1. |
Pretty Good
04:06
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All your thoughts organized by colour
and all your colours organizing my thoughts
Wind and water tousling each other
Words and ideas pressed into a slingshot
I see you coming
I see you coming
I see your left leg running
I see the river
I see the river
I feel the water rushing
So you can calculate away
you can crunch numbers all day
build clouds of smoke
and trains of thought,
the locomotion of the underpaid
but your script cannot compare
to the scattered, the unprepared
words you spoke
unbroken chains of thought
in the low commotion of the parking lot
You’ve got a pretty good eye of aesthetics
but I’ve never seen you looking so flourescent
I know it gets hard to discern waste
when maybe there's still a time and a place
but your eyes were open wide
and the light was harsh and unkind
so you shut up, you shut down
you spent your time just hanging around
so you can calculate away
you can crunch numbers all day
build clouds of smoke
and trains of thought
for the emotionally underpaid
but your script cannot compare
to the scattered and unprepared
words you chose
unbroken chains of thought
in the low commotion of the the parking lot
As I fade away, I watch you hesitate
Why don’t you calculate away?
You can crunch numbers all day
build clouds of smoke
and trains of thought
the locomotion of the underpaid
but your script cannot compare
to the scattered, the unprepared
words you chose
unbroken chains of thought
in the low commotion of the the parking lot
you faded out of focus
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2. |
Into the Ether
03:31
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I wanna lay down under the snow
I wanna hold you
I wanna step through the mouth of a building
so terrible and small that I will never come out
I wanna stay out under the darkness until it fails me
I wanna let the temperature delay me
until I pull you off the easel that I painted you on
to talk to you
to shout at you
I wanna talk to you
Step into traffic
Learn to float above it
Into the ether, up above the pavement
where if its attention you want
then I can give it to you
If you find that your neighborhood’s betrayed you
and when your friends fall apart, they try to blame you
and you who’s God it is you pray to
then get out
Everything you want to know
will gently tear as it unfolds
the folds of the map are too damp to hold
The things you thought you never knew
fade into focus in front of you
in full colour, as good as memories
you can be made new
I wanna lay down under the snow
I wanna hold you
I wanna step through the mouth of a building
so terrible and small that I will never come out
I wanna stay out under the darkness til it fails me
I wanna let the temperature delay me
until I pull you off the easel that I painted you on
to talk to you
to shout at you
I wanna talk to you
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3. |
Hindcast
03:17
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Hindcast
I will split my face because I can
I will hindcast and forecast and
I will wash the residue from my pores and
I will stuff our heads with everything I can
Because someday we’ll have time
to spend on each other until we figure out what this is for
You always say that you want to do something against the law
but I think sometimes what you really want
is something simpler, something less specific
less of a deed and more of a frozen frame
a feeling that you can hold onto
when you’re old and going grey
Are you sure that we’re welcome here?
The world around is unclear,
are you sure that we’re welcome here?
We were blown in on the wind,
you said ‘Are you sure that we’re welcome here?’
While the world around is unclear,
I’m pretty sure that we’re welcome here
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4. |
Cracked Hands
03:27
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I wake the waterless winter wind up by
overheating it until my skin dries
almost mistakable there in the halflight
thoughts lucid enough to be
half
right
wandering around with my eyes shut
I see twice as much
and I quietly wonder
if anything I can touch is material
I know a world, she’s got bad posture
and she has windblown hair
Pretty as she is, I can tell that she understands winter
I heard the darkness thick as ink inside
but saw the sounds of your voice try
to taste the colours of black light
swollen down and dark but still
all
right
everybody was smirking
I saw everybody else was shirking someone
I saw cherry red brick and ash, can you feel it?
It’s in my head
It’s in my hands
It’s in my heart
It’s in my eyes
It’s in my stomach
It’s in my arms
It’s in my throat
It’s in my mind
It’s in my chest
It’s in my mouth
It’s in my legs
It’s in my lies
It’s in my wrists
It’s in my spine
You’re everywhere
You’re all the time
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5. |
Southpaw
03:08
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If there are any words at all
that could have saved my life
they’d have been
Don’t play around with nostalgia
It’ll rip your heart out an once at a time
Don’t insult me with your diagnosis:
I know when my roots have been severed
just look at my leaves
This shit will eat your food for you
it’ll send you home
I’m reaching through the floor for you
Go on and send me home
Let’s say the things we’ve always said
and cut off the bloodflow to our heads
until everything we own is
officially deemed unsustainable
I’ve got the left hand of darkness,
why don’t you tie behind my back?
