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Broadcast The Secret Verse

by Chris Cleverley

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    The new album pressed on 12” black vinyl in card sleeve beautifully designed by artists Martin D Hyde.

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  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 8 Chris Cleverley releases available on Bandcamp and save 15%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Broadcast The Secret Verse, Nausea (Radio Edit), Still Life, Chlorophyll, Live From The Glass Isle, We Sat Back and Watched it Unfold, Ring O' Bells feat. Kelly Oliver, and Apparitions. , and , .

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1.
Borderlands 04:20
I was thirteen years old. With a looming grey cloud of smoke on the skyline. I didn’t know what it meant, for ‘us’ or for ‘them’, I just knew that something bigger was coming our way. Now twenty years have flown by I suppose, And what we have to show for them the devil only knows, In the world we made, in those dumbstricken days, What a world to bring you into. My smiling and sweet little girl. Who will you turn to in a withering world? So fractured and frenzied and falling apart. May it spare the foundations of your delicate heart. They say that ‘kids these days are growing up fast’. Faster than we thought we might have been in the past. So we’re building our borders high and we’re harking back to days, When the loneliness inside us didn’t feel this way. Oh sweet delicate child. May you find beauty in the rugged and the wild. In a world so fractured and falling apart, May it spare the foundations of your delicate heart. I pray you live well and live long. Show me I’m just old and tired and teach me I’m wrong. And with all that’s left in me, I’ll do anything to see you Build your spirit stronger than mine. Just build your spirit stronger than mine.
2.
Chlorophyll 03:14
This kind of thing, it always comes with a cost. We calculate the reckoning, adjusting for the loss. And so we make the best of things in time that we have got, Either that or ride the crest out hoping it’s enough. But it hurts me to see your colours change; To know you’re not the same. And it hurts me to see how the world we made Led you to be this way. I’ve taken to watching the subtle way The light around us seems to change a little with each passing day. Sometimes it shimmers, sometimes it fades, Only to illuminate you in the most perfect way. But it hurts me to see your colours change; To know you’re not the same. I’m ashamed to see how the world we made Led you to be this way. But I understand. How I understand. This kind of thing, it always comes with a cost. It hurts me to see your colours change; To know you’re not the same. But id adore you any way That you need to be.
3.
Still Life 03:30
This is just life imitating art, So you can call me a fucking mess And tear out my heart. But junk bond empires burst apart, So you can bring out your dead, And load them on a cart. The last tree stands in a purifying tank, Centre of Times Square. In the remnants of the billboard screens, A dead American dream. Faint scream from the crossroads of the world, As the sunset sinks behind A hollowed-out skyline. This is just life imitating art, So you can call me a sorry mess And pray for my sorry heart. But junk bond futures are doomed to implode, So you can bring out your dead and leave them for the carrion crows. The last dove sealed in formaldehyde, I’m old enough to remember how it was; To swallow the acidic taste of my pride. The cold wars, the grain stores, The rain showers, the dust clouds, The crowds bursting through the barricades. This is just life. This still life. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I’m any less to blame Than him, than her; Wide eyes, screaming into a void for an answer. So it’s back into the sea, for the next hundred, million years, ‘Til the universe sees fit for us To crawl back out again on our knees. This is just life imitating art, So shoot me in the head Before it gets a chance to start. Trade my future, carve it apart, And you can drain out the blood, Left in my beating heart.
4.
Ouroboros 03:36
All we have left is our limbs pressed together; The warp and the weft, the linen on leather. I don’t know if I ever once caught myself believing A part of me would rather the staying or the leaving. You know that we’ll never be more Than the sickening mess of the moments before. With the pace of eternal return It could happen a thousand times over and we’d never learn. The ghosts of other lovers came swarming in around us; Miasma and madness. I don’t know how they found us. A bleak murmuration, down here on all fours As they pecked out our eyeballs and picked at our sores. You know that we’ll never be more Than the murmuring madness of the moments before. With the pace of eternal return It could happen a thousand times over and we’d never learn. It's digging away at me. All the secret horrors of the universe Rained down on me in those moments there. With the pace of eternal return If it happened a thousand times over then we’d never learn. So hate me more than you can. Make me a mirror of your misery, man. And I’ll hate you with all that I am; Manifest as a memory, under the sand; A poison anemone. For a thousand years, waiting for my enemy to wake me again.
5.
Source of my peace, spark in my soul What would I be if you ever go? Aching. Resplendent. Clear in the light. Golden. Solitary. Radiant and bright. It’s funny how images emerge in your mind, When you’re frozen in moments in space and in time. The cold ever-after, the grasping for more, Don’t ever let me go back to before. Remember the early days when I wasn’t sure Of what kind of man I was anymore. But you eased me so gentle, you anchored me down, You waited so patient, while I came around. November ocean. The salt and the sand. Do you remember my trembling hands? Lay me down gentle, the silence to ease. Don’t ever let me go back. Please my darling. Voice of my reason, love of my life. Keep me from wandering too far from the light. You soothed my devils, you let them in too. You taught us we’ve nothing to fear from you.
