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GUV III & IV

by Young Guv

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1.
I treasure the feeling  Forever like a sunbeam on my bed  Your light so sweetly beamin’  Made rainbows on the pillow by my head  Old feelings stir inside  Staring off into the night  Couldn’t leave U if I tried  If I tried  My whole life has lost its meaning But I can’t lose my song or lose my light  Despite this hopeless feeling  I still have never seen a star so bright  Old feelings stir inside  Staring off into the night  Couldn’t leave U if I tried  If I tried  Times feel so strange  But I still love you all the same  And it’s you I’m hangin’ onto  Ya it’s you I’m hangin’ onto  I can’t escape the emptiness inside Couldn’t leave U if I tried  These old feelings stir inside  Staring off into the night  I can’t shake these old feelings  Can’t put aside  You’re still runnin’ through my mind  Couldn’t leave U if I tried 
2.
Baby I just gotta move  But I’m forbidden to go outside I got a brand new pair of boots  And a shirt so loud I wanna show the world how I can slide  It’s only dancin’ It’s only dancin’ but it feels alright  It’s only dancin’ That I’m needin’ tonite  It’s only dancin’ I gotta bad case of pins and needles  Ya my legs have been subdued  If I could shake ‘em off  And run to ya You know I would  I wish to skip down the avenue  It’s only dancin’ It’s dancin’ but it feels alright It’s only dancin’ that I’m missin’ tonite  It’s only dancin’ I just need to take a peak  And see what it’s like So I break the window open wide  In blows a fantasy of days gone by Standin’ shoulder to shoulder Side by side  It’s only dancin’ It’s only dancin’ but it feels alright  It’s only dancin’ That I’m needin’ Don’t need a reason  Give me one tonight  It’s only dancin’
3.
Lo Lo Lonely 03:28
I don’t think it could any worse than this A broken heart  One last kiss  I will disappear now  How could I resist  Into a fog  I don’t exist  
So so long  Cuz for now this love is gone  Forever now  I’ll always be  Lo Lonely  
Now all I do is sit here and look at the hills  I’m wrinkled velvet  I’m unfulfilled  I wanna show you how the light shines through the trees  I can’t resist these pretty things  
So so long  Cuz for now everything’s gone  Forever now I’ll always be  Lo Lonely  
Tears linger on inside  And the pains too much for me  Ya I’ll always be  Lo Lonely  Lo Lo Lonely 
4.
Just when I told ya that I want to work things through  Just when I thought it would be safe to tell the truth  I see his arms are around you  I only wanna see u tonite I only wanna blow out your candle light  It’s you I wanna luv and make feel alright   And I swear I’m gonna like no one before  If he can’t make you feel like I do  It’s time to choose  I tried to phone ya Now I’m knockin’ at your door  I thought I knew you better  But you're lyin’ more and more  And now it’s him that you adore  I only wanna see u tonite I only wanna blow out your candle light  It’s you I wanna luv and make feel alright   And I swear I’m gonna like no one before  I dont care cuz you are mine and I am yours  If he don’t make you feel like I do Then why am I not the one for you 
5.
Good Time 03:07
This year my heart hung low  She lifts me through my sorrow  It’s fadin' day by day  Horizon getting clearer  Oh oh  Like the sun through the trees  She came to love me Like a leaf on a breeze  She blew me away  Baby come take me on a sunset ride  She’s my good time  She’s my brightside  She’s my real good time  Good time  I'm fallin' down below  I may not see tomorrow  Whatever comes my way  Could make me see things clearer  Oh oh  Like the sun through the trees  She came to love me Like a leaf on a breeze  She blew me away  Maybe I’m crazy I’m so twisted inside She’s my good time  She’s my brightside  She’s my real good time  Good time  It’s been an upside down  Cold cold year  Trying to recognize  These shadows in the mirror 
6.
