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The Late Great Gold Dust

by Gold Dust

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    This is the black vinyl edition of 'The Late Great Gold Dust'. Limited to 200 copies. Includes insert. Please note that the image is a mock up.

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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    This is the olive green vinyl edition of 'The Late Great Gold Dust'. Limited to 150 copies via Bandcamp. Includes insert. Please note that the image is a mock up. The color of the vinyl may differ slightly.

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    This CD edition of 'The Late Great Gold Dust' comes in a high quality four panel LP gatefold style cardboard sleeve. This is not a jewel case. Limited to 50 copies. Please note that the image is simply a mock up.

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  • Cassette + Digital Album

    This is the cassette edition of 'The Late Great Gold Dust'. Only 50 copies available. Image is simply a mock up.

    Includes unlimited streaming of The Late Great Gold Dust via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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1.
Go Gently 04:23
It used to be, a song, Once recorded, could live forever A line to the remote evermore But it starts to feel absurd Writing notes to a bankrupt future Like paper airplanes launched at the sun, A conceit of hope vs. numbered days And what if this ends up our world’s last gasp? The good behind us, left to fight over scraps It’s alright It’s ok Leave me where I lay To agonize over words no one hears, The floral language used to catalog fear: -Abandonment -Feeling fake -Rejection and snakes Combine them and shake Temporary, though, as all this may be Powerless, sure, but at least I’ve got me And you’ve got you - We’ve got us - I hope that’s enough. Remember me, Remember us. Oh - It’s only a song But who’s left to hear it? Oh it’s just a song And we’re just it’s keepers
2.
There's a voice that won't use words & I guess I've got a lot to learn Apologize for all the things I should've said I was sure that you'd have known & kept them to myself Watched the world fall from your eyes, Replaced by fear or longing, sometimes both Time to time, I wonder if I'll get it back, In the pain of waiting years, I move against the tide All those stupid half-made plans I had, They never seem to work out right A million useless songs Give voice to what went wrong & I don't wanna hide, I guess just not be found, at least for now The sun goes down hazy on a slate-gray night And charcoal clouds move to block the moon The last star in our sky Illuminates our eyes & serves as proof of life, I think, at least for now
3.
Will I see the storm before the wind picks up? Will I finally get it right? Well, I don't stand a chance if I brave the night, Alone and burrowed in Sleep outside to see the skies As all that's green around me dies I'm not one to hypothesize It can't be a good sign at all All overgrown with bittersweet & Mountain laurel, eventually A pretty tangle of defeat, A poison path, a wilted memory If I can't see the moon through the evergreens, I'll hold tight, just trust it's there And if there's not a sun to light our summer sky, Well I guess we'll know the dark If I don't return then plant a tree & Lay some flowers at its feet Inscribe a plaque that says "Finally Free, It Always Sucked Here Anyway" I hope to hell or god above There's something to keep dreaming of Peripheral, but never loved: A background noise or writing on a wall When there comes a day where all lights dim low And the sands of time lay still, I won't need to know how it all unfolds If the wind stays at our back We're all terrified of the lives we've got, In the shadow of our fate And we may never glimpse the unknowable, In darkness or beyond. No, I don't have a place where those fears can lie, So you'll see them time to time.
4.
If you don't like how you look, you don't have to look There are no mirrors if you keep your head down You see, I keep conversational with the cat Or at least a check-in when no one's listening She says, "I'll tell you how this place really works - The world gets smaller as you get older, and Gravity doubles when the days get dark enough, And you're feeling heavy with the lights out" So I listen from the floor, Gone is any past grandeur And all those years, they pour ashore Where I'd felt a failure before The words embedded in the hallway of my mind Like a post-it note found in a friend's apartment Said, "You can run nearly til your legs fall off, But what you run from will stay right behind you. You can drink, smoke, or medicate thoughts away, But they're still waiting, sharpening their teeth" so, If you can’t stand your own voice you don't have to sing. There'll be no more sad songs if you won't write them And it's ever-darkening, And the plot gets lost again Under weight, any branch bends, With luck it'll keep from giving in It's kinda strange, but I can't turn the page I'm sure that there's more - Can't imagine it ends mid-sentence But I think
5.
Awake, and feeling bad Toss & turn & drift off, Jolt awake in sweat When you feel your heartbeats over the noise of your thoughts And you just can’t shut them up, The fear can last the night through, laying terrified But there’s nothing I love More than nothing at all So close I felt to death, It kinda warmed me to life - All being relative. Felt my skin melting off from the light of the sun Coming in through the shades It’s the only side effect, but it’s a fucking lot There’s nowhere I’d rather be Than absolutely nowhere So take that pill, or maybe spit it out Try to convince yourself you’ve got it figured out Put it out of your mind - Everyone has their time So climb that wall to see the other side Nearly kill yourself trying to decide Trying to decide where you’ll come down I guess it’s not my day I guess it just hasn’t been For a couple decades or more When the body wants what the mind can’t override And the night takes it’s grip In these familiar haunts where we all come to die - If it starts to feel like home, It’s cuz it’s all that you’ve known I took that pill, it didn’t help a bit I climbed that wall, both sides were shit I put it out of my mind. We’ll find home in time.
6.
