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Fire​-​lives

by Miriam Jones

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  • A 6-panel digipak and lyric booklet with original artwork by Mike Hepher and Rose Fay.

    Also includes immediate download of 12-track album in your choice of 320k mp3, FLAC, or just about any other format you could possibly desire.


    *Note that prices listed exclude 20% VAT added by Pay Pal on check out and payable by EU and UK customers
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  • Streaming + Download

    Immediate download of 12-track album in your choice of 320k mp3, FLAC, or just about any other format you could possibly desire, as well as a pdf of the lyric pages (drawings by Rose Fay).
    Purchasable with gift card

      £8 GBP  or more

     

1.
Rhythm Out 05:00
Everybody loves me but they went off with one another And they say I’m looking lovely but they’re attracted to each other I am running low on options I am running less and less these days And I know we ‘re all getting older but I am getting less and less these days I’m closing down slowly It’s not that I’m sad more like I’m cold but maybe I don’t need you I’ll be fine I’ve got my rhythm down I like my freedom crave my space you’d only throw my rhythm out The whole wide world is open and I could start another life there And it’s not popular opinion but there’s something to be said for sticking with your share I am burning out on options I am burning less and less these days I can do just as it please me but I am pleasing less and less these days If I could have planned for this But you were the only thing I took for granted Anyway so many get and throw it all away Those who would have stayed are left with nothing Nobody's choosing love they choose whatever gives them what they want I'll be better off clutching my something but sometimes it feels like nothing
2.
Helicopter 04:36
The afternoon comes sliding sweet beneath the kitchen window in the heat In my glass the ice retreats From the sky the rising rumblin’ of a helicopter freezes me Just on the other side of here frantic you are fumbling ‘round in fear. Sweat obscures your eyes like tears Edging round the fields to find a way to disappear And I hear the helicopter drowning your life out with every beat of its terrible wings I feel the helicopter drowning my heart oh with everything that its being there means I lace my hair behind my ear You claw the branches and the air I spare my heart for you out there because I know we’re both relying on somebody else’s care I don’t even know your name and I won’t pretend that we are just the same but if I came upon your hiding place I wouldn’t give you away I hear the helicopter hounding you just to get out get away You’ve built your life on that refrain oh and I feel the helicopter sounding your heart what a thundering thing in such a fragile machine
3.
Words Away 05:02
Lord knows that words don’t always earn their keep and lovers pride themselves that they don’t need to speak they’re so good at reading one look is all they need And I love all the faces that you make at me the ones you pull on purpose and the ones you lose to honesty oh let the sun rise but your smile awakens me And you know I love your kisses but I want more from your lipses So don’t throw your words away I’ll hang on everything you want to say Whisper your sweet, sweet nothings they mean everything, everything Don’t throw your words away I know you love me but it’s not the same It might be easy to say, say it anyway Don’t throw your words away. Life rolls down a tight rope of delight and dues The mouth can say all kinds of things the hand won’t prove You mean the world Love, but I don’t have time for you But often these hypocrisies aren’t understood A few more zealous lovers in this world would do some good Oh if you feel it, go on and let it loose Love is always clouded but that’s not for being shouted
4.
the stone rolled a stone’s throw away from my heart but I can’t lay hold of it life is a mystery, death may be doubly so little is told of it stone cold and bones folded still in the ground I can’t bear the thought of it my love weeping miserably demanding of God if he cares for the lot of it and it’s only a stone’s throw away from us all darkness deeper than space or a blinding new dawn either Christ was a liar or Christ heard my call The stone rolled my stone-soul all over in earth and there’s no unrolling it But even a stone can cry out when his own lose the voice for extolling it
5.
When the promised fire falls on our heads and on everything we know it shall be made plain, the worth of it all burned to ashes or refined to gold When my life is repossessed and the truth shines her light into the hold all I have done, cursed and blessed will burn to ashes or be refined to gold And if I don’t love you life is worthless nothing will remain of it When my time is over what will I show for it I cannot escape from this I know well the force of myself and the selfish will be turned out in the cold all I have been for anyone else will burn to ashes or be refined to gold You may have, or have nothing at all but in the end all the homeless will come home and where your heart is, what you've loved above all will burn to ashes or be refined to gold on that day, sudden and great, this whole world, worn and tired, torn and old will be set alight, a new kingdom made on top of the ashes from the finest gold
6.
Bones 04:18
She said you know my heart left long ago 10 years you’ve held my bones She stepped off my throne on my knees I watched her go When she stayed away I rose And she drifts by like a misplaced satellite taking pictures of the world locked in her mind And I was out of your mind Out of your mind I stood alone in the rooms we never made a home I just stood there and I froze All that I own bears the life that you’ve disowned and my clothes hang on my bones And I cried for the surreptitious dynamite that sent you hurtling through the weightless outer-life where I was out of your mind Out of your mind
7.
Come Clean 04:03