Sunrise on my window pane Light upon her skin again A winding line I followed here Out of a story  Take Up All My Time Don’t worry about nothin’ Lay it down to rest  It’s either blue or red  Another year lookin’ down at my shoes I watch everyone dance But all I see is you  The space I have been movin’ in  It feels bigger than anything  I sit with my shadows again  And the flutter of my heart  Take Up All My Time Don’t worry about nothin’ Lay it down to rest  It’s either blue or red  Another year lookin’ down at my shoes I watch everyone dance But all I see is you 
7.
Solitary blue Milk grey doom Got a lot of things But I aint got u  With that soft serene And the color green  I am incomplete You without me  And sometimes it just happens that way  Passing through a fabric landscape Tears are always clouding my eyes But I ain’t got u  And things wont feel right til i do  Touch your cheek to mine Stop my heart in time Nothing matters now Cuz I ain’t got u  Maybe someday soon With the stars in tune  A secret melody  I only hear from u  I find behind the fringe of my eye  The gentleness of your reflection  Fears are always clouding my mind But I ain’t got u  And things wont feel right til i do  Captive dumb and useless I slip deeper secluded  With all tomorrows gone There will be something or someone  Out of the blue  That’s keeping me from you  No I cant wait til June  Solitary milk grey doom  Touch your check to mine Stop my heart in time  Nothing matters now  Cuz I ain’t got u 
8.
Head first into the ether  In the dark too long  Fading out like shadow  When the light is gone  Only wish that I could see you again  I’m afraid you ain’t my only weakness  I was dying to be with you all the time  But it’s so hard to breathe when you’re barely alive  See things shifting coming into view  But in the corner of your eye  I’m still the same old fool  Goes on and on its endless  The road is long and cruel  No turning back  I’m just the same old fool  Is it a curse  Part of a pattern  I’ve been in way too long  Theres no answers  It might be better  Now that you’re movin’ on  Only wish that I could see you again  I’m afraid you ain’t my only weakness  I was dying to be with you all the time  But it’s so hard to breathe when you’re barely alive  See things shifting coming into view  But in the corner of your eye  I’m still the same old fool  Goes on and on its endless  It’s pointless to assume  I’m something more than  Just the same old fool  Same Old Fool 
9.
She’s a desert of affection  I’m an ocean of blue  She ain’t payin’ no attention  She don’t cry for anyone  She don’t cry for anyone  My tears are always plenty  But she don’t cry for anyone  She’s a blizzard in the summer  Where the flowers don’t bloom  I don’t wanna be a downer but She don’t cry for anyone  She don’t cry for anyone  My tears are always plenty  But she don’t cry for anyone  When it’s all said and done Not me Not you  Not anyone  She made me think I was the one  But now it’s her I’m runnin’ from  Was she really feelin’ nothing  Cold as water on the moon  And just as distant too  She don’t cry for anyone  She don’t cry for anyone  My tears are always plenty  But she don’t cry for anyone  It was all a dream  A fantasy  And I woke to reality  I cry for you but you don’t for me 
10.
Scam Likely 03:42
I often wonder  If I can really be sure  Where would I exist  If I existed at all  Over and under  Tell me what normals for Maybe I’m a bit too tired of it all  I’m gone  Beyond  And I’m barely holding on And I know theres nothing I can do about it  Tell me you love me  Tell me that I’m adored  And burn me with your starlight  Evermore  For now I’ll keep my dreamin' And just pretend  And be both here and now Both now and then  I’m gone  Beyond  And I’m barely holding on And I don’t know if I can wrap my head around it I’m gone  Beyond  Hopeless feelings linger on  And I know theres nothing I can do about it  Feel the darkness come my way  Hear the wind keep me awake  Feel my hands begin to shake  I’m gone  Nothing I can do about it  Nothing I can do about it  No I can’t wrap my head around it
11.
