The remastered version of this NYC underground classic. Icepick was originally released in 2014, shortly after Cannonball’s performance at the New York Antifolk Festival.

On the original release date, the poet Bernard King wrote of this album:

I was just shocked there were not more icepicks in town. I know the age of ice ended a quite a while ago, but still. At least you will be prepared if confronted by any. Or picking the brains of cold minds. “An icepick is a tool used to break up, pick at, or chip at ice.” Not to be confused with an icepick lobotomy or human sacrifice, or a hot glue gun. Famous weapon of choice for mobsters and to kill Leon Trotsky.

Hey there, yeah you, with the ears! Four Horses of the Cannonball Statman Anti-Apocalypse: The Devil, A Starving Artist, A Norseman, A Former Presidential Candidate. (And The Dick Jokes.) Starts slow with his fingers on the table, starts with a mental image. All of a sudden it sounds like Joie Dead Blonde Girlfriend is back at the Raven. This is post-Dogcore Antifolk. And we need more American-Anymenized Antifolk orbiting around the human universe.

Frostbite was in the air, it was a cold winter. He had to walk in that frozen weather from E Sixth and Ave A to W Eighth and 6th Ave, because his train wasn’t running from 2nd Ave or Bway-Lafayette. His hands are still a bit numb from that. Though he has no risk of more than a light mist that would graze the very outside of his fur, he’s not afraid of the bleeding in his brain. His mind is cold and he is somebody.

There’s a dog barking in the distance there’s Joe Crow in the distance, a symphony of distance. Faster and faster haunted sounds in distance even stretching back to Antifolk 2004 1994 1984 the best in the world tell me it’s the best in the world tell me it’ll take over the world. We already did we all went crazy too. Down by the gallows, we’re all hanging too. He’s the horse, down Avenue A street after street I don’t know what this craze is all about but all his friends will come hang with you, see you down at the SideWalk see you down at the Fort and soon you’ll be hangin’ too. And you’ll become the history that caught up with you.

Carlos has been on fire for a long time now and Alicia Keys still doesn’t know. How many nights has he been sitting in his wheelchair out there on the Avenue? He’s just Cannonball Statman with a guitar he’s not ready for this. And you don’t need the Dormouse to tell you to feed your head, you don’t need the Apocalypse to tell you that everyone is dead. It’s getting colder out there but it’s fierier down on Essex at Old Man Hustle with Brer Brian and Monster’s harmonica in the almost totally empty black night, drunk girl from Massachusetts asks for a rendition of “Freefallin’” by Tom Brady and Cannonball obliges it blows up into a symphonic overdrive with that late-night streetlight buzz in your ear steam pouring out of the pipe in the street behind a big poodle dog’s hair. He’s part human, and part dog. Woof! Woof! (repeat chorus)

On a mission with a fishing pole hanging out with all those Lower East Side cats and rats and Richard Ringer and Sister Chain and Brother John, and Robin Goldsmith and Nico in the half hot sun lackadaisical evening all those hipsters walking their dogs over at Super Fantastic Happy Fun GO TIME! with Kirk Kelly. He’s going fishing and that something he’s gonna catch is you catch you with Walter Ego Make Music New York unknown singers wandering around during the day. He Is Brook Pridemore. Catch yew down the subway busking with Zoe Z catch yew at Goodbye Blue Monday with Debe Dalton catch yew at The Spiral Staircase with Phoebe Novak Dogs vs. Cats. Phoebe is a punk rocker. Catch yew at SideWalk with the Grasping Straws and Bob Black, catch yew down at Tribes for Catweazle and catch yew at Under St. Marks with Satan. There’s Jim Flynn.

Used to raise cats but a monster stole them took them to the woods to die in the woooods I AM the tiger and you’re staying with ME. He had a dream of your life thinkin’ about your eyes a love song for the apocalypse a fairytale of the woods lost in the night on the trains lost on Bleecker Street lost on Ludlow Street way out at Deep Tanks the corpse on the table the voice the face the corpse all those demons, Lorraine Leckie’s demons, sometimes they have milkshakes sometimes they don’t have anything but Ray’s Candy Store always has everything. Even tarot card bubble-tea. It’s a cult. Woof meow.

He likes feeding propaganda and candy to the people—propaganda, candy, drugs, roses, chocolate, claws, water, flaxseeds, rock and roll, nails, the Devil—they’re just waiting for something to fall out of the sky and into their consciousness. Songs that disintegrate gradually, in fits and starts. It’s morphosymphonic. What is this human doing! This song is not going the way it was before. This is the Morse Code version. The songs are speaking to you and you are the telegraph.

Now serving a life sentence for stabbing the giant plastic frog who lives in the Greenpoint Gallery with an icepick, a ghost in the body of a human the center of attention in the center of the aisle Lana says please don’t stand here at the open mic you meet a lot of people who talk kind of funny he’ll follow his demons from song to song from year to year from subway to subway in the New York City transit system wasted away by the MTA. Holy ghost holy ghost holy ghost seven seven seven. The floodgates have opened of all that was once ice, and it turns into the April sun life. Insane in the membrane, insane like an airplane. He’s mellow, like yellow. This show is “pure set,” and by that I mean undiluted. He hopes you surface so he can bark at yew. 

released April 20, 2023

Cannonball made this in NYC, in 2014, and then remastered it in Oaxaca, in 2022.