Don't mean to let you down and disappoint I get it, I also can't stand my voice Never expected that there'd be a tomorrow, Still caught up on all of my yesterdays Stumble over every stupid thought I gave them words and always spoke them wrong Tied up in silence like some mountain peak, A view I saw one time, but can't seem to find again Got to feeling like a setting sun, Sick of myself and so uniquely dumb, Still tired from being born I'll be like water, taking any shape I'm told Any container, ice tray, rivulet, or bowl No, water doesn't get to choose the path it flows But given time, no one wins cause water works to erode Maybe I'll still be here in the morning Maybe I just need a little time Sorrow's not the simplest thing to hold, though I guess at least it's something I can own
7.
And Yet 02:24
It felt as graceless as the sound of the wind beating flat on the pines As the rains blanket sideways on the window, feeling hopeless inside Oh, it's been a long time A painfully long time It seemed as pointless as have most of my nights tracing maps in a storm You can push against the tide all you want, still asea by the morning Oh, it's a hard wind And you can't avoid it It's just how it is I left here in a dream on the wings of a black crow It flew me to the moon and I looked at the earth below Surprisingly, I could see the window to my room and I thought, "well, fuck" And as aimless as I've ever been, I returned to this bedroom Waking from a fever dream into something so much worse Oh, you'll never know, though, Where all of your years go In a lonely life spent waiting for someone to let you in
8.
Where did all my best years go? When'd I get so old? Dried on the vine You can try to will heartsickness gone, Cure it with a song, Some old tragic tune that goes: "Life is bad, at least it's short" Then repeats in the second verse: Yeah, living's bad, at least it's short I'm still looking for my arc, Some kinda narrative I guess I'm aging like an uncorked wine, Bitter to the taste, And no longer fucks you up The weather's bad and getting worse, I'll wait it out on your front porch No, I can't spend more time inside, Trying to fall asleep or die I'll narrate unreliably The reasons to leave town, Cross country, overseas Everyone here has some kinda dream That takes up so much space, Crowding out what's real Blurry-eyed and left to fate, I’ll chase it down some interstate I may find something of my own, Maybe, through dumb luck, I may not - who can say? Is this a fever dream, or maybe something in between? Is this a burden I can bear? And maybe if someday I end up somehow half ok, I'll hope to God to meet you there
9.
All things aside, I feel fine I guess at least some part of the time Stoned and alone, my eyes reflect on my phone Like a box wine supernova in the sky Of all the lives I could've lived, I somehow ended up stuck with this It's a hall of mirrors and I've lost my way, So many doors and none are unlocked "Sorrow aside, I'm alright," I repeat it to myself day and night But when all that you see is just the shit you can't be, I guess you start to feel like closing your eyes And imagine a welcoming void, The inevitable is hardly a choice With a humbling look in the rear-view At the encroaching fate you'd hoped to avoid It's a thing I drag behind me though, mostly got used to the weight And if I try to make the best of it, if I see the dark abate, No, I'm not exactly built for this, but maybe built to phone it in Every mirror that I walk past, I think "Oh, Christ, not you again" Stammer trying to explain it away And if you can't tell that I'm bluffing, then hey - If it can buy me some time for you to think that I'm fine, I'll keep my panic to myself one more day Well, time makes an ass of us all, It's a remarkably embarrassing crawl Only nature can haunt the ways we wish we could haunt, As we try to will away our own ghosts But all that aside, I feel fine Though at times, I think I'm losing my mind There's not a drug they'd prescribe that's able to override The drive to darkness, to some starless black night And sadness aside, what remains? The intention or the damage sustained? The way the words fall short of their quarry, The way my memory's bound to trap me in time And all the shit I can't explain, it swarms around me in my sleep When you can't make out a single star from the expanse that stretches deep You wonder, in it's enormity, where the meaning actually lies And if there's not a cloud up in my sky, it's cuz I kept them all inside All things aside, though, It's getting late, so, Bullshit aside, friend, I think we know how this ends.
10.
Depressing light in a tragic room What goodness comes is then gone too soon It's as ephemeral and brief as a catalpa's bloom And though I may know my way around, I'm just a tourist in my own town Familiar as it may be, it's sure not home No, I'm not sure what it wants from me Other than something that I can't be I'm too old to die too young, though I’m too young to stay So you can go out and have a beer, Get in your car and just disappear Like a ghost that haunts this dump but knows to not stick around Spent a couple years sober, I'm glad that that's over, I finally feel more like myself Cause being cloudy of mind helps the darkness pass by, You might even mistake it for light Whiskey away the boredom, the pain I've got a date with disaster, she haunts me at every turn She'll fuck me up, then unfuck me up She never turns off the lights when she leaves, & the door's left ajar
11.
All these drastic swings in weather Come on so sudden, so extreme You recollect sunstroke or deep-freeze, But I remember in between: Those fragile moments In nature's balance Seem to foretell the unknown Looks like we're in for some New kinda darkness that Might not let up, might stick around Some clouds won't burn off in the sunlight, Sometimes they linger, undefined They might connect with something bigger, The universal - something real By mid-October I hoped The sky would open at last The rain would beat on my windows With luck, I'll sleep through it Through late November or til Maybe October again I've waited so long and hoped against hope To glimpse the other side I tried to find warmth amid nosebleed cold But i only saw the ice The thaw's coming in time, And may rain wash away The burrows we hid among Like lightning alight, A dust or a droplet, In bloom or a swift decline What the fuck happened here? Intentions missed by a mile. Where is our gentler world? If clouds won't break or move, The rain'll blanket down, I'll be the dam that gives way If I can't run from it, I'll be the town down below, Make peace, goodbye, see you soon I know someday will come, But this time I lived through it Though I keep thinking I won't
12.
For Luna 02:10
Water Street, 3 am, my mind adrift again I’d like to write a perfect line, to leave some permanence behind, To try to right all vaguely wrong from the shelter of a song And end it on a perfect thought - It may be this, but likely not.