You’re the April of my life  A cool showery day  On a slippery street  I’m tumblin’ away  A brighter day and darker nights  The smell of a new rain  Walk for miles on the streets  Take my breath away  When I am older I’ll get to know her Again and Again and Again  You’re the April of my life  I’m the end of May  I watch the fireflies  Like bubbles in champagne  I was staring at the sky  A dome of white and blue  A water lily in the night  Gazing at the moon  When I am older I’ll get to know her Again and Again and Again  Ooh aah  Ooh aah aah  Ooh aah aah aah  Ooh ooh aah aah aah  She’s the April of my life  She’s the April of my life  She’s the April of my life  She’s the April of my life 
12.
Too Far Gone 02:59
If you look over there A far and distant stare  If there’s love in the air  Can’t find it anywhere  You can change what you wear  The color of your hair  Not a hope Not a care  Not a prayer  I’m too far gone  A world beyond  I can’t go on  I’m too far gone Don’t miss your chance  Come take me by the hand  Someone like no other I need her bad I wish for pleasure  One like I’ve never had  Found a love  It was rare  But I just didn’t care  Had nothin left to share  So I just left her there  Now I’m sinking lower and lower  If its good do it over and over 
13.
Once upon a dreadful day  Two lives torn apart  I can’t sleep a wink  Knowing that she’s gone  A wilted petal whisked away  I still feel you here  There’s a chill inside my heart A lonesome fear  If I kissed you one last time  Would it be enough to change your mind  Change your mind  I cant change your mind  Colors from old pictures fade  New memories to make  Diggin deeper down  Into the frozen ground  If I kissed you one last time  Would it be enough to change your mind  Change your mind  I cant change your mind  A winter chill inside your bone  Wander, lost, nowhere to go  If you change your mind  Let me know  If I kissed you one last time  Would it be enough to change your mind  Change your mind  I cant change your mind  I cant change your mind  I cant change your mind  I cant change your mind 
14.
Had a dream about you baby  You were hexagon  Got me wondering now  If its a sign from god (Or someone) Cant make it stop  (Put the brakes on) Give it all you got  (A silly con)  Played like a pawn  (Inside the game) See a face through a filter someone made Another man without a name  All my records keep on breakin’  All my dreams are gone  They’re aint no one around  The show must go on  (To no one) Cant make it stop  (Can’t turn it off) Blow like a bomb  (Can’t see beyond)  She read my palm  (It had nothing to say) See a face through a filter someone made  Somewhere someones getting paid  No more sunshine  Only rain  No one to love now  Only pain  See a face through a filter someone made  Another man without a name Somewhere someones getting paid  My whole mind is goin’ strange 
15.
Overcome 04:43
Across a shoreless sea I went dancin’ on  What difference does it make  I’m not anyone  Laugher in the air  Swallows up my soul  Every changing shape  People I’ll never know  Every so often I am overcome  When I see the stars I count every one  I count every one  When I wake up  In a familiar slum  Found myself return  To familiar love  I fell to dreaming in a valley of  Highways and cities all frozen up  And every so often I am overcome  When I see the stars I count every one  I count every one 
16.
A missed chance  For the lonely  Unacquainted love Undeclared  Can you trust me  I don’t blame you now  Time stands steady Where you left me  What are you running from  (Cmon cmon) (You can’t stay for long) La-la-la-la love me don’t leave me La-la-la-la love me don’t leave me Don’t leave me  Another chance  Ya you owe me  A serrated touch  Anywhere on my body  There ain’t no one else 
17.
Cry 2 Sleep 03:34
I missed you  I’m sorry  For leavin’  No goodbye  Pick me up  At sunrise  Just listen  Close my…  I cry 2 sleep  The morning  Brings new light  I know just  What you like  Don’t know how it happened I just knew it was time  I cry 2 sleep  Another road  And I’m so lost without you  But a voice inside is telling me to run  I hope you find someone  Who makes you feel  What you once felt from me  While I cry 2 sleep  I cry 2 sleep
18.
Clouds up above stick to the sky  They’re all just floating questions why  My thoughts are scattering around me  They have no borders and no boundaries  (And I am) Cold in the summer  Cold in the summer  Cold in the summer  Cold in the summer  Cold in the sun  Can’t stand anyone  Now is not the time to cry  Don’t know where you’re going  Neither do I  Cold in the summer  Cold in the summer  Cold in the summer  Cold in the summer  My clothes are hanging by a string See my reflection  It don’t mean anything Got a message from a friend This could be the one It could be the end 
