Telephone Game notes It could be the heat, except it isn’t—this vicious feeling, this being out of time, this music.  It’s the crack of the cube dropped into whiskey, and the wet glass pressed to your face.  It’s sitting on the porch, watching the grass grow, while the heat lightning dances in the distance.  It’s the stoop, doing idle gossip.  It’s the ache. These songs are born from blown air conditioners; they are scrawled on the hallways of nightclubs; they are the buckled knees and fallen shoulders of resting dancers.  They are young, and they are beautiful.  Their beauty has nothing to do with their youth, though their youth has everything to do with their beauty.  You can hear these songs in the low crackle of the telephone; you can see them through the many eyes of Rumor.  You can hear them in the echo of Sarah Vaughan and Billie; they linger in the sway of Motown.  They are the songs you can ride, right out of the moment. In the studio, in Toronto and New York, these songs were breathed into wires and then pressed into tape.  Sound, vibration, the frisson of air, is fleeting.  It is a ripple across the atmosphere, always outraced by time.  But these songs were snatched out of the air, and when they were pressed into tape, they were made into a thing.  Since these songs are things—molecules, atoms—they have shape and weight.  Time runs up against them and is repelled.  They can be touched.  Touch.  You will see, aha, they’re real. Some of these songs are about falling in love.  Some of them are just about falling, or rising, or suspension, or the wish for suspension.  Some of them are faltering, or halting; all of them are clear.  It’s the clarity of Kate’s voice that makes them so solid.  Her voice is a plane you can stand on. Who hasn’t dreamed of arresting time?  Of turning a vibration into a thing that lasts?  Of putting off spring, of delaying change?  What is love, if not a desire?  A song can be a mooring on the moon-tugged sea. I confess: when I wrote this, I thought of you.  — Louisa Herron Thomas Take Everything Blackout Open Window Take Me With You Who Is Young, Who Is Naïve? If Spring Comes Now Fake ID You Can Have The Sky Our Legs Are Burning We All Fall Down The Actress details Produced by Kate Schutt Kate — electric guitar, vocals Terri Lyne Carrington — drums Orrin Evans — piano Duane Andrews — acoustic guitar Marc Rogers — bass Chris Brown — B3, clavinet, Wurlitzer Damian Erskine — bass on tracks 3, 5 Denis Keldie — accordions on track 5 Andrea Zonn — viola on track 6 Horns arrangement by John Ellis John Ellis — saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet Alan Ferber — trombones Shane Endsley — trumpet, flugelhorn Grégoire Maret — harmonica Background vocals arranged by Sheldon KX Reid The background vocalists are Paris Woods, Candis Joseph, Sheldon KX Reid String arrangement on track 7 by Jeff Louie Jeff Louie — violin Nat Barrett — cello Music by Kate Schutt and Koko Bonaparte Lyrics by Koko Bonaparte and Kate Schutt