6.
Paradise 03:32
Do you even see me, Or am I just a wild shade? Straddling two realms in the hazy afterlife Of the society you made. Its all turned to ashen grey, And while the future is not ours to say, Last night I saw a vision of your paradise; A great walled city lighting up the night sky, The rest of us left for dead Out here in the desert. Is this even real to you; The spores inside my lungs? The insects crawling over everything That I have ever said and done. But I see through it all, With white hot eyes that burn right to your core And it’s a destitute wreckage down there. Were waiting for that precious judgement day When the sky will fall on it all anyway, Were waiting for that precious judgement day to arrive.
7.
Nausea 04:59
I will meet you down Way down at the bottom of everything. It was 2am, parked up at the petrol station, We’d decided God was dead. You were cool with that. I'd been so unhappy for so long, And I don’t think I could tell you. I’d been counting on you thinking I Would be strong enough to be worth your while. I will meet you down Way down at the bottom of everything. You turned you face away, as we drowned In the cosmic loneliness, While 'Figure 8' played loud through the stereo. There was no deceit, no higher brain We embraced the overarching pain That belied our sweet, elated freedom To face a world devoid of meaning. I will meet you down Way down at the bottom of everything. Where the tectonic plates subside. Rip through me, burn my eyes. You’ll feel your core divide At the very bottom of everything.
8.
Heraklion 04:59
The lighthouse is far, But look back where we’ve come to where we are. Below a tapestry of stars. The silence is mine. The colours are flying around you and me. Sunset on the sea. Weave me in, unfurl me all around. And listen to the softly shifting sound Of the waves. The heat of the day. Horseback through olive groves. Humidity on skin and peeled back clothes. Into the sea. Teach me to believe... That reality is not the tortured mind, But the world around that roots us down and binds us... Together. And I didn’t think I’d ever be here. Not like this. Not like this.
9.
We left the 7th of December twenty sixteen, The week they raised the city to the ground. They said that they could get us Southwest, down to Rashadeen, Or the outskirts of some other border town. Under the auspices of peace keeping forces Checkpoint lights flicker in the storm. The sobering lessons. We were burning our possessions In the cold winter night just to keep warm. The sickle moon’s rising, the Lord is devising His plans for us all. Who are we to question the great ebb and flow And the rise and the fall. The Tiergarten shimmers and a Berlin winter Wraps you up like a waking child. Icicle memories will splinter and I'm thinking on A dissipating image of your smile. My love glowed brightly in the desert that night Fragile as a naked flame. So easily extinguished, what slipped through my fingers, Who could ever put it right again. The sickle moon’s rising, the Lord is devising His plans for us all. Who are we to question the great ebb and flow And the rise and the fall. Fading, Smiling The Sickle moon's rising, the sickle moon's rising. Who are we to question the great ebb and flow And the rise and the fall. The sickle moon’s rising, the Lord is devising His plans for us all. Who are we to question the great ebb and flow And the rise and the fall.
10.
What had I missed? Nothing exists in the way that I thought that it did. We pull we resist. Carving a path to our place in all this. So what are we if not the sum of all things? You and I, our atoms collide and they twist. How simple to see; After all it would seem that without you I cannot be me. I watch us now through the screen. Doomed to repeat all the same things again. What is real now it can’t be unseen? Floating through life like the ghosts inside this machine. I lay for a while in the light at the end of the world; It was glorious. Radiant. Silver and cold. Screaming, dissolving and watching my whole life Unfolding before me, beginning to end. No purpose no meaning, I’m done with believing There’s anything more I could be. It’s just you. And me. The ocean. The breeze. It all comes to nothing, you see, But that’s all I could need. I’ve seen how it all ends. Seen how reality shifts and it bends. We can no longer pretend That we were the ones deciding.
11.
If I’d have listened back then. If I’d have listened back then. How different would life be for so many people If I’d have listened to myself back then. I’d never have heard the plaintive call of the corncrake, Id never have walked the banks of the Seine. I’d have died so many years before my time If I’d have listened to myself back then. O show me the beauty of all I’d have missed If I’d have listened to myself back then. I’d never have felt the shimmering cool sensation If the pressure of your skin on my skin. I’d never have mapped the point of your constellation To trace the image of your soul within. O show me the beauty of all I’d have missed If I’d have listened to myself back then. I’d never have reaped the truth of that cold, hard lesson And given myself the freedom to say I’d have died without giving myself the chance To have died within your arms one day. O show me the beauty of all I’d have missed If I’d have listened to myself back then. So if I’m back down there. When I’m down there again, I’ll cling to the beauty of all I’d have missed If I’d have listened to myself back then.

