The flies and horses, the goldfish and the turtles in Skursula songs don’t live in Candyland or the universe of the Care Bears, devoid of all Cloud Quakes and evil spirits influencing wrongdoing camp goers. They are spoiled by their innocent longings, but they exist in gothic temperatures and churning waters that feel boiling to the bare touch. Though these characters give off the feeling of being the products of straight-up anthropomorphism, they’re actually reflections of the opposite procedure – the girl as the field mouse and the heart as a bird of prey, perhaps just circling, but perhaps more when the steely night vision kicks in. These animals and insects can be the people that you meet while you’re walking down the street tomorrow or the next day, but the revelations of these characteristics is more that they aren’t naked eye material. One thing that Ursula Dial and Skye Carrasco (women with two names like that were bound to meet at some point on a college campus, taking some of the same classical music classes) might have to deal with in their giving of these feathery, noble, honest and occasionally sexy qualities is that once they give animals the characteristics of real life human beings that they know – or even those of people completely fabricated for the sake of a yarn – they’ll find that getting them back can be a real headache. Whomever they borrowed these characteristics from should be prepared to never have them returned. They should operate under the assumption that their abilities to rationalize and problem solve, in some cases, might be gone forever. The turtle’s got that. There are tradeoffs. For the guy whose qualities were used to invade the horse’s life – one that will see a self-inflicted co-habitation with a mouse that constantly whispers sweet nothings into its ear – he’ll suddenly and potentially forever be able to open it up and stampede or rumble a china chest with a whinny from the guts. Who knows what’s put into these humans to replace the stolen characteristics – cotton or balled up Sunday newspapers would be my guess.

First song
Twin City Blues (Skursula) [4.46MB] [1081 downloads]


— unreleased
In the early days of summer we took a trip up to Minneapolis for a week, and we became smitten with the city and the three northern boys that graced us with their company during our adventures there. During one of our last sunny afternoons in the twin cities, we floated around Lake Calhoun on a big, red, two-seated kayak sipping on water bottles full of orange juice and vodka. While we laughed about the craziness our trip had ensued, we realized how much we would miss those three boys. From this realization grew the lyrics and music to twin city blues…only we turned everyone into an animal that had the respective qualities of our dear friends.

Second song
Hip Hop Boi (Skursula) [3.78MB] [1027 downloads]


— unreleased
Ursula’s little classical heart fell hopelessly hard for an east coast boy who had the fastest flow. As her obsession grew, she caught herself trying to impress him with her newly discovered hip hop knowledge. This was only the third song we wrote and is a twisted version of a “Popper” Etude that Ursula was practicing at the time in her classical studies. The core of this song is based around the hilarious contrast between classical and hip hop cultures.

Third song
Basketweavin' (Skursula) [3.68MB] [1007 downloads]


— unreleased
Skye wrote the lyrics of this song at the ripe age of 18 before she became jaded by heartache. Luckily, she is a quick learner and this ignorance has never been repeated since (yeah right). When we first met we used to switch journals and write really bad love poems as therapy for our broken hearts. We discovered this charming skye-scribble in a frantic rush before our Iowa City debut, which was the opening act for a noise show. (weird) This is also the first song we ever wrote, so out of sentiment we end every show with it.

Fourth song
The Rhinoceros Song (Skursula) [3.57MB] [1001 downloads]


— unreleased
The motives we had behind writing “The Rhinoceros Song” were devilishly premeditated: we wanted, needed and craved to perform a song about sex. The two of us were at our wits end playing songs about mystical animals and innocent crushes. The lyrics are a hodgepodge of our random thoughts, old discarded poetry and adolescent diary entries from our favorite muses. Every male in the audience should fear being a rhinoceros.