain't nothing long nor slow like a river Headed down Cutting stones Move the soil to some other world There are bones all ground to dust down there Wet dust Mingled with the sand And it's sand and dust all left to us By the ones who lived and died before time Before we had a word for time And the dust will just keep rising The dust will just keep trying The dust will just keep choking us And everything we know until we're gone And who will remember? And who will remember? Will anybody see and care to know what we once were? The serious things we were The silly things we were before this dust What we were before dust The Sinking Man came by this way Before we were dust
2.
Come On 04:58
When you're walking on the water Where does your intention go? Are you focusing on heaven, man? Or on the blue abyss below? Come on, man. In the wild, in the desert What's that voice inside your head Telling you to wave some magic wand And turn some stones right into bread Come on, man. Are you serious? And who's the one said I love you? And who's the one who said believe? Is he the same who left you hangin, man? Is he the same who let you bleed? Come on, man. Are you serious?

about

"Well, if I was a big pile of old bones (and I am) just waiting to be ground down into powder and scattered across this Earthly plane, I can't think of a nicer way to erode than beneath the breezy, weighted wet blanket of Joshua Barton's "The Sinking Man." Riding a couple of chords, a loping bass line, and a gentle chorus of dipping, glistening lead guitar fragments, we're plopped right in the middle of a dream-like scene from the very beginning, as Barton's lazy, confident croon describes our … protagonist? Headless, suspicious, winesick. And then, without going anywhere really, we're somewhere else, the narrator's attention turned to time, and the time before it, and the time after it. Will anyone remember this Sinking Man silliness in a hundred years? A thousand? More? How long has this song been playing, anyway? How many times have I started it over?

I was pretty sure I'd heard this slippery, wiggly ear worm before, and sure enough — buried in the sands of my inbox was a link to a demo from more than two years ago: A drop in the bucket for parents with jobs and a smaller drop in a bigger bucket for a universe that just keeps growing whether we need it to or not. But the first time I heard it, it was just as familiar; a rambling sing-a-long filled with the kind of longing reserved for our few private moments, like morning commutes to places we spend our days because they pay us to.

It might be worth mentioning here that JB has gone fully electric on this outing. If you're looking for brooding, steel-string Old Testament revenge fairy tales and redemption songs, try his excellent long-player Witness. On this single and its B-side, "Come On" Joshua is happy to groove in a world-weary, defiant gospel zone, the latter of which is baked in droning organ tones and reverse guitar drones to comp his sweet, dry falsetto to ask the question of our time: "Are you serious?"

A return to the electric guitar, spring reverb, and innumerable effects pedals in the service of, well, minimalism, only seems natural following a 2023 marked by far flung experimentation that included reuniting with 2000s rock band Fields of Industry for a tribute to Low's late Mimi Parker at Grand Rapids' Pyramid Scheme and a triumphant 3-songs-in-50-minute extended jam at Jackson's Michigan Theater. Solo gigs included intimate sets played in Michigan's wooded cabins, church coffee houses, living rooms, and punk rock bars. In his free time, he reconnected with old friends to fill basements with washy echoes and jammed on synthesizers with his kid. He saw Dead & Co. three times and ran a marathon.

Long distance running isn't for everyone — it sure ain't for me — but I gotta believe it builds patience and gives someone a whole lot of time to think about things like rivers and dust and time and what comes after it and, importantly, what to do with this silly time before we are dust. Are you serious?"
--Eric Gallippo

credits

released January 22, 2024

Words and music written, composed and performed by Joshua Barton
Produced by Joshua Barton
Additional production on "The Sinking Man" by Peter Hochstedler

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Joshua Barton Lansing, Michigan

Joshua Barton is a singer-songwriter from Lansing, Michigan. He's been finding ways to straddle bleakness and hope since 1999. He has led the shoegaze band Fields of Industry, run the experimental label Arts vs Entertainment, and made a string of brooding acoustic releases, solo and with band Seerstones. ... more

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