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Suffer Well

by Simon van Gend Band

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1.
I sold my meanest face and all the wasted time for bags of nothing I love the way you fold your grace and lay the roast deep in the oven And don’t be such a ghost who coasts alone and lost from all my loving It only takes a wish or two at most to push you back to buzzing Each day I wake amazed at what my mind has raised in lazy dreaming It casts a frazzled light across the day and colours it with feeling I didn’t mean to fall away from all your silver starlight streaming But it only takes a wish or two at most to push me back to beaming Chorus: Like little fleas we ride on the back of a dog And the dog’s chasing a bird who’s chasing the sun And the sun is sinking down down down Even the one who rules the world Is only a speck on a tiny rock Near a tiny star on the edge of a galaxy that’s one of billions and billions and billions And far along the road where love has gone you’ll see a thin man plodding And where his horses felt they’d had enough and fell you’ll find him flogging The thinnest wedge of fear can take you far from here and leave you longing But it only takes a wish or two at most to push you back to belonging Chorus It doesn’t matter how you feel about what you’ve done right or wrong Or what you said to whom and when Cause at the end of every day the sun still goes down down down
2.
Vitamin X 03:45
I’ve got a million nerves Serving me up what I deserve You swerve right and I swerve left I spin round at your behest And all the things I could’ve said Read like books inside my head Don’t you love the way I sway Seasick starbound sail away Chorus: Vitamin A I love the way You help me see the light of day Vitamin C up in the tree We love the fruit that grows for free Vitamin D the yellow sun Shining down on everyone Still I feel a little perplexed Think I might need a little Vitamin X Causes great and causes small Give me pause and make me stall Kick me loose to free the next From what has not happened yet Juggle me up and juggle me down Coddle me deep in your eiderdown Spare a thought for the big idea That won’t let any feelings near Chorus Some days I couldn’t give a hoot Pull myself up by the roots Fling myself across the day I don’t mind the things I say But sometimes everything grinds back in I get lost in wondering Who’s to crawl and who’s to fly? Who’s to laugh and who’s to cry? Chorus
3.
Nobody Knows 03:15
I don’t know why I get to feeling empty When I’m surrounded by things I keep to make my life full And I don’t know why I get to feeling lonely When I’m surrounded by people that push and that pull And I don’t know why I swear in the traffic When most of the time I’m gentle and kind And I don’t know why I get lost in the attic With the whole house full of treasures to find Chorus: Nobody knows, but everyone loves To suppose that they know, but nobody does All of our thoughts and all of our wisdom Are just to give us comfort as we stumble through the dark morass And I don’t know why I keep asking these questions When I know that the answers are not in my mind And I don’t know why I’m constantly trying To fix myself when I know that I’m perfectly fine And I don’t know why I’m constantly thinking About what I’m thinking and then about that And I don’t know why I’m always striving When I know what I want comes when I relax Chorus And now we’ve got if figured out that the Earth goes round the sun But no-one really understands why The Universe from nothing burst and sprayed the sky with a billion suns Sometimes I think I’ve figured out something The reason behind all this discomfort I’m in And then for a while you’ll see my mood brighten But soon the confusion takes over again Newton and Darwin made everything clearer And everything seemed to make sense for a while But Heisenberg threw us back into wonder At Schroedinger’s mystical Cheschire Cat smile Chorus … and through the thickest jungle hack and on and on into the black
4.
Watermelons 04:20
All I ever do is think about what’s to come And how it’s gonna be when my work is done And all the joy I’m gonna feel when obstacles are overcome No matter where or when or who I’m with I’m always waiting for a bigger fish And all my hopes are mixed up in this myth that the best is yet to come Chorus: This is the time, this is the place Let the juice run down your face It’s time to bring the watermelons in All your wealth don’t leave it on the shelf Help yourself to all that the moment brings How long you gonna sit around and wait For bigger fish to bite upon your bait, For some sweet magical idea to wake you up to really being here? Happiness is just over the hill But over that one there’s another still And even when you’ve reached the peak I bet that you will still find more to seek Chorus The urge to run from what’s inside of me Keeps me trapped inside the yet to be And like a stone I skip along the surface of the ocean that is me Slowly I am learning how to sink Beneath the layers of the thoughts I think Into the world of what I feel where there’s a chance to make the moment real Chorus
5.
Google Song 04:25
No wonder I’m nervous Google took a photo of the bushes outside my home Are they here to serve us Or sell us the illusion that we’re never gonna be alone? Don’t you know the feeling hunting for the next thing Fill up the space left by the last thing? Everyone a piston pumping in the engine What we really feel there’s no time to mention Chorus: And all this information doesn’t seem to change the way I feel And everything we share is haunted by things we can’t reveal Am I awake or half asleep and how much of this do I keep? Am I a sheep that’s herded on by the need to belong? But I love it, I’m hooked in A couple more clicks and I gain another juicy fact, But I don’t gain much wisdom And the hours that I’ve wasted are never coming back Everything I want is somewhere on the network If anything is broken soon I’m an expert Jumping to the sound of a new notification Swimming in a sea of surplus information Chorus Totally beguiled I’m strung along for miles and miles And I’ll do anything to hide the fact I’m broken up inside And I waste hours I can’t afford just to pretend that I’m not bored And I feel like I’m at the end, though I just gained another friend I’m somehow still lonely Even though I’ve got about a gigabyte of facebook friends But none of them phones me To tell me how they feel about the way we all pretend Just the other day my internet was broken Could not believe the fear that was awoken Stumbled round the house bumping into feelings Fearful of the hush and what it was revealing Chorus
6.
Be My Echo 04:25
Help me to find a way to stay soft in all this hardness My skin is starting to grow so tough, in all this heartlessness Chorus: Be my echo I’ll be your echo too Two sounds colliding and rebounding in the blue Help me remember my reasons to smile in all this sadness Give me a place to unload my tears, when the world is cold Chorus Somehow I keep on rolling forward through my days And though sometimes I stumble, still I find my way Somehow I keep on finding colours in my grey And though I sometimes mumble, still I find the words to say Help me to weather my dangerous moods and help me move through This string of tiny courageous moves connecting me to you Chorus
7.
Something inside of me is calling, me imploring me to come on home from the war They’re searching the hills and forests and the fields for the guy who won’t fight any more Something is shaking me awaking me and making me believe in my freedom to be At home in the ups and downs as I’m rolling and I’m coasting down from the highlands to the sea And what I got’s enough for me And there’s peace in the lands for as far as my eyes can see The sun is shining on my window sill Talk to me about the ordinary love That requires no special skill Just an opening and a letting it run in until you’re full No special force of will Just a small, soft animal Sooner or later gonna get the renovator to pull down these crumbling walls Feel that sunshine spill into spaces where before there was no light at all Under the moon I’ve been asleep in my cocoon but now I’m spreading my wings in the light Soon I’ll rise gonna head into the sky with a song in my head and a feeling that everything’s gonna be alright cos what I got’s enough for me And there’s peace in the lands for as far as my eyes can see The sun is shining on my window sill Talk to me about the ordinary love That requires no special skill Just an opening and a letting it run in until you’re full No special force of will Just a small, soft animal There’s something in a mammal that seeks out the warmth of another And the child will dig a tunnel for miles to get back to the mother It’s the thing that makes a stranger change into a brother and sometimes if you’re lucky it’ll turn a stranger into a lover Can you feel now the moon is full? Help yourself to all the dreams you find scattered among the moonbeams No special force of will Just a small, soft animal
8.
Slow Down 03:24
I don’t know where to begin To weed out the ailing within Deadly and even it flows Pulling me down as it goes But then I slow down, and I see you Despite all my fear you have always been there And you slow down, and you see me Through the fear Under the evening sky I kiss all my troubles goodbye I rise to the smell of the wind and cover the tracks of my sins And then I slow down, and I see you Despite all my fear you have always been there And you slow down, and you see me Through the fear It’s easier playing this game Believing we are what we claim Promoting ourselves up the chain Waxing ourselves as we wane Then I slow down, and I see you Despite all my fear you have always been there And you slow down, and you see me Through the fear
9.
Suffer Well 05:26
Muhammad Ali stung like a bee But said he couldn’t stand the training But he swallowed the pain, ’cause he wanted to gain All the things he wound up gaining And Dostoyevsky said this about those With hearts that love and with minds that know The bigger you are and the more that you care The greater the pain you’ll have to bear Chorus: And each of us must learn in our own way To silently relate To everything we hate ’Cause sure enough for everyone The time will come For suffering to be done And when it casts its spell I hope you suffer well Keats said this and I agree That all this pain is necessary Like squeezing diamonds out of coal It turns a mind into a soul and Nietsche’s life was strange and dark But what he said was on the mark That we’ll survive our suffering By learning to see what it means Chorus Now I’m not saying you’ve got to bottle it in Sometimes it’s good to offload on your friends But everyone has problems of their own And mostly we must face them all alone Chorus
10.
Anxiety 04:14
I did all I could do To be like the wind To blow a hole in the heart of all that Makes me think I’ve sinned I’ve lived deep in the wrong I took all I could take I never thought I’d be naked baking Shame deep in the cake Hurt left an echo in my brain Sweet watermelon summer stain Chorus Tiny worries bloom inside of me I lie awake and watch the coastguard lying lost at sea If you find her send her back to me I couldn’t see her through these layers of anxiety I never wanted a lot Just the freedom to feel To let the love of a summer evening Fill me with its zeal To stand proud in the world To laugh hard at the fear To catapult my emotions far and Wide and high an clear Hurt wove an aching in my bones Those tiny lines drew me alone Chorus It’s not easy to see Back to when it began I try so hard to remember but I Can’t see who I am I try so hard to be cool To be easy and free To be the kind of compadre that might Bring her back to me Hurt left it’s patterns on my soul These things are way /beyond control Chorus
11.
Everything is jumping at me All the colours thrive in the sun Every little scent’s alive now Coffee grounds and cinnamon buns Suddenly the thoughts I’m thinking Seem to me to be wise or profound All the girls in the supermarket Seem to be happy I’m around Chorus: After therapy and sometimes when I’ve been crying or thinking I might be in love I get a little taste of freedom, just enough to make it clear that all I have here might just be enough Everything that just this morning Seemed to be a minor tragedy Seems a part of some great story Or a theme in some great symphony The music I hear while I drive Touches some forgotten part of me My ipod can do no wrong Tingling all down my vertebrae Chorus Too bad the feelings crest For just a while a day at best And then my sorry life meanders slowly on But slowly there’s a deepening A shifting and a sweetening A creeping in to where I might belong Kettle’s on the kitchen is calm I settle into my dreamiest thoughts Not afraid of things that only Yesterday were anxious and fraught Every chord on my guitar now Stirring up a richness in me I could strum these chords for hours Resonating all I can be Chorus
12.
I pass the bergie on the street his lowdown luck just triggers my conceit The love I got that fed me up and filled my life with all I proudly bleat I feel so elite But deep inside the unnamed dread The heebie jeebies spinning in my head What you got to do that for Remind me just how thin the love is spread? Chorus: Everything I ever get done And everything I’ll ever do All the little glories that I’ve won And everyone I’ve tried to screw It’s all because I’m terrified Of the big fat nothing I see a girl she makes me hot I try to find a way to make her feel the love I’ve got But before I find the words to speak the fear steps in and ties my tongue in knots And the bubble pops And oh to think that maybe she Wanted that thing just as much as me Seems the fear of falling down Trips me up and send me to my knees Chorus The bleakest fears are stirred in me by angels carved in stone in cemeteries Already as a child I knew that someday all I was would cease to be And that the warmth would freeze So here I sit, writing a song Hoping it will somehow make me strong Fleshing out the empty space Trying to make some love out of an ache Chorus
13.
Waking at dawn, packing the gear September tour, a nip in the air Stop at the toll, digging for change Snowy Cape-fold mountain range Got to be quick, so far to go A 12-hour drive to our first show Do you remember the Laingsburg flood? This whole town was buried in mud Chorus Bottled in a Scenic like a bullet on the big road We got a chicken in a bag and bottle of flat Coke When the feelings are bad and the car’s too small We find a way to laugh at it all (My mistake oh come let’s shake your point of view’s the one I’ll take) Back in the car, feeling the vibe Last night’s crowd was a long-lost tribe Looping around the back of the ’Burg So many trucks headed for Durbs We’re gonna be late, what’s the name of this town? Dammit the map was upside down Finally there, minutes to spare Feel the love in the festival air Chorus (Sorry man didn’t mean to flip it’s not important please pass the chips) We while away the hours on the road Telling ourselves stories that we’ve never told Each of us carrying our load Of untold stories We learned our lesson leaving KZN We went straight instead of turning when The N2 forked, so much stress Next time use the GPS The East Cape stretch was a hell of a drive Dodging cows in the old Transkei Eric told us about the day He arrived from France and kissed the clay Chorus (Sorry guys I apologise, hey, check the moon starting to rise)
14.
Lightly aching I wake and I screw my head on And I stretch out my feelings and push myself along With my feet in the shallows of shadowy dreams I go into the kitchen to plot and to scheme Chorus: Philosophy, all I ask for’s a raft for these days on the ocean alone Apostrophes are all I have now for words like ‘I love you’ and ‘honey I’m home’ Absolution and blame, meerkat and cobra inside me I hope that if I call it names, my bad self will no longer abide me Lightly aching I wake and I take on the day And I plug in, I switch on and I plug away Feeling overly worked, feeling underly paid I live for the moment when I hit the hay Chorus Lightly aching I wake and I make up my mind Not to let you negate all the things that I find In the streets where I wander and work to be kind Always watching my back should you sneak up behind I hate you now, the way you keep popping into the movie that plays in my head Please take a bow and exit the stage, the shows over, the actors have all gone to bed Chorus

