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Thaw, Freeze, Thaw

by paper bee

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1.
Tuscon 02:32
the hot night was more thick than I thought and the sea of the sky was the color of my heart and I walked I walked just to be just to walk I feel my legs I feel my thoughts oh they crash up against me like waves on the rocks oh they wrap me in cobwebs and leave me tied up I will walk like I could get lost as if these streets could feel new I will wait for you to call I will wait for this to fall apart
2.
my body is water my body is land where the storms swell at sea and come rolling in my body is jagged cliffs ships cannot land a body of water too frigid to swim it’s not safe in the water but I’m wanted on land as a body for wanting or as one of them make study of wanting claim absence from pain make poems of your body to let yourself in but a body can’t hold a raging wind a body can’t hold the ocean tired hands tangled muscles the cold creeping in through the cracks round the windows as the floor caves in in the woods there was silence where it should not have been a body can’t own the trees and the land I’ll ask the river to make me strong but my fear’s so big how could I be wrong and I know how my joints feel in the cold and the world is too big to hold well the light it dances cross our kitchen floor and the dust pools in the corners of the room and your hands are made of many shifting shapes I try to track their motion as we speak as if they hold the secrets of your strength and I would memorize you if I could
3.
The Heat 06:01
I’ll pick wild flowers for my love as often as I can in hopes she sees I see she’s wild and beautiful as them it’s hard to see from where we stand anything but an end the howling does come in the heat is wide and the cold is thin the heat of these drives like the heavy breathing of giants maps tangled with wires held taught each year of my life oh there’s nothing like the feeling when you don’t sleep for two nights and your body is a vessel or a beacon in the night for ships to break themselves upon if you can’t keep the light when you give your words so honestly the emptiness ignites till your heart becomes expected and you’re filled with strangers’ desires and we drive the sweet scent of fire oh I wanted it to make me cry it tugs at desires on the sweat of my lover who died it recalls the sinking hollow left when someone leaves your life and I wish to meet it like a dam releasing in the fading light we ran across those rocks like we were running for our lives but when the floodgates opened it was not the river’s full might suspended on those wires I thought I might glimpse something whole but it turns out they were loosely tangled even as time slows but I’ll still try
4.
Thaw 03:31
well the dogs were running and the sinking feeling was all consuming and the tethers binding worth to what we were doing were so frayed and weak already fingers release and it’s a slow unraveling but the cold is less painful than thawing and the ghosts know your name where you’re homecoming and the days you stop longing for dying all collide with the heaviest doom speak my name by the ocean where the wind resounding is deafening oh these pines have known me they are unforgiving but they will hold me I’ll follow your swarm to the swells that meet the shores of the river where we were all children where translucent but strong we are reaching towards the words we are finally knowing so I mouth to the wind I was wrong
5.
To Be Soft 02:57
grew up in the north not the far north but the north enough to know the sting of the wind and the numb of months and months of snow when you go I’ll try not to let myself be all I was there on the stoop in the snow I was there I was there I would sing so I’d know I was there your words are so robotic your eyes want where you didn’t end up you aren’t alone in the night you still love one another you just don’t kiss each other your hands are warm and safe late at night and I wanna love me as I was when I was seventeen when all of the sharp things were pouring into my body when all of the lies that could keep me safe were forged into armor it’s hard to escape and I wanna love you with all of my body but it’s full of defenses they are faster than I am they are so sharp they make me so sharp I am not an ocean I am not jagged cliffs I would be a bird I would be a swarm of bees I would be soft as the soil soft enough to sink into
6.
Mud 04:53
it’s not enough to be soft if you can’t be strong i don’t want to be mud if i let it this pain could be the end of me bubbles floating to the surface as i sleep sink deep i could wallow in my illness till it has all of me or pretend that i can run when i am crawling and this is not what i thought this is not what i thought walk down to the water wherever i am living i will find it it’s not waiting unless there is none flowing i can tell i’m holding my breath if i haven’t found the water when i notice this it shows me if i’m gonna find my way back and so far i have found home in the silence that the water leaves in my thoughts not like all the rest of the time when they swarm and hum and burrow and i’ve found home in assumptions of what people have to hold me found home in misunderstandings of what i am freely giving and i’m not there now move away rebuild your life it’s like when your childhood pets have all died and you know it won’t be the same if you go home oh no it won’t be the same if you go home
7.
My Love Is 02:44
baby I don’t want this space I want you at my side I want you at my side but I need I wanted you like snow wants to cover the trees clinging to your branches till the wind shook me I dreamt we were both standing tall with rustling leaves two amongst a forest snow a blanket at our feet oh it was real we found love it was different from all that i’d felt before but our room was all walls running into themselves cutting every route off I am sunk deep in mud it’s a sinkhole everywhere I try to trust you say you’re not cold just far are we too broken not to break each other’s broken hearts I hold tight onto things I get lost in words and dreams I don’t want you for my everything I want to run with you I want to be nourishing I can’t keep up with you the soil is frozen my love is tangled threads my love is sickening
8.
