Gracious Calamity
For booking: graciouscalamity@gmail.com
The radiant meadow glistens with history, pocked with crystals. The color wheel, your hands, shapes of infinite cosmic accelerating. Your spirit has formed. Gradient paths simmer in the mist; a momentary vision and your spare eye catches a yellow one, an oiled foot moves through oceans of Mediterranean space and there is an instant of rush and the birds descend upon your clothes. The eyes close and you cry “Yes!†With a whoosh and swoop a thousand tiny birds gently lift your body from the ground. You arrive lost and aged, across the valleys, the dark canyons, having traveled a fortnight instantly, and lived half as long. You arrive with a plum pit in your stomach and an icicle dagger in your teeth. You have been transported to the peak of the the keepers of the song. There is absolutely no way you could have walked here, and you are fully aware that you are a guest. The music speaks. It speaks for your dreams, and it speaks from frequencies beyond your imagination.
Gracious Calamity is a dream and an experiment. The songs are green and the voices are ancient. The strings are whirling children, the hearts of ballerinas, aged six. The smiles and the rhythms are heart blasting dust roads of living glitter, and it will never make sense that these two secret and wonderful women are doing this for you. When a Gracious Calamity song begins, tiny areas of your body begin to remember the microscopic sensation of moisture and air molecules. The history of the country where you were born begins to race through your head and you start to remember for the first time. You remember chosing your surname. You remember generations of the canoe, fishing along the ice. The hallucinations are persistent and real.
(((((graciouscalamity.bandcamp.com)))))
Releases
WFR065: Gracious Calamity: Carefree Since ’83
Carefree Since ’83 is primarily about weather: an almanac of the human body as it absorbs, withstands, and opens to sea breezes, thunderstorms, heat, water, spring. Recorded to 2-inch tape in the coastal town of Weymouth, Massachusetts, the album crackles with glass, mosquitoes, voices of birds, voices of friends, wind-chimes, an old ship-to-shore radio microphone.
WFR061: Gracious Calamity: Live on Winter Solstice
Special solstice set recorded live at Third Life Studios in Somerville, MA. Gracious Calamity were honored to be featured performers at the Metal & Glass Ensemble’s annual Solstice celebration. The night was so cold and the room was so warm.
WFR054/WFRV 001: Whitehaus Family record family record
A double vinyl LP compilation of tracks from 26 artists associated with the Whitehaus in Jamaica Plain.
that summer you moved quickly. there was no time after work to go home before the show so you pack those boots in your bag in the morning when you left the new apartment, made a call during a cigarette break and scribbled an address, a part of town you don’t know but go alone anyway, all the streets look the same but you find it, from the outside it looks like no one’s home and at the bottom of the dark stairs you panic. you almost turn and run but you don’t and the door opens for your knock and there’s a smiling face on the other side…
WFR048: Gracious Calamity: Becky’s on Vacation
A collection of studio, live, and home recordings by Gracious Calamity. Compiled for their summer 2009 tour with Tiny Tornadoes. All the hits! 100(ish) handmade copies exist.
WFR031: Gracious Calamity: Rabbit Rabbit EP
Rabbit Rabbit is a homemade confection blooming with giddiness. This five song EP is composed of various recordings from bedrooms in the Whitehaus and one track live from the Advent Church Library in Beacon Hill. Kate Lee and Kit Wallach’s complementary vocals reverberate with strength and dignity, joining a chorus of benevolent guitar, bobbling ukulele and ringing xylophone. These simple euphonies give one a fuzzy feeling that matches the fuzz of the homespun lo-fi recordings.