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Is your life my suicide?
Is your life what keeps me alive?
Feel all your pain multiply
Give you a name and imperfect bloodline
What could I give you if you want to leave? You never asked to be here
This is all a hallway to another empty room but you can’t go without me
Who will save you from the darkness in me?
Help me.
Feel free – so free that you're floating!
Don't care, don't see, no one's looking
And I want that moment
Hold that for a moment
Feel that for a moment
Break free from my shortcomings
Let go and rise up above them
Squirm around on the floor in an attempt to transform
I’m coming apart
Help me change
Look out – I’m trying not to breathe
The beauty undisturbed
Crushed beneath a brick but then you landed on my sleeve
Butterfly, help me change
Look in – the cage is just a dream reflection in the dirt
Crushed beneath a brick but then you landed on my sleeve
Butterfly, help me change
Eyelash kisses
Feather down your spine
I’m wearing your lipstick
Tracing your outline and it looks like mine
Help me change, butterfly
Eyelash kisses linger on your skin
I'm wearing your lipstick
I’m your worst enemy – masculine
Raynbo
Rainbo
Raenbo
Reynbo
Feel the pull from deep inside
Swimming in the astral brine
Water-based and cranberry pie
Sure was fun planning your birthday
Welcome to beautiful Hollywood
Followed a girl there once
Almost had a kid with her once
At least I think I did but she might’ve lied and now I think about it everyday at least once
While I cuddle my sweet cheeks
While I cuddle my gummy bear
And it kills me
It killed me
Hold me
Swing me
Introduce me
I’m an experienced father
Who’s forcefully, remorsefully, staying alive
Anything you need
I’ll build you a bridge just to float underneath it
I’ll burn it right down to the ground
We can read by the fire
I’m here to show you colors
Product of our lust
I got a thing for Rodney, Rodney
I’m imagining a place with you, Rodney
Hold me captive. Hold me underneath, Rodney
Our adventure can’t be over yet, Rodney
See my beautiful wife
In my beautiful house
These are my beautiful children
No, I can’t sneak out
Can I shake your hand?
Make you laugh out loud?
I want to be with you
No one can ever find out
Every light is on but all the rooms are empty except one
Oh babe don't stay too late
You know I hate to be alone and I'm alone
Baby woncha come on home
There's a madman standing on the corner
And he keeps on looking at my window
Oh baby woncha come on home
Home
Every key is turned
And every window's bolted from inside
Oh babe you know I get so scared
You know I couldn't live alone, it's just been confirmed
Baby woncha come on home
Standing on the corner
Is a madman looking at my window
Oh baby woncha come on home
Home
Baby woncha come on home
There's a man
Standing on the corner
Now a shadow moves across the window
Oh baby woncha come on home
Baby woncha come on home
Girl, when I met you I was a child
Immature, insecure, running just to catch your smile
We took the Mazda to outer space
Lost track of the time but held on to the aftertaste
I fell to your feet
The two of us made a heartbeat
Now all we need is rest
I’m not the first to have you, but I’m the first to know you best – I’m your boyfriend
Down on my knees like a husband would, dishes and the floors like a partner should, took our baby walking through the neighborhood, anything I could to be your boyfriend
Down on my knees like a husband would, dishes and the floors like a partner should, took our baby walking through the neighborhood
What you can’t, I could
Girl, when I saw you I couldn’t stop
Spent the whole summer bumbling around your flower shop
Then you came over without your friend
An overnight stay turned into a weekend
Why me?
Lean on me, make me feel like a man
You can do what you want with your invisible hands – I’m your boyfriend
Look at you
Look at me
We were kids
Carlo Rossi
Celebrate your birthday every Halloween.
I’ve been true to you – no makeup.
But look at this
This routine
We only touch when we’re asleep
Dreamt I was your roommate
Yeah, I could play that part but we all have emotional needs
Show me your emotions
I belong to you and you belong above me
We need a meadow to roll in
We need a fire to start spreading
It catches on, catches on
I belong to you, I hold you up above me
I don’t know what I’m standing on
But I know to keep hanging on
Is this you? Is that me?