about

‘Broadcast The Secret Verse’ is Chris Cleverley’s first new music in nearly three years. It showcases an unprecedented new sound combining elements of Lo-Fi Folk, Ambient, IDM, Dream-Pop and Post Rock, ushering in a bold new artistic era. It is an album of total rebirth & reinvention.

Produced by John Patrick Elliott (The Little Unsaid), the album creates immediate associations with Indie greats Sufjan Stevens, Phoebe Bridgers & Elliott Smith, with echoes of Aphex Twin and Jóhann Jóhannsson. Ambient electric guitars, synths, samples & programming combine to push the boundaries and shatter the expectations of contemporary acoustic-led music. An all-star cast of guests including Lucy Farrell (Vocals, The Furrow Collective), Rob Pemberton (Drums, The Staves) and Lukas Drinkwater (Bass, Emily Barker) further enhance this rich tapestry of sonic texture.

It is an album of two halves, holding a mirror up to both the immense beauty and deep sadness in our modern world. As dreamlike melancholia interweaves with an unshakable sense of hope, it is primed for the deeply conflicted 21st Century emotional landscape.

Diverse subjects include pervasive artificial intelligence (A Prediction Algorithm), charter cities (Paradise), climate/nuclear emergency (Still Life) & mass displacement of people (The Centre Cannot Hold), all the while carefully highlighting the transformative power of deep interconnection with people and nature (Heraklion, If I’d Have Listened).

‘Broadcast The Secret Verse’ is an album about saying the things that need to be said in the time we have. At times abrasive, at others uplifting, but never in between. It is a contemporary, fresh and innovative offering to the rapidly evolving 21st Century songwriting scene. The perfect companion piece to our head-spinning modern age.

credits

released November 4, 2022

Chris Cleverley - Vocals, Acoustic, Electric & Nylon String Guitar, Banjo Synths, Piano, Programming, Ukulele, Ebow
John Patrick Ellliot - Piano, Programming
Rob Pemberton - Drums
Lukas Drinkwater - Bass
Lucy Farrell - Vocals
Kathy Pilkinton - Vocals
Graham Coe - Cello

Engineered, produced and mixed by John Patrick Elliott

Mastered by Tim Debney at Fluid Mastering

Artwork by Martin D Hyde

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Chris Cleverley Birmingham, UK

Chris Cleverley was born under a solstice moon, in an aura of honeysuckle mysticism. He is among a new wave of pioneering artists carving an uncharted path through the UK acoustic landscape. Inspired by the Lo-FI Indie greats Elliott Smith & Sufjan Stevens, his ambient Dream-Folk songwriting pushes the boundaries and shatters the expectations of 21st Century acoustic music. ... more

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