We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Keego Harbor

by Matthew Milia

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $7 USD  or more

     

1.
Salad Bars 06:40
Salad bars in this frigid town Where the repo’d cars are blood-red brown October stars flash numbers down for keno Candy corn in an empty cart You still mourn the brand-new start That ended with a broken heart Yeah, we know But somehow it doesn’t make you cry To know the junk mail that you and I Will still receive long after we’ve been long-dead So I stop to give the psoriasis That’s there above your eye a kiss And sip a beer to hear just what this song said No one’s nineteen for very long Everything I mean, I’ve said it wrong So do you see the danger? And don’t you be a stranger Yeah, that’s what your mom said And it broke your heart apart And then it sent you to the start of it again Apartments passed down friend to friend Till you’re standing at the decade’s end With nothing really left to spend but more time You’re in Madison Heights When the morbid fascination bites That’s triggered by the dull lights of some slow climb Not so special after all In the deathlike center of the mall Where the broken skylight sunbeams fall on you I flash to the children’s hospital With the gown and IV that I pull Behind me to the game room draped in blue I never saw that blue so thin I never heard from you again You never knew this all could end, yeah we know Now it’s salad bars in this frigid town Where the repo’d cars are breaking down October stars flash bright as the casino No one’s nineteen for very long Everything I mean, I’ve said it wrong So do you see the danger? And don’t you be a stranger Yeah, that’s what your mom said And it broke your heart apart And then it sent you to the start of it again So do you see the danger? And don’t you be a stranger Yeah, that’s what your mom said And it broke your heart apart And then it sent you to the start of it again
2.
Sunburnt landscapers in the country club gulch The entire spring world smells like wet humans And rotten mulch And the lilacs My done-to-death climax Well, I don’t care They’re all I’ve got there The dumpsters behind the bleak tanning salons The entire spring world is just broken roads and damp coupons In the after-rain The smell that I can’t explain Petrichor mingled in your hair You look so blissfully high After you’ve had yourself A good cry And I know that You are my… Trailing behind the dumb vanity plates Out past the outrageous Bloomfield Hills mansion estates The lunch-timers and sad corporate climbers Are driving home into the hot sun Last night I slept in a hospital recliner Next to your bed and I watched the tubes exit your hand And then I wept alone in a diner And pitifully prayed that you’re not one You look so blissfully high After you’ve had yourself A good cry And I know that You are my… I wanna list of every kid I used to know And their current careers My therapist insists I should let all this go From my formative years But the feral spring softness is swarming the offices Where mutual funds and cummerbunds get rented out The roads are all paralyzed We travel the service drives Searching for the slightest sign that it all might work out We’re just sunburnt landscapers from the trashier towns On the north edge of the county Where the endless love always abounds Where the oil change places And terrified faces Remind me that I’m in my heaven You look so blissfully high After you’ve had yourself A good cry And I know that You are my…
3.
Oh, my friends, what can I say? In some strange year on an even stranger day Well, I guess I’ve had some luck But overall I felt like I’ve been stuck Inside a department store Where no one looked before they locked the door So I’m waiting overnight Consumed by love, just starving for the lightning This soft summer we’ll go find the brightening The sky above some condo lakeshore might bring The great reminder we’ve been looking for Dead streets full of slush Dead friends who eventually lost touch Dream houses you might buy On some part of town you deliberately drive by Small talk just burns my ears A solo walk across town turns my gears Back to a hopeful mode If I don’t bust it I just might explode, dear Thirty slushy lifetimes flush my right ear Where I just sneeze some antifreeze and light beer But I got reason to believe by next year On a long drive home down Woodward we’ll be free Kids in a backyard ravine Clinton Watershed snow, cold and clean Trace a trail back to the fridge From Krogers through misnomers like Quail Ridge Middle-class lifetime galore Midnight run to your sacred party store Best case scenario A hidden paradise where we can go A subdivision full of friends The sun sets low but the feeling never ends Yeah, and something’s gotta shake eventually I know that, but who can wait a lifetime to break free? It’s all black The sky above some condo lakeshore swallows Pontiac The pre-storm song of sweetness sung for me
4.
Small donations From alumni this fall Should cover the celebrations In some suburban banquet hall As Lions traffic Darting north at dusk They leave town lickety-split While you and me Pass every SUV And head back into the thick of it Nobody acts like they know it I can’t relax till I show it There’s a funny feeling back this fall 31 cyclical flavors On your tongue as this season quavers You’re the one who smells like rain And something I can’t verbalize at all Me and my sweetheart Unstoppable We were born in the same hospital About four years apart Brought back to modest homes In the shadows of the soccer domes Our mothers clung to cordless phones As the summers all began to drone by Five accountants Four in real estate High school friends at their wits’ ends With reason to anticipate Some cataclysm That’s slowly creeping down Every year they smell that fear Just trickle in Like a fickle wind And spread its deadliness around this whole town But me and my sweetheart Unstoppable We were born in the same hospital About four years apart Brought back to modest homes In the shadows of the soccer domes Our mothers clung to cordless phones As the summers all began to drone by Known as the flirty one I met you, I was thirty-one I just stood around and hoped that you would notice Figured I had given up Like people who smoke with the windows up In their Tauruses singing choruses so hopeless In love with the crooked tooth Where the snow boot hit you in your youth In this endless grid Where the springtime hid like crocus We’ll drive out to Bloomfield Hills Laugh at the size of the utility bills As the futility spills and I’ve lost all my focus It doesn’t have to feel that way We’ll find the place where the good things stay When the Dairy Queen of the quarantine reopens Nobody acts like they know it I can’t relax till I show it There’s a funny feeling back this fall 31 cyclical flavors On your tongue as this season quavers You’re the one who smells like rain And something I can’t verbalize at all Me and my sweetheart Unstoppable We were born in the same hospital About four years apart Brought back to modest homes In the shadows of the soccer domes Our mothers clung to cordless phones As the summers all began to drone by
5.
I can’t believe how reluctant the warmth has been As we wait And the shitty cars that jumped the gun They blast their stereos till the windows shake With the sound Yesterday you and me drove out to the place Where the sun Shoots down from outer space And shines off everyone standing there Dumbfounded in drive-thru lanes Or the hospital parking lot On the brink of Pontiac Well, I still remember how it used to be When the world was still young It broke in the morning It settled in the dusk With the taste of metal on its tongue I buried an old lifetime in the off-ramp’s fresh overgrowth mess Where blue jays and cardinals and starlings and darlings of the scene obsolesce As the night shuts down all the big-box stores open up for the day As the day wears on all the traffic lights dangle and blink their lives away We’re dumbfounded in a set of clothes That were bought years ago From some bargain bin That our grandmother’s knew before they’d go home I still remember how it used to be When the world was still young It woke in the morning It settled in the dusk With the taste of metal on its tongue
