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War Within

by Tender Mercy

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1.
The Key 03:36
How long have you been trapped How tight are the cuffs Are you eating enough Don't throw away the key You locked the door And set the alarm You locked the door To keep us from harm Don't throw away the key
2.
They've got you surrounded But your not coming out They've circled the wagons Still trying to figure you out The war within They've got you surrounded Waiting for your demands They've staked out your getaway But your not going anywhere The war within Your not gonna win
3.
Reveal 02:51
Every time you try to conceal It just comes right out with the whole deal There's no hiding it when you can squeal You reveal Why bother tucking it away These secrets only go one way No point in keeping it to yourself When you can tell everybody else You reveal
4.
I used to stand in your shadow I used to be such a flower I used to know what you were after But now it's all a riddle I used to cower in fear Waiting for your mood to clear I used to know what you were after But now it's all a riddle
5.
Footsteps over your shoulder Movement in the shadows I'm being followed Car parked down the block No headlights now moving slow I'm being followed
6.
The Road 04:01
There's a road You can take or ignore At your own peril or failure Or you can stand To the side let it all go by Or you can stand to the side Play it safe shield your eyes Which road High or low Which road Are you going to follow
7.
Grave 05:02
It's your grave You found your final resting place You dug the hole as deep as you could Then climb inside as often as you should It's your grave Here comes the dawn Tell us what whats gone wrong Here comes the day So shows us your wicked way It's your grave don't make it any place you want to stay
8.
Once Again 03:42
We stomp on each others hopes and dreams And then take turns Licking each others wounds So they will heal real soon And we can start again
9.
Problem 03:31
I don't know what your problem is But I know that for sure Is it's all your's

credits

released October 17, 2019

Words/Music by Mark Kramer
Produced/Mixed/Mastered by Nick Layman
Recorded June/July/August of 2019 at The Creamery Louisville,KY
Cover design by Ben Traughber
Layout by Dustin Marcum
Recorded under the influence of Johnny Hartman and Lana Del Rey

Special Thanks:
Dustin Marcum
Obsolete Staircases
Nick Layman
Ben Traughber
Sean Padilla
Daisy Caplan/Lung
Tim Anderl
Blake Conley/droneroom
David McDonley/Heritage Print Shop
You


Tender Mercy aka Mark Kramer returns to the world of the recorded with his latest sonar beacon, the Obsolete Staircases released War Within, swiftly on the heels of his split cassette with Bloomington’s own Wintermute and his prior masterpiece Leave Little Room. The album continues the Spartan sonic thread that is at this point the Tender Mercy trademark (T M TM?)- the smallest cluster of notes to imply chord structure and change, canyon wide stretches of reverb, and on the floor of that canyon is Mark’s unaccompanied voice. All of these things are played with a delicate hesitancy, like a secret you are scared to reveal. To be truly vulnerable is often the scariest thing of all, and you can feel Kramer making himself truly vulnerable here. Each move is measured, Kramer choosing his notes and words carefully.
Leave Little Room seemed to speak of consolation and small encouragements (‘Now here you are, ready for it all, ready to stand tall’ went “How You Are”) of understanding. It was a pep talk encouraging one to take stock of their situation and assess what they truly want and need. Leave little room for anything else.
War Within is where he encourages us to move forward. Songs are more pointed and offer less certainty that it’s all going to be ok. He has turned the personal into the political. Whereas before Kramer bemoaned that his tears ‘drowned the whole damn town’ in a show of biblical sympathy, he lets us know now that the time for crying is over. The mourning for where and who we are is passed and it’s time to move forward or be lost forever. In “Grave”, he says you can wallow in your defeats forever or take what you have learned and rise up. And these aren’t as warm of sentiments as before. Given where the zeitgeist has taken us, a soft hand was what we needed to hold us together, but a hard one is what is needed to push us forward and upwards. ‘There is a road you can take or ignore at your own peril or failure’. Kramer isn’t going to make the decision for you and he knows it’s hard to make, but he urges you.
Given the slow and deliberate pace of Tender Mercy’s music, shifts in tonality can feel like noticing changes in glacier formations, but given time and perspective on it all, the change is evident. Kramer’s time to grieve has passed and now he has set himself and us the listeners out to move forward into the world, little room left for what weighs us down, ready to fight the, well, war within.
-Slugger City Sound/Blake Conley

