Ryan Pink writes like he's just come back from a near death experience. Many of these songs are filled with a quiet desperation over some introspective awakening about his mortality; and nonetheless they're comforting. His voice is somewhere between Leonard Cohen and Paul Simon on the emotional richter scale and it calms and soothes and sedates.
Mostly acoustic or piano, with wonderful harmonies and a perfect pace; Ryan's music is good to chill out to and reflect on the past, present and the unknowable future. If we all embraced that notion, we'd have little reason to disagree.
In addition to his heartfelt songwriting; Ryan Pink is a poet.
Fishhook
It was years ago.
I mean,
we were just
kids,
back then.
We were
just kids.
But Jesus!
There was a tartan sweater involved,
lipstick,
a half pint of rum
and a job at a gas station that
didn’t
quite
fit.
Life was in the works.
The letters were unexpected,
long and narrow and full of million dollar
community college words,
as if she had a mind she could recognize
but not quite grasp.
They came in the summertime,
rode in like paper airplanes;
maybe two, maybe three,
before I had a chance
to respond.
She said she liked the way I had looked,
in that tartan sweater,
all foggy and lost,
not quite an impression.
She said she thought of California sometimes,
or New York,
and she claimed she’d be able
to love all the men in her life,
if she only had the secret, if she could only learn
to keep a thing beautiful
after it dried.
I wrote back that the dust
was bad where I lived. The city sagged
like dead wheat and the
people… the people all crouched along
the sidewalk,
their eyes focused and firm,
steady on the ground.
I told her about Kenny
and what had happened in the war. She wrote back
that the man I described
seemed like a stranger. She wanted to know
why I was there. What good was that city?
How come I didn’t have a woman
and what did I do with those years
anyway?
I stopped writing her
sometime after I met her. I owned
two tartan sweaters,
both different from the other,
and I wore the one
that I never
really
liked.
She said it was just like the sweater
I was wearing
when she...
- Ryan Pink
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Ryan Pink - Miller Was A Liar