It came out furiously "Why won’t you just let me be? Can’t I just do what I do? You know I don’t even think that I asked you" I watched your face fall, the color rising You fell behind while I rushed to right me I break my heart when I break your life-line By disregarding you like a side-line But can I come clean You know I want to come clean Oh will you let me come clean Things that I wouldn’t see you bring before me daily The light I throw in the dark and then the dark in my own pretty heart I watch my height fall, but something true there Cause I don’t feel small now that I’m down here I stare across to the eyes before me Right on the level and love implores me Go on and come clean I want for you to come clean So go, go on and come clean We sit in silence and I’m ashamed now along a church bench we are the same now I say I’m sorry I didn’t mean to Will you forgive me, you know I need you To be myself to be someone else to wallow with me in knowing Grace who Walks beside us in all our weakness in all our anger, in all our speeches Of what we know and what we deserve and all the reasons we think we shouldn’t have to come clean, we don’t wanna come clean We know we need to come clean
8.
I turned on the tv and it suddenly was Christmas and I hollered at the advert that they wouldn’t get my money and I could not believe they honestly were trying to take my heart for Christmas The airwaves jammed with snowmen and with santa claus and angels and I do believe in angels but not the kind that do not scare you and I prayed some kind of holy fear would find its way to me this Christmas ‘Cause my heart is dying to prepare for something wondrous and mysterious This world is ringing in my ears and it’s thunderous and delirious I walked into town and it was red and gold and sparkling and while I waited for my watch I hovered round the shiny shops oh you who have no money come and buy fill your hearts full up this Christmas Steering down the sidewalk I could hear a conversation ‘bout a boy who had a head they’d like to push under a faucet and I wondered are we saving up all our loving hearts for Christmas Part way through December I pulled out the wooden figures from their boxes and I placed them and I looked into their faces wondering what they all were looking at...
9.
If Only What 03:57
the heart is the heart of life that’s why you broken-hearted died the heart shapes your lot in life but escaped your eyes you went down in secret smiling somehow only with your mind if only what if only but what would I have if only what if only she lived on the borderline under desert sky fighting to stay alive we sat by the waterside we were desert-dry 7 days and nights we flooded one another back to life oh my brother we’re keepers of each other but who kept you going under? no, no-one a heart will be still as stone if it’s left alone
10.
Open the window and breathe in I can’t believe we’re finally leaving It’s just the way I always dreamed it, always I got you, you got me, we promised there’s nothing left but to get on this if the car breaks down we’ll pawn it Finally free to love and leave this land I know they see it in some ways as just another routine runaway From the girl who couldn’t stand to stay in one place But running ‘away from’ and ‘into’ are two completely different ways to get on through You pull me like the right was meant We could drive a million miles tonight I could not be further gone than here in your sweet eyes as we’re kissing at the stoplight And I’ve left this town more times than I can think of But I never cared less where I was headed to than on my way out with you love Oh and every day your love takes me far away and I’m OK that you’re my routine run run runaway The first time I met you I left you make believing things we could get up to The places we’d go doing what we loved to A year gone and married a day in and we’re leaving everything for England Like I never came awake from dreaming You say I’m brave to come away but understand I will be at home wherever I have you in my hands You keep me safe like nothing else can
11.
Fire-lives 04:21
I pray you out of this holding bay Wide open doors calling you away God only knows why we hover here bleeding life down the drain of going nowhere I sing my songs in the dining room wring my heart with not a heart to move You spin your soul with a coffee spoon typing tales to conversations of the lives all going on around you only want to give yourself but who knew - beauty would be such a hard sell And sometimes we settle for the smoldering of our fire-lives Breathing like we we’re dying when we’re only sleeping A song on the stage of your weary heart Shifting the weight of the waiting art Singing a story right in your ear lifting your love to their quiet fears Oh when I run away I run right into the beauty of a freshly fallen holy day that loves me over and lets me loose holding my peace and when it washes me it washes you too I know for all the stillness, the light moves In and out inaudible, piercing you right through Don’t worry, this fury that keeps you alienated is the way we pray for what may be the day we’re satiated I love you will not be enough to lift up your courage always What you’re speaking, life you think you’re leaking comes overflowing some day
12.
Oh My 05:12
Oh my lover makes me sigh when he kisses me so warm so sly Like a full red winter-wine Radiating slowly slowing time Oh my lover makes me high words that go straight to my heart, my mind Like April rain in mid-July no coat, no shoes, face flung up to the sky Oh there is not a question that I’m fully affected by this love And his heart is my direction and I’m fully detected by this love Oh my lover makes me try but not the way the world makes all the time The way the colors and the lines of some great summit call you up the climb and you feel satisfied Oh there is not a question that I’m fully affected by this love And his heart is my direction and I’m fully detected by this love there is not a question that I’m fully affected by this love And here is great affection that I should be perfected by this love Giving all we are to somebody else’s arms forgetting yourself and then finding you are naked but you’re not alone Oh my lover makes me cry He don’t always do or say what’s right But I am my lover’s wife and I’ll stand in his darkness and his light just like he stands in mine