19.
Only love can turn me upside down On my last stand hold me if you can The touch of her hand The night that we first met I still don’t understand Why I can’t forget If I relax my body now Fall to pieces to the ground These days all I see are tiles of stone When I look down I’ll be gone by morning How quickly it all melts Maybe I should luv somebody else Maybe I should luv somebody else
20.
Helium 03:32
Come and breathe the air around me  Drive up to the dunes Nothing could compare to How your love heals like a spoon Have I ever told you  I’m on your side  I just think about you baby every night  All I wanna do All I wanna do is hang around u  I lose track of time when you’re in town  All I wanna do is hang around u  Take me to your favourite place  That makes you feel unglued  I seem to be stuck inside a helium balloon  Let me take a chance  I’m rolling the dice  Yea I’m still hanging onto paradise  All I wanna do All I wanna do is hang around u  I lose track of time when you’re in town  All I wanna do is hang around u 
21.
You make jaw drop to the floor I don’t feel human anymore  I’m so  Nervous around u  So nervous around u  So nervous around u  I never thought I’d feel this way again  I swore that this would never happen  I’m so  Nervous around u  So nervous around u  So nervous around u  I wanna spend this way forever  But love only last so long  I wish that you could make it better But the panic is too strong  I’m so  Nervous around u  So nervous around u  So nervous around u 
22.
Without your love  I’m no where at all  Without you here  My sky would fall  I heard a song from down the hall  These days I feel I’ve heard them all  I’m beyond the hill  Can’t see me at all  And I get so high  With no place to fall  I heard a song from down the hall  These days I feel  I’ve heard them all And now that summers gone  The leaves start to fall I’m no where at all  So many people I can’t recall  So many thoughts  So wrong about them all  I found a place where tear drops fall  Can’t seem to be  Far enough from it all  I’m all alone here  La la la la la la 
23.
Let it bloom on the vine  Anything that comes to mind  Let it burn  Let it die  Let the year hang out to dry  You’re a river in my memory tonight  Forever overflowing down the sides  Let it go  Down the wire  Let the evening bring wildfire  Painted roads  A red sky  Men in coats  Passing by  You’re a river in my memory tonight  Forever overflowing down the sides  You’re the wind in my blood Swoopin’ like a dove And it’s you that I still think the world of  You’re the wind in my blood Sometimes it’s just too much  And it’s you that I still think the world of  I will find a way to carry on  Try to sit here in the silence  Colours form under my eyelids  Yellow green blue and violet  High above like a pilot  You’re a river in my memory tonight  Forever overflowing down the sides  You’re the wind in my blood Swoopin’ like a dove And it’s you that I still think the world of  You’re the wind in my blood Sometimes it’s just too much  And it’s you that I still think the world of  I will find a way to carry on
24.
Along the road  Then and there  In the autumn hours  I could lie just about anywhere with you No where else would matter In a field of tender colors  She sparkles everywhere  And smoke takes the place of the clouds  When they aren’t there  Along the walks  Here and there  In the early hours  Back to back  In the shadows Of a pink sky tower  I see a rainbow in the sun  Like when you really love someone  And smoke takes the place of the clouds  When the day is done  Along the road Then and there  In the autumn hours  I could lie just about anywhere with you  No where else would matter In a field of tender colors  She sparkles everywhere  And smoke takes the place of the clouds  When they aren’t there  I see a rainbow in the sun  Like when you really love someone  And smoke takes the place of the clouds  When the day is done