6.
I shaved my face this morning For a laugh Oh, I’d shave the past three years If I didn’t think that they’d grow back I saw your face this afternoon on someone’s phone The look upon your eyes was just an endless dial tone And I’m the one calling To say that I am falling Faster than the masterplan did anticipate Yesterday morning I woke up to find Your little warning about leaving things behind Without ever really knowing what they’re worth And I’ve been leaving things Far behind All around this earth We could be so fine But I don’t wanna make you Toe the broken line No, I just wanna take you there Into the sunshine Of autumn America Will I return to Keego Harbor Where I am from? When turning 31 has got me feeling kind of dumb But then it won’t be long before I’m 32 Flirting at the bar-and-grill With Jill and her tattoo That says “I’m sorry” And I’ll be sorry, too And look around All over town For any glimpse of you Yesterday morning I woke up to find Your little warning about leaving things behind Without ever really knowing what they’re worth And I’ve been leaving things Far behind All around this earth We could be so fine But I don’t wanna make you Toe the broken line No, I just wanna take you there Into the sunshine Of autumn America Autumn America, autumn America Autumn America, autumn America, autumn America Autumn America, autumn America, autumn America Autumn America, autumn America, autumn America Autumn America, autumn America, autumn America Autumn America, autumn America, autumn America Autumn America
7.
Snowflakes big as bumblebees McMansions through the twilight trees The sterile solace hibernating there The weekend comes, we’ll have some fun I feel so bad for anyone Divorced from that sweet force That made them care And I haven’t heard you laugh in a long time Haven’t heard you laugh in a long time Haven’t heard you laugh in a long time Haven’t heard you laugh in a long time A secret sorrow fills the yard And all along the boulevard Buses growling northward to our home The lilacs bloom and I’ll be there A bathroom where the light’s so rare Streaking in a childhood monochrome And I haven’t heard you laugh in a long time Haven’t heard you laugh in a long time Haven’t heard you laugh in a long time Haven’t heard you laugh in a long time Everyone that you know Has got a reason to Hold onto the flow That sent them into The present tense is full of recompense and wonder It’ll level out just like a shout blends into thunder We’ll drive up Adams Road until the wheels fall off and I just Haven’t heard you laugh in a long time Haven’t heard you laugh in a long time Haven’t heard you laugh in a long time Haven’t heard you laugh in a long time Snowflakes big as bumblebees McMansions through the twilight trees The sterile solace hibernating there
8.
The Hail Mary you sent me Was a full week tardy I just wanna be the cigarette you sneak Outside your family Thanksgiving party And the resentment’s grown larger It’s fully juiced on your forgotten phone charger That’s still plugged in beneath my bedside table It channels something I’m unable to label And when I go out walking And the dusk sounds like my past lives are talking I don’t wanna see the sun I don’t wanna see anyone What remains now But inherited cars And the stars’ smoky evacuation? If you tried to abduct me I’d make it back To sleep in the black high school tomb Time can’t corrupt the immaculate lack That’s left there in the back bedroom Or steal the feel that’s ours As the dusk shadows Straddle the bars Of our inherited cars You eyeball yourself in the gas station mirror And set off the auto hand dryer You can’t recognize your face But you recognize the fear That you might be a compulsive liar You drive past the complex Where your grandparents answered the phone At the end of their days You’ve lost any context For the world that was transferred To you in the subtlest ways What remains now But inherited cars And the stars’ smoky evacuation? If you tried to abduct me I’d make it back To sleep in the black high school tomb Time can’t corrupt the miraculous lack That’s left there in the back bedroom Or steal the feel that’s ours As the dusk shadows Straddle the bars Of our inherited cars
9.
You called me up You said, “Are you still alive?” I said I’d just been sitting in my bed at night And listening to I-75 The motorcycles are very loud I wish I had something to advertise Of which I was half as proud September’s landed And soon the leaves’ll land, too Maybe we’ll rake a pile And I’ll fall in right after you You can try to clarify each moment you’ve spent As the suburban Detroit fall spills out your ears It reminds me of the backyard set on Home Improvement Although I’ve lived her firsthand 30 years Your mother called me She said she didn’t know where you’d been I said the last time that I’d seen you Was at the Franklin Cider Mill when You looked up at the sky And said it was similarly hued As the night that your grandma died And you family ate Chinese food I had that dream again With the vicious ex-lovers With suspicious motives As they hid there beneath your covers A childhood friend’s dad started a talent agency They tried to throw me some voiceover work selling shoes But maybe on account of my midwestern nasality I was unable to give them anything they could use Pour the lakes of coffee that I drank When I die, into the tank Of desperate daily perseverance If you’re able to get the clearance I want death by morning breath And a rerun of our chats As the world wakes in the pre-dawn And checks their social media stats Somewhere it is always almost Halloween Somewhere you are always almost turning 17 The solitary moment’s all I’m endlessly defending I’m stuck inside forever and it’s never not endlessly ending
10.
Keego Harbor 05:03
Someday I think I’ll move back to Keego Harbor Rent an upstairs room where the pear trees bloom for the barber That I used to see Since the age of three In Keego Harbor My parents met in a bar in Keego Harbor And the video store isn’t there anymore by the water Of Dollar Lake Where there’s so much at stake In Keego Harbor Maybe I would get a shift Working at that all-night gift shop at the hospital Where the brink of luxury Meets the stink of drudgery I’ll find a place where it’s all possible In Keego Harbor it’s all possible In the first part of life you just let in the light And you loop it like a DVD menu And some day in your 30s all your colors lose their bite And you can’t change the channel now, can you? So you just re-sign the lease in perpetuity You can do your grocery shopping in a blindfold with acuity And you still feel the magic in the parking lot at dusk Though it’s getting kind of hard to say What year it is But I kept the sacred place safe inside of me I kept it safe through all the foreign things I tried to be Like the robin’s nest nestled in the letter C In the mini-mall sign for Nail City Where Orchard Lake bends and the trailer park ends And your affluent friend’s dad had offices Where no one else could know the esoteric way to glow With the late fall chemical processes And our uncles, they were all in their mid-thirties once They’d drop by to check our height charts every couple months We slowly outgrew everything that we knew Till we stood inside a world that looked so odd to us Keego Harbor waits for me The inland lakes and rusting phone lines lead To disintegrating subdivisions Where your parents wait out winter At the center of your little world The world is falling all to pieces June implodes and then releases Sports arenas from our childhoods Someday I think I’ll move back to Keego Harbor Rent an upstairs room where the pear trees bloom for the barber Though they smell like death It’s the sweetest breath In Keego Harbor Someday I think I’ll move back to Keego Harbor ‘Cause keeping alive’s hard But giving up’s even harder And I’m not ready to die I’ll just go simplify In Keego Harbor