about

The fruit of Simon's year-long "Song a Week" challenge, where he wrote 52 songs in 52 weeks. This album is made up of the 14 best of those songs.

credits

released September 3, 2015

lovingly created by www.darkpopchris.com
all songs written by simon van gend
arranged by simon van gend, ross campbell and chris tuck
simon van gend – guitar and vocals
ross campbell – drums, backing vocals
christopher tuck – electric guitar, keys and electronica, backing vocals
(tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10)
eric michot – bass, backing vocals (tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 12, 13, 14)
brydon bolton – double bass (tracks 6, 7, 9, 11, 12)
gene kierman – guitar, french horn, backing vocals (tracks 2, 4, 7, 10, 14)
frances kierman – backing vocals (tracks 7, 10, 11, 14)
proudly recorded on TUL microphones
album artwork by sanet stegmann
special thanks to zanri kritzinger for getting all our ducks in a row

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Simon van Gend Band Cape Town, South Africa

Simon and the Band à Parte are an introspective indie/folk/rock band from Cape Town, whose music has been described as a unique blend of folksie foot-tapping red wine fireside poetry. This trio, with Simon on vocals and acoustic guitar, Eric Michot on bass and Ross Campbell on drums, has released 3 albums to date, with a 4th due to be released on 30th June this year. ... more

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