Love Is Not 04:14
i wanna believe that I deserve the kind of love that doesn’t always hurt and I wanna believe that I can hold something fragile in my hands and I wanna believe that your grip on me wasn’t meant to crush anything and I wanna believe that the cold I felt was the distance like you said and I know home is not to be called upon and I know it’s not as simple as deserving or belonging I know love can’t heal it all and I love you doesn’t strengthen when you say it every hour every day when you wish on every eyelash every 11:11 that someone will just be ok I dreamt that you died so many nights and the loss followed me through so many days i was so sure that it would be the way that the power of my love for you would betray me till i woke up with so much chipped away by the smallest of chisels resentment rusting me away pack it away if it interferes with the story of what this should feel like show my friends what this should look like till it is bursting out of every seam of my body I am sick all the time cry for you I’m sick all the time you think I’m weak but I’m holding this storm and it’s heavier than anything I’m so mixed up you are always right putting me down what does it strengthen i’ve never cried as much as this year love isn’t all about power baby I’m not the snow and you’re not the leaves pain flows with love when we’re to shattered to do more than breathe I’m trying to think that there’s more there for us to be but I know I can’t be much if who I love does not believe in me
9.
i am full of bugs swarming up and out of me cause it smells like fall the air smells like fall i can feel words like arms wrapping around me telling me i won’t be lonely but I haven’t really felt lonely since i left you made me feel things much worse than loneliness breaking trust is one thing when you never really had it you’re like me how could you do this to me? now I don’t talk to you and I don’t get to see you i’ve got me
10.
Mine 03:23
I am not breathing easy I have not been sleeping easy nothing is easy nothing is easy I have got warmth under my skin i am a fire fed by this wind i have my hunger and my hands oh how the howling does come in i would like to be wrong oh tell me I’m wrong and not forgiven I want to be at fault control I want to be wrong and strong and changing if i make it all my fault will I eventually get to go home if i accept it as not my own how will i ever call anything home i wasn’t enough I’m never enough at least it felt that way i can’t be enough that’s not how it works but it still felt like failing at being a dam between you and everything you’d never say and now that it’s said i never was there I was gone
11.
What's Left 02:22
let it go and then there’s a hollow place rustling leaves and debris that she left in me open the window if you want to you don’t have to my heart will never again fly as swift as it did towards her beacon never oh no mistake for love a heaping on of heavy words words drenched in honey dripping and sticky words made of rope vines thick with thorns where did I go where did I go now is this home now that I know what is not love what is not home
12.
Like Oceans 04:04
off the coast waves are swelling oh the tension of them rippling like muscles can’t come home without breaking when they reach you break against you foam engulfs you oh you stay in the water longer than me oh you are of the sea I am the soil but you could crash onto me it’s ok you go rushing out just come back again please oh we have been broken but baby we move carefully I wanna be there and see how your shards they are shimmering I won’t tell you that I’m not scared of all the sharp things we are carrying but I’ll tend this love carefully from my room in the city all the cars are the ocean from your room where your staying can you hear them like oceans? i can hear the dogs barking on the phone when you call me every sound is a tunnel when you’re made out of fragments like the dogs in the backyard like the dogs in my old dreams when we sleep in the same bed sometimes I still wear headphones presence is a slow process but i’m learning i’ll meet you somewhere warmer I’ll come meet you wherever
13.
my body is written as tragedy but i’m not trying to do that anymore I’m trying not to do that anymore what if we deserve to feel joy what does it really mean to ask for more leaving all of our clothes on the shore letting go of tragic metaphors where changing is to lose something and i don’t want to make choices out of fear to become the foam on the waves to walk every step upon glass to be my own man who saves me this story is not about me i will always find a way to sing clinging will not stop the changing to move is not the same as to leave
14.
An End 02:46
where do you go if you leave will arms be there to wrap around you hands to form a swarm around the things we tried to help you see stars come out and form the lace above you the grass is wet it cools the heat inside of you that burns when you are reaching to reinforce your armor make it stay is an end severed off cleanly or is it years of backing away flickering lights in the clouds dissipating saying goodbye i hope you can change

about

we recorded most of this at a cabin in rural pa called hinter eche in december of 2020 and then added some bits here and there throughout 2021-22. i did my first shot of testosterone 2 days after we got home from recording. this album is a lot of things for me - its the last documentation of my old singing voice which i loved a lot, a story about love and harm between traumatized trans people, a project that kept me going in 2020, and just some songs that are really fun to play with my friends. i’m pretty sure this is my favorite thing i’ve ever made. I hope you like it too. <3 nick

credits

released May 19, 2023

nick berger - guitar, synth, vocals
anthony richards - drums, guitar
sam cook-parrott - bass, vocals
cherise nystrom - synth, vocals
maryn jones - vocals
kyle gilbride - guitar solos
kate illes - vibe tech
nneka anyaoku - friend of the show

songs by nick berger
recorded and mixed by kyle gilbride
mastered by alex molini
album art by nick berger

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paper bee Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

nick + toni + cherise + sam!

:) :( :) :(

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