about

✭✭✭ORDER LP/CD/PHOTO BOOK✭✭✭
↓↓↓↓↓
stores.portmerch.com/matthewmilia

All songs written by Matthew Milia (Milia Songs, BMI)

Produced by Matthew Milia & Ben Collins in Michigan

Engineered by Ben Collins

Mastered by Jeff Lipton and Maria Rice at Peerless Mastering, Boston, MA

Matthew Milia - lead and harmony vocals, acoustic and electric guitar, 12-string guitar, bass guitar, harmonica, mellotron, Fender Rhodes, Hammond organ

Ben Collins - drums, harmony vocals, bass guitar, electric guitar, 12-string guitar, tambourine, shaker, jingle bells, glockenspiel, Hammond organ, electric piano, Farfisa

Lauren Milia - harmony vocals

Pete Ballard - pedal steel guitar

Ryan Hay - piano

credits

released July 16, 2021

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Matthew Milia Detroit, Michigan

Matthew Milia is a critically acclaimed songwriter, best known as the lead singer and guitarist for Frontier Ruckus. Celebrated for his obsession for memory, domestic minutiae, suburban redundancy, and the fragility of family dynamics, Milia has written over 100 songs constructing an intricate personal mythology based in his lifelong home of Detroit, Michigan. ... more

contact / help

Contact Matthew Milia

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Matthew Milia, you may also like: