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Audience of Summer

by Miserable chillers

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1.
Saga's Sword 03:06
were you ever curious how the stars fell into their present arrangement? there was a series of accidents and then the witnesses all blinked into witnessing and who gives a fuck about the clowns and their instruments resting on the bed of this young lake? and i was a young girl and i waded in shallow waters and i felt the silt and stone and i felt too young to be their steward if i’m washed away if i’m washed away waiting on that summer feeling, a big long yanking of a rug. a house was built for you a long, long time before you were born. i’m leaving now, i’m leaving now. i am constantly descending. i am just one-way we’re all just one way! even way out here, in the desolate places, yeah, way out here you can see the dirt doing its thing: it circulates, pulls us down and presses us against everyone good and snug.
2.
i dove in the sea in a new machine i was going to see where the bottom is. critters of the deep, busy tenants unseen the sacred filthy floor, a big, old home. the neighbors downstairs picking at the dust, the wrappers, the plastic bags, the useless and long lived, and us, the wrong kin. the amphipods, the holothurians reaching in the dark touched by the water.
3.
Animal Trial 02:21
Absolution was all that we knew: we climbed up the hill, hung the sow from a tree. left her dangling by her hind hooves snout to the earth, ass to the sky. we all must find a home in the house of the law. if dreams don't come true, this is all that we knew. we cast out the locusts and exiled the aphids! all are accused! this was all that we knew. absolution was all that i knew. i'm forever a child alone in my cradle. mother sow she is kissing me to sleep, to see how my neck might fit in her teeth.
4.
City of Eyes 02:48
Summer in the city of eyes, no surprise, that after such a terrible year my clothes have gone out of style again. I must’ve tried hundreds of time to find beauty in sidewalks and trees and all of those basic things I comprise. It’s hard to make arrangements for loving myself when i think until my feelings belong to someone else, but i’m in love with you. All the lordly idiot light, in the morning, this summer in the city of eyes, that’s what’s making me cry I guess.
5.
The Glass 04:02
I saw my brother and he looked sad for all the colors that have gone bad. The spoiled roses, the ocean green, forgotten poses in stupid dreams. wrap me in letters, sing me in song. When you leave won’t you bring me along? Since I was a child I’ve pressed my nose up to the glass. Peering out at the wilds I pressed my nose up to the glass. Ever since i’ve been keeping time. Goodbye froggy, Goodbye bug. to the risky bodies I give my love.
6.
Card Captor 03:04
My hand, little raven waver talking in these subtle ways finding out, externally, how to hold my person, i guess. my hand blossomed just once. one day, baby, i looked around. even though we’re so trained on that moment, are you swerving to the exits again? my hand always touches touching touch, always for the audience of summer i am trying to read your hand in light.
7.
i pressed the peach to get a feel for time as days go by. this fecund thing so overfull with life when it rains it rains it rains it rains it rains it rains it rains it rains. a horror show, the flesh will burst apart so sweet, so tart. overgrown, a fault in softness the juice rains and rains and rains and rains and rains and rains and rains and rains. a calendar of touch is unwound the barren days pressed on firm ground. once we put a name to the middles back when all our names were still little. it’s innocent, the waste of summer’s rush to bloom, to blush. Within a beat my heart fills up and then it empties out and empties out and empties out and empties out.
8.
Cargo Cult 01:35
nighttime lonely, i retell the stories from the other times. of the runways where planes don’t land or the kids who climb up trees and swear to never touch the ground— who stretch their arms to the limbs of love. is that enough? to forget them, and forget that place? we taste with just one tongue. i am waving all the lights, again. a blinking sky, a story time.
9.
Antipodes 03:41
i’ve been having so many bad dreams of the antipodes hanging upside down from me. or the damn old pinholes, an ancient index. a big and bright sky, what’s seen but cannot see. it’s been just a short time, this busyness: the screaming, the staring and naming all these things. i’ll swap our places. drag my knuckles up hills, smack all the stars down, all that grants shape to me. but i am smoothed out i am rolling away and i’d never wanted to see everything.

about

“I think of myself as a late bloomer, a lot of obvious things have only recently started to appear obvious to me,” says Miguel Gallego reflecting on intuition and his creative practice during the peak of the 2020 pandemic. Currently based in Brooklyn, New York, Gallego grew up in suburban New Jersey to parents from Mexicali, in Baja California. It was in these early days in New Jersey that Gallego formed an important, slightly enchanted relationship with nature, which lent itself to both obvious and not so obvious realizations about the world around him. Gallego cites vivid childhood memories of days living beside a “bizarrely bucolic” creek straddled by woods in suburban New Jersey and the palpable effect it had on his definition and perception of nature. He learned years after moving that what he thought was an escape to a world untarnished by human involvement was in fact man-made, an artifact of a previous era with a very intentional design. This realization lent itself to an intellectual growth spurt; Gallego learned that our surroundings often grow in complexity the longer you take them in.

These formative experiences with nature have eerie parallels with Gallego’s first forays into music. Gallego’s fascination with songwriting began early, eventually extending into a recording practice that began when he received a Tascam digital 8-track as a sixteen year old. It was not until six years later that Gallego assumed the Miserable chillers name and became more active in NYC’s local music community. In the years that followed, Gallego took time to find his voice as a musician, and meditated heavily on what kinds of stories he needed to tell. He went on to release three EPs and a handful of splits, including 2019’s meandering and improvisation-heavy Schoënblintsjia, refining his craft as a songwriter along the way. Gallego is now getting ready to release his debut full length, Audience of Summer, a record that explores this strange and premeditated experience of going outside and the inescapable impact of climate change.

Over the past six years, Miserable Chillers has shifted from a bummer pop act grounded by indie rock guitars to what can now be best described as literary baroque pop. Audience of Summer is not only the product of afternoons spent listening to Prefab Sprout, Clube da Esquina, and Kate Bush, but also an amalgam of imagination, myth, and deep contemplation. Pulling heavily from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Audience of Summer is deliciously esoteric, and brilliantly arranged. Recorded, produced, and mixed by Gallego himself, with additional sound design by composer and producer Connor Hanwick, the record also features contributions from friends and collaborators like Jeremy Stoddard Caroll on pedal steel guitar, Sarah Goldfarb (Red Widow, Ovaeasy) on cello, Megan Braaten (You’re Sister) and Kabir Kumar (Sun Kin) on backing vocals, among others.

All of these parts and personalities come together with expert precision. Listening to “La nave del olvido,” an early track on the record, synth parts get prismatic, and textured percussion gives the song a hazy depth that feels plucked from a heat wave. “City of Eyes,” the record’s oldest track, uses field recordings taken in industrial East Williamsburg, and references an essay by the writer James Agee. “All the lordly idiot light/in the morning/this summer in the city of eyes/that’s what’s making me cry,” Gallego sings in impressionistic harmony with Braaten.

Audience of Summer is, as Gallego puts it, “a document of where I was before things changed permanently and abruptly.” It is a record about the relentless march of time and how we try to make sense of it, and the vulnerability that comes with moving forward. “I feel a personal affection for myself growing as a person and as an artist as I made this,” Gallego says of these songs. Listen to Audience of Summer and you’ll feel that sense of affection, too.
- Sophie Kemp

credits

released August 7, 2020

Artwork and design by Mary Constant
Mastered by Dan Thorn at Pink Noise Studios
Recorded and mixed by Miguel Gallego, with additional sound design by Connor Hanwick

Miguel Gallego - guitars, vocals, programming
Jeremy Stoddard Carroll - pedal steel guitar, recorded at Primeval Studios
Sarah Goldfarb - cello
Isaac Gillespie - guitar on ‘Calendar for Annie’
Megan Braaten - vocals
Kabir Kumar - vocals
Lele Dai - vocals

Special thanks to Tom Giardini, Kabir Kumar, Nik Loynes, Adam Wittekind, Amelia Pitcherella

Dedicated to Sarah Goldfarb

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Miserable chillers Brooklyn, New York

adult contemporary music group ( ages 26 +)

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