about

In the months between wrapping up production on the first album and it eventually reaching the public, Pierce quickly began thinking about the follow-up. The reignition of a long-dormant interest in poetry brought a closer focus on lyricism and a deeper consideration of what the words were trying to express. The themes of isolation and self-doubt that floated in glistening clouds of reverb on the first album began to sharpen, and the language around these difficult feelings took on a new clarity. Pierce’s songwriting has always held a distant sadness, but with The Late Great Gold Dust, the melancholy cuts through, feels more present and alive within the songs. There’s a muddy narrative arc to these twelve songs, getting more harrowing throughout the album’s second half as screams echo in the void until an exhausted sigh that sounds something like acceptance rises out of the murk. This incremental ramp up from the album’s lighter material to its most depressive follows the same Side A/Side B mapping that made both Neil Young’s On the Beach and Black Flag’s My War different articulations of the same creeping intensity.


The Late Great Gold Dust steps into new dimensions musically as well. Pierce continues the layers of jangle, fuzz, and sunny vocal harmonies that made the first album equal parts tender and strange, but takes new risks with production, texture, and instrumentation. Album opener “Go Gently” erupts with near-metal doominess that fades into gentle folk softness, with layers of acoustic instruments and psychedelic fuzz melting together. “Proof of Life” builds around contemplative dulcimer parts, again stacking its instrumentation in thick layers. Throughout the album groggy synths and scene-setting field recordings work their way into dynamic arrangements that significantly expand Gold Dust’s depth. Pierce played every instrument and sang every vocal on the first album, and while he still handles the lion’s share of the performances here, he brings in several friends to add new angles to the tunes: guest vocals, moody Fender Rhodes, Hammond organ, damaged synth, and J Mascis lending his instantly-recognizable guitar with a “Maggot Brain” level solo on “Larks Swarm a Hawk,” the track that closes out side one. Eloquent weirdo Sean Yeaton of Parquet Courts contributes a short story for the liner notes, narrated from somewhere between the natural world and all the psychedelic computerized kitchens of the future.

credits

released November 4, 2022

Written, performed, recorded, and produced at home in 2021 and 2022 by Stephen Pierce.
Mixed and mastered by Justin Pizzoferrato at Sonelab in Easthampton, 4/2022.
Artwork by Darryl Norsen.
Liner notes by Sean Yeaton.

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Gold Dust Easthampton, Massachusetts

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