This superiority complex makes it hard to hear sometimes
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6. |
Black / Elk
05:27
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7. |
Storyville
03:01
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You told me it was all a dream
I told you “Isn’t everything?”
I’m descending into storyville
and to everything that that might mean
Every little thought is gonna follow me home tonight and
every little word is gonna follow me home tonight
A convict in the basement of the city is fading the streetlights in
but that does not mean what it used to; I’m not going home
I feel my collar scraping at my throat
and my clothes hanging from every limb
There’s a gun tucked in under his coat
and jasmine perfume on her skin
I remember feeling caught in a crossbreeze
you were there beside me
quaking like a heartbeat
heat weakening my knees
And a convict in the basement of the city is fading the streetlights in
but that does not mean what it used to; I’m not going home
Gomer, if I had to guess
I would guess that you are here
but before you go and disappear
I just want you to know that I’m here, too
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8. |
Still
04:20
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The parasitic wrecking ball teeters,
faintly drifting side to side
The wind is strong, but we can rest
in its shadow, we are glad to be alive
There is a levitating grandeur in
the wrecking of neatly-packaged scripted time
It’s a feeling that we both recognize:
Panic, liberation, the sublime,
silence on the radio,
the pause between performance and applause.
Everything just goes to show
something else, forever, and so on
Still, on the way out I'll call and
I will gladly take the fall
because I'll recognize the dirt
and then rise up above the earth
and I will fly and you will fly
and we will barely have to try at all
The best that I can hope to do is document
the fragments as they fade to figments
Truth and untruth,
off balance, or course
The interpenetration of lightness and dark
Still, on the way out I'll call and
I will gladly take the fall
because I'll recognize the dirt
and then rise up above the earth
and I will fly and you will fly
and we will barely have to try at all
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9. |
Little Fictions
04:15
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You are a thought that I had never spoken
You are signifier signified
There is a distance that you need to travel
You’re still inside watching the day go by
Oh, the wind is strong
and I know that it'll pull you along
you can try, and try
but your honesty is telling you lies
The wind will not be satisfied
The meek are clawing their way to the surface
I saw window blown out of its frame
I do not recommend you interfering
The wild animals are being tamed
You say you wonder is who will follow you down after you go, but
the little fictions will devour you underneath your coat
You appeared to me out of the ether
out of some sort of closed reality
The light refracts on to the scraped up floorboards
This is the way that things will have to be
My mind's distracted and my shoes are untied
I am a lock, and you are not the key
a gentle thought has somehow spiralled upwards
I am a figment, you are next to me
and I know, I know
that your thoughts are burning out of control
the wind blows and blows
you have cut the string and tightened the bow
but some things you simply cannot know
All you wonder is who will follow you down after you go
The little fictions will devour you underneath your coat
You appeared to me out of the ether
out of some sort of closed reality
a gentle thought has somehow spiralled upwards
I am a figment, you are next to me
I am a figment, you are next to me
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10. |
Waterbirth
04:35
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I remember I was born of a waterbirth
Delivered with my feet on backwards and my head out first
The interns gathered at the banks of the birth canal
I could not pick out my Dad among the men around
My tears were not reflexive, I truly was afraid
of the room that I had entered and the mess that I had made
I realized I was naked and I was ashamed
Without a car, without a job, without a name
I don't know why I expected our definitions to line up
I knew words are only symbols of what I really try to think
but the words you chose, the touch, the name you gave to me
all were not what I expected them to be
On the day that you returned and I was introduced
to the house that you had purchased and to the room you had produced
I was asleep, ungrateful for the life you'd planned
I see it now though: I just didn't understand
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The Utilities Lethbridge, Alberta
The Utilities are an Alberta-based folk rock band. “Heavy South,” their newest and best record, fixates on circular patterns: work weeks, weather patterns, daily exchanges. Melodic, lyrically-focused songs are the heart and soul of the record, with gently psychedelic flourishes and instrumental detours adding colour. Their work is genuine. ... more
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