about

In the spring of 2020, Ben Cook — a.k.a. Young Governor, Young Guv, or just Guv — was holed up in the New Mexico high desert, his U.S. tour having been abruptly covid-cancelled during a southwest swing. He and his bandmates were living moment to moment in something called an Earthship, a solar-rigged adobe structure sustainably constructed with, among other things, recycled bottles and tires. And out there in the serene vastness, as a short ride-it-out stint turned into a nine-month sojourn, Ben was writing music, slowly, little by little, mostly at night while the others slept. By the New Year, almost in spite of himself, he had created a new album, two new albums actually, and through the ordeal he was forever changed.
In a place he never expected to be, under circumstances no one could have predicted, and in the face of physical isolation, emotional desolation, and existential dread, Ben created GUV III & IV, a collection of songs dedicated and testifying to the eternal healing power of love — how to find it in the world, in others, and most importantly, in himself. Written in the New Mexico wilderness and produced in Los Angeles, the double album will be released on Run For Cover later next year.

In New Mexico, daily life was ad hoc, communal, idyllic, almost Utopian. Ben and his five mates shared everything, all their money, shelter, and meals (Ben did the cooking). “It was beautiful,” he says. “We were at the foot of the Taos Mountain, part of the Sangre de Cristo range, one of the seven sacred mountain ranges in the world. I swam in the Rio Grande every day. The memory is surreal.”
Work was different — much more daunting. Though the marooned sextet had built themselves a makeshift studio for their little clay casa, inspiration was slow and sporadic. “I was isolated, the world was in complete chaos,” Ben says. “I lost control of the routine that I thrive in. I worked on songs more randomly, only when I felt like it. I was hard on myself for not writing enough. Truthfully, I don’t even remember doing most of it. I was removed from the process, in a way, somehow alienated from my own creativity.”
Isolation amid chaos, a thrumming feeling of alienation from oneself and others — this wasn’t exactly new territory. Two years ago, when Ben released his last record, the double-album set called GUV I & II, he likened the songs to “people-watching in a foreign country in the morning.” He was talking about the loneliness of living in the modern world, a condition that, for most people, was intensifying even before 2020.
And it went back further than the previous album cycle. Ben’s been at this a long time, making music and doing the thing that artists do: noticing what goes in the world, in all its discontents, while everyone else plays dumb. He formed his first serious band, No Warning, in 1998, and over the course of their initial eight-year run they became legends, the Toronto teenagers who perfected New York hardcore, channelling all the anger, resentment, and confusion of that awful War on Terror period, which everyone wanted to forget even as it was happening. Then he spent the rest of the 2000s and 2010s as a guitarist in Fucked Up, who among their contemporaries were unequalled in their intellectual ambition, their capacity to sublimate all that anger and alienation into something profound, erudite, and redemptively strange.
“Guv” has been Ben’s personal songwriting outlet since 2008. Under that name and its derivatives he’s issued a pile of singles and EPs and several full-lengths. Before 2020, Ben says, the songs tended to come, if not easily, then at least efficiently, regularly, reliably, owing to a work ethic he describes as “a bit maniacal.”
But out in the desert, where nothing was familiar (“The energy there was unlike anything I’d experienced”), it was if he was living outside himself. The old processes he had relied on, the patterns that had prevailed in his former life, no longer seemed to apply. And so they had to change. Given narrowing outer horizons — the shrinking of social life to just five fellow campesinos, the looming prospects of a ruined career and a collapsing society — Ben was forced to broaden his inner horizons, to spend long days and nights under the giant sky figuring out what actually matters and what’s really been inside people’s heads, his and everyone else’s, during these past years of decadence and decline.
Accordingly, the new songs are marked by a sense of intense yearning to connect — with other people, other beings, other energies — and to achieve by those means a measure of inner peace. The very first verse of very first track, “Couldn’t Leave U if I Tried,” whose opening guitar lines are pure-cut Roger McGuinn-esque arpeggiated bliss a la Guv, sets the tone and establishes the stakes:
I treasure the feeling 
Forever like a sunbeam on my bed 
Your light so sweetly beamin’ 
Made rainbows on the pillow by my head 
Again and again, in song after song — which range widely in style and mood, from Laurel Canyon jangle to British Invasion blues-pop to AM-radio Americana to the mildly sleazy electro pop that is something of a signature — we hear variations on the theme of those opening lines: If, as seems likely, we’re moving from a “love is all you need” world to a “love is all you can have” world, then what’s to be done except “watch the fireflies like bubbles in champagne,” as Ben sings in “April of My Life.”

Ben calls the new album “a document of my two years away from the world. My healing.”
“Through real work in therapy over a long period, as well as spending many months isolated and alone, I have started to finally access my true self little by little, and it’s reflected in this music.”
Maybe that process would have happened anyway, without the world cataclysm, without the detour to the sacred mountains. But it happened in its peculiar way, and in a holy place, and so we have this poignant and beautiful two-album set, which couldn’t have been made in any other timeline or under any other conditions.
It’s an open question where exactly the timeline that begins with GUV III & IV leads. After tracking the albums in L.A. in early 2021, Ben decamped to Mexico — old Mexico — where the healing process has taken yet another surprising turn.
“I’m taking a complete break from music,” Ben says. “I haven’t picked up a guitar since the record wrapped. I’m learning Spanish and boxing.”

credits

released July 15, 2022

Produced By Young Guv 
Co-Produced By Tony Price & James Matthew VII
Recorded By Jonny Bell @ Jazzcat Studios, Rob Campanella @ Figment Sounds, 
Guv & Price @ Taos New Mexico & Brooklyn NY 
Mixed By Steve Chahley, Guv & Tony Price
“But I Ain’t Got U” Mixed By Alex Gamble
Mastered By Phil Demetro
Vocals, Guitars, Bass & Keys By Guv 
Vocals & Guitars By Tommy Major 
Vocals, Guitars, Bass & Harp By James Matthew VII 
Bass By Ryan Gavel 
Drums By Richard Gowen 
Guitars, Bass & Drums By Noah Kohll 
Banjo, Keys, Bass & Vocals By Bobbie Lovesong 
Steel By Jon Catfish DeLorme, Steve Wood & Colin Duckworth 
Sax By Garrett Walters 
Flute By Tara Milch
Strings By Megan Siebe 
Percussion By Adam Amram & Guv 
Design By Braulio Amado
Photography By Danielle Parsons 

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