Lizard Kisses is the collaborative songwriting project of Cory Siegler and Marc Merza. The duo have been releasing music over the past five years, working alongside different like-minded musicians in their Brooklyn community, including members of Florist, Mutual Benefit, and Share-a-tories as well as the Spookfish’s Dan Goldberg. Siegler and Merza front the Lizard Kisses project, but they’re always more fulfilled recording with friends. The rotating band’s forthcoming release, Not Seeing Is A Flower, will be out in August on the Japanese label Dead Funny Records. It’s a compilation album comprising live recordings, 7″ singles, demos, and unreleased material that otherwise might not have made it onto a formal LP. Lizard Kisses will tour Japan in August with of Montreal and Noble Oak in conjunction with the compilation’s release.

“In My Way” is a previously unheard Lizard Kisses track and Not Seeing Is A Flower’s debut single. The song initiates with Siegler’s calm and crystalline admission that she doesn’t really know what to say: “And so it goes and comes before it breaks/ I lost the words and fell into a silent space.” It’s inherently ironic to write songs about silence, and yet some of the best are about exactly that; finding the right words to console and comfort, to express love and Great Big Feelings during times of unease. It’s fitting, then, that the soundscape accompanying Siegler is a comforting one. With the help of Jake Falby (Mutual Benefit), Andrew Morehart, and Sam Morrison, Lizard Kisses construct a cradle for their lullaby built from hushed, layered tones that allow certain instrumentation to jut out and take precedent for fleeting moments without overwhelming.

This is an atmospheric song; it doesn’t hinge on any one realization or drop in the conventional sense, but there is a turning point when Siegler edges toward the answer she’s looking for. “Oh my darling,” she sings. “I’m trying to explain/ In my way, in my way.” The repetition of that final line recalls Stephin Merritt’s “One April Day,” when he sings his crushing closer: “And I’ll turn to you and I’ll say/ I’ve always loved you, in my way.” Perhaps that comparison is wayward or unwarranted, but the very particular way Siegler sings the closing verse — like she’s finally found her answer — makes me think that this is a song about love; about caring for someone enough that you want to explain the inexplicable to them, to show them the world as you see it.

Watch Lizard Kisses perform another song off of Not Seeing Is A Flower, “Take Comfort,” below.

Not Seeing Is A Flower tracklist:

01 “Sunrise” (Live)
02 “Take Comfort” (Live)
03 “Nothing Left” (Live)
04 “In My Way”
05 “In The Morning”
06 “Close”
07 “And The Sun Will Shine Only For Us”
08 “Loosen”
09 “If/We”
10 “It’s Too Late” (Demo)
11 “The Ascent” (Demo)

Japanese tour dates:

08/23 Tokyo @ Shibuya O-Nest *
08/25 Hamamatsu @ Kirchherr +
08/26 Matsumoto @ Give Me Little More
08/27 Hiroshima @ Back Beat +
08/28 Fukuoka @ cafe & bar gigi +
08/29 Nagoya @ KD Japon +
08/30 Osaka @ Chika-ikkai +
08/31 Sendai @ Pangaea
* – with Of Montreal
+ – with Noble Oak

Not Seeing Is A Flower is out 8/17 via Dead Funny Records.