There are all sorts of ways to jam econo – one was embodied by Minutemen, an iconic San Pedro trio whose legacy is still very much alive in spite of lead singer D. Boone untimely death. You can say that Louisville’s Tender Mercy (aka Mark Kramer) also jams econo – the structure of his compositions is skeletal, the songs themselves don’t change all that much from album to album and his sonic palette is minimal (voice + guitar). Yet the overall effect his songs produce is nothing short of stunning (especially in a live setting) and “The Key”, the subject of today’s premiere, serves as another proof that refusal to go along with times is often the best decision an artist can make.
Slow-paced and utterly lonesome (if not downright ominous) sounding, “The Key” might be the last thing anyone would associate with warmth, yet there is something deeply human about the way in which the song conveys feelings of loss/grief/profound sadness. The foreboding/cryptic lyrics complete the picture – sounding as if the narrator is too scared to give away too much for fear it might emotionally damage the listener.
Don’t forget to put on the headphones while listening to this one.
-Ilya Sitnikov/I Heart Noise

Tender Mercy is the recording and performing moniker of Louisville-based singer-songwriter Mark Kramer. With Tender Mercy, Kramer creates a minimalist brand of folk with reverb-drenched atmospherics and thoughtful, engaging and poetic lyrics that blur the lines of slowcore and folk rock. His latest album, War Within, is out this Thursday on Louisville label, Obsolete Staircases.
Atlas and the Anchor is proud to present the quasi-title track to the album here today. Listen to “The War Within” below, with its deft use of stark space and ethereal emotion that captures the intensity of his inner struggles. The soft, sparse ambient folk Kramer crafts is like a warm yet scratchy blanket that will put you at ease and unsettle you; but you will come back for more, for the way it makes you feel.
-Justin Kreitzer/Atlas And The Anchor

Under the moniker Tender Mercy, musician Mark Kramer creates eerie and unnerving skeletons of songs out of little more than a few carefully plucked notes on guitar, some semi-whispered vocals and valleys upon tender valleys of reverb. He has a new record, title: War Within, out this month on Louisville label Obsolete Staircases and it is a decidedly evocative affair, though of what it’s hard to say.
Kramer’s voice is an airier thing than Bill Callahan’s gritty baritone – Kramer sits somewhere near the intersection of the half-mumbled, almost wordless whispers of A Minor Forest’s Erik Hoversten and the more warbled tenor of Thom Yorke. But Callahan’s Smog, and especially the stripped-bare acoustics of The Doctor Came At Dawn and Kicking A Couple Around, are clearly a point of reference. (Or reverence.) This is a record that aims to do a lot with very, very little. Kramer clearly is out to make emotive music out of as few puzzle-pieces as possible and, though not every track on War Within flirts with capital-M Minimalism, especially in terms of expansion and heat, it most definitely is a lower-case-M minimalist work, and a pretty damned effective one to boot.
Some of the songs on the new LP can be downright devastating in their scarcity of musical road-markers. Three songs in, we find “Reveal,” where Kramer lilts back and forth, sometimes rhythmically, into a gentle falsetto over a deconstructed arpeggio. It’s almost impossible to hear the words he’s singing, but the thrust of the feeling behind the singing says everything it needs to say. In a world of pop divas and cluttery remix-reboots, it’s both alarming and refreshing to hear music this bare.
Elsewhere, the record leans a little too much on its formula. On “I’m Being Followed,” Kramer walks into the opportunity to turn his highly isolationist vocals inside out, making them a kind of vehicle for paranoia and dread. But, instead of some occasionally interesting though incidental ambience, the song lacks direction and punch. It’s beautiful, sure, in a muted kind of way. But it’s very similar to what surrounds it. And that lack of distinguishing features doesn’t make big, “universal” statements; it makes some tracks feel a little gray – and not in a good way.
Kramer redeems himself on the early movements of “Once Again,” where a searing (by this record’s standards, anyway) though undistorted solo note on guitar leads to Loren Connors-like figures. Well done, sir! It’s an indication of just how much command Kramer has over his sonic approach, this ability to build a whole song’s foundation out of a few strands of feathers. War Within really can be an interesting, even embryonic listen – not to mention great sad-sack self-pity music for the maximalist-challenged. Kramer’s clearly onto something here. The record is not without its shortcomings – music this daring often risks that very thing – but its ambition and adherence to mission alone make it worth hearing.
-Justin Vellucci/Music Tap

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Tender Mercy Louisville, Kentucky

Tender Mercy is the most underrated Louisville act of the decade
-Daisy Caplan/Lung

Louisville's Mark Kramer (aka Tender Mercy) crafts softly dramatic experimental folk ballads that analyze the hypnotic ability of sound.
-Zach Hart/We Listen For You (welistenforyou.com)

www.leoweekly.com/music/b-sides-tender-mercy
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