Is this how we thought it’d be?
The clock is ticking remember we’re living in a little box on a hill there’s a fence and a treadmill
No one gets in or out anymore since closing the only door
We’re living in the daylight longing for the allure of the darkness
I can change my hair, find some new old clothes to wear, sing in a flawless voice to you
Show me your emotions
I’m awake
I have to know this time is such a golden time
you won’t remember this
The only rainbow I’ve witnessed
I watched you start a shell
Then bridge the distance to yourself
You won’t remember this
The only rainbow I’ve witnessed
I’m awake
Before you learn from pain
Before you’re guided by your shame
You won’t remember this
The only rainbow I’ve witnessed
If I could I would keep you here
And we would repeat these years
Don’t look away from this
There’s only a rainbow if you see it
R-A-I-N-B-O-W
R-A-Y-N-B-O
R-A-I-N-B-O
R-A-E-N-B-O
R-E-Y-N-B-O
Do you think I’m pretty?
This will be as pretty as I get
I stopped checking the mirror a long time ago
I don’t believe we’ve met
I run scared, everyday I run scared on the elliptical
I’m getting’ in shape – soon to be invisible
I run scared and I run real slow
I’m slowing down
I’m shutting up
I can’t talk
I’m teaching a baby to walk
I can’t talk now
I’m teaching a baby to walk now
Someday, she’s gonna run
There’s a thing that I feel
And it’s a hard thing to feel
You’re the good that I feel
The big good that I feel
about
Birth of Omni began in the dark. Five years ago, when Nate Kinsella began writing his fifth album under the name Birthmark, his world, like that of so many others, felt upside down. This was early 2018, a year into the Trump presidency and amid the ubiquitous American fever of mass shootings and racist violence. Just months earlier, the dawning revelations of the MeToo movement had jolted him, ending his naivete and giving him insight into how the women in his life often saw the men in theirs. Nearing 40, he was finally a father, too, with a newborn daughter and another on the way. Into what kind of world, he sensibly wondered, was he bringing these kids? Early songs wallowed in this anxious question, the dim start of what he thought might be a not-especially-uplifting EP.
But five years later, Birth of Omni is a kaleidoscopic wonder of sound and sentiment, asking the same question Kinsella first posed for himself but arriving at a surprising answer—maybe a better world, in fact, if only we can all be a little more open. Opportunities to grieve and fret overflowed, he reckoned, but he also wanted to celebrate the possibility of change, the joy of wonder, the essence of being. The result is the most dazzling and dynamic album of his storied career, with heavy beats and heavenly harps, cascading harmonies and quiet hymns, brutal noise and blissful arpeggios woven into 10 songs that capture the highs and lows, the vexations and victories of marriage, parenthood, and life itself. Maybe you’ve heard every Joan of Arc, American Football, LIES, and Make Believe record, but you’ve never heard Kinsella quite like this, because he’s never sounded quite like this—totally open to every idea and emotion, unrestrained as he tries to frame the future in whatever light he can find.
The sequence of upending events that yielded those first sketches didn’t end, of course. But when the pandemic began two years into work on Birth of Omni, Kinsella took its suspension of reality as an invitation to forget his own rules. He warped his voice with software until he questioned if it was still his, fluttering as it did through electric fractals or stretched until it seemed to trickle with sweat. And in a series of residencies in isolated cabins and the New York City art space Pioneer Works, he dove in and out of genres like never before, fusing ASMR readings and sampled voicemails to mutated disco and cherubic pop and orchestral emoting. A panoply of guests and friends—Arone Dyer, Greg Fox, Jeff Tobias, Richmond’s Spacebomb crew, among many others—helped him reach these unexpected syntheses. What was the past in a present so unprecedented?
Birth of Omni is rooted in parenthood—specifically, the way it reflects back on one’s own prerogatives or prejudices. His voice distended into a codeine drip, Kinsella wonders during opener “Snowflake in My Palm (Not for Long)” if giving his time and attention to his kids means the end of his own life, or the thing that actually makes him matter. During “Butterfly,” as beautiful as an early Sufjan Stevens symphony, he cavorts with his giggling daughters in the backyard, only to realize that their innocent game of chase presages the way they may one day need to flee some toxic dude. (A cover of Joan Armatrading’s secretly devastating “Baby Woncha Come Home,” sung by Dyer, affirms such encounters.) Can his kids, as he sings, “help me change”?
“I’m Awake” steadily rises from a piano meditation on memory and ontology into an ode to maintaining a sense of innocence even as experience comes. Kinsella and his kids work through the spelling of “rainbow” until they get it right; the song shudders brilliantly, the future opening like a break in ominous clouds. There’s that change, cast in love. One track later, however, gunshots cutting through the sound of screaming children interrupt closer “Pretty Flowers.” It’s an honest reflection of the doomsday reel that runs through this new father’s mind when it wanders, a jarring reminder of life’s real stakes. But “Pretty Flowers” returns in a tribute to his children, to “the good that I feel.” It’s Birth of Omni’s arc, cast in miniature.
Many of these songs confront the realities of aging, or the exigencies of long romantic relationships morphing into domestic partnerships. He ponders how to recapture a bit of that youthful lust in “Red Meadow,” offering up what he can—new clothes, a haircut, a romp in a field—to disrupt their routine “in a little box on a hill.” But during “Boyfriend,” he coos like Usher about washing dishes and taking babies on neighborhood walks; it is a fully adult seduction, Kinsella saying come hither above rattling bass and ricocheting synths, apron still on. Roles and the relational bonds between us change, he realizes, and it’s up to us to make good on that.
Indeed, as he worked on Birth of Omni, Kinsella reckoned with his own sexuality, coming to grips with the acceptance that he’d never really fit into the social straitjacket of masculinity he’d tried to don neatly for 40 years. Now with a family and approaching middle age, could he admit that he was more than someone’s straight husband? Could he deal with it? The gorgeous and compulsive “Rodney” is a lustful song for the would-be paramour that gives the track its name, countered by Kinsella’s awareness that maybe the escapades of his youth are behind him, that he’s got other commitments in his life. Shudder to Think’s Craig Wedren backs Kinsella here, playing the real role of the supportive voice who has been here before. We make choices for those we love, Kinsella affirms during “Rodney,” but the adventures of our imaginations can and should remain endless.
Kinsella has a confession about Birth of Omni: No one may care about what he calls his “dad record,” his reckonings with approaching middle age, or the manifold musical fascinations of his chameleonic songs. Perhaps that’s bad for business, he admits, especially since Polyvinyl has been such a steadfast advocate of his work. But isn’t that kind of vulnerability and self-reckoning the point of Birth of Omni, to make yourself and hopefully your kids and maybe even the world a little better by being honest about and open with yourself? After all, he wrote, recorded, produced, mixed, and mastered this album alone, because these are notes to self, personal reminders of how he wants to exist moving forward. Birth of Omni began in the dark, but it exists now in the full light of an essential reality: Our roles change, as do we. There’s hope in knowing there’s still somewhere else to go.
credits
released January 19, 2024
Written and performed by Nate Kinsella
“Baby Woncha Come on Home”
Written by Joan Armatrading, lead vocal by Arone Dyer
As far as indie albums in the 2010's and beyond go, this is one of the most cohesive and emotive albums I've experienced looking back on it and is Jay Som's best album tokyonoir
The proceeds of this extensive compilation of punk and rock go towards the healthcare costs of beloved musician Dan Wild-Beesley. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 21, 2017
What a fun, engaging album. A very dynamic mix of airy, dreamy indie pop and pounding, energetic indie rock. You’d think these two styles would clash, but they meld perfectly in these ten songs. With such a broad scope of pop and rock styles on display here, there’s a little something for everyone to enjoy. Kirk Gauthier