about

Recorded live (main tracking) in Jones’ Oxford terrace with a band of bass, drums, electric guitar and Jones’ own acoustic guitar and straight-forward piano, Fire-lives sparkles with raw spirit and power in a thoughtfully combined set of heartening songs, sometimes buoyant and winsome, at other times slow-burning and dark. Further additions of brass, layered vocals with rich harmonies, cello and percussion result in a lush, distinctive and beautiful album, reminiscent at times of Mumford & Sons folkish energy, and at others of Plant & Krauss’ Raising Sand with its spacey, gritty guitar sounds, percussive-drum treatments, and sweet melodies.

Poetic, earthy and personal lyrics have always been a feature of Jones’ writing, but Fire-lives takes several leaps forward on the imagery front, and in Jones’ own words, in creativity of content:

“Many of the songs on the album were inspired by the experiences of people around me instead of my own, and the boundaries of my usual songwriting format have been given a healthy stretch in some places. I’ve explored alternate tunings as well as a depth of musical hooks. ”
.
The majority of the songs on the album began as part of Jones’ Solitary Songs, a project for which she wrote and recorded a song a month and made them available for download; intent on expanding her attention to fundamental musical detail through the project, her arrangements were restricted to voice and guitar. The Solitary Songs experienced a degree of reimagining to become the full-band versions on the album.

credits

released December 8, 2010

THE BAND
Miriam Jones - vocals / backing vocals / acoustic guitars / piano / percussion

Jez Carr - bass / backing vocals / hammond / brass / piano

Adam Carpenter - electric guitars / dobro / backing vocals / piano / mandolin

Matt Hay - electric guitar / viola / pedal and lap steel / backing vocals / percussion

Thomas Hooper - drums

Barney Morse-Brown - cello

Produced and Engineered by Matt Hay (has worked with the Who, Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue)

Executive Producer: Miriam Jones
Recorded at the Oxford hovel Zoo Studios in High Wycombe, UK

Artwork design and layout by Mike Hepher at Bluebeetle Creative
www.bluebeetlecreative.com
Illustrations by Rose Fay www.rosefayillustrator.co.uk

license

all rights reserved

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Miriam Jones Victoria, British Columbia

Management: miriamjones.tumblr.com/contact

"Quite apart from that this album is extraordinary on its own merits there are few artists willing to expose their talents to such a sparse instrumental background, and you need to listen to it and discover its beauty for yourself."
- Tim Martin, FATEA Magazine
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