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1. |
Fort Ashby
04:12
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Out-of-tune piano, cylinder gramophone
Katydids, calliopes, big machines that buzz and groan
Down at the County Fair
There’s music in the air
It’s like a Tom Waits tune but with a different singer
It’s a great big world and it seems to me (it’s coming back to me)
It’s much bigger and it’s so much smaller than it
Ever used to be
In my grandma and grandfather’s backyard
They built a forty-foot slide
All I remember is the light
There’s a funhouse called Star Warz, it’s spelled with a “z”
Copyright infringement, it’s all coming back to me
Here comes a big bass drum
To rock my skeleton
There’s candy in the air, it’s slipping through my fingers
It’s a great big world and it seems to me
It’s much bigger and it’s so much smaller than it
Ever used to be
Now they tell me that it’s monster trucks and
Tractor pulls in the night
All I remember is the light
Put me in the moonwalk, I can’t even stand
Take me to the stage to see Daddy in a country band
Some kid who’s half my size
She won the livestock prize
She had a little lamb
And then the lamb got bigger
It’s a great big world and it seems to me
It’s much bigger and it’s so much smaller than it
Ever used to be
Got my baby beside me going eastbound
On a cross-country flight
All I can think of is the light
It’s coming back to me…
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2. |
Caterwaul
05:04
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Come down, catercorner
Carry me across the square
Come down, catastrophic
Crushed and quite beyond repair
Come down, calla lilies
Cold and lovely in a vase
Come down, cantilever
Can you lever me in place?
But if it’s not your time
You can’t make it your time
If it’s not your time
Come down, cat o’ nine tails
Count again, it’s more like ten
Come down, catatonic
Cannot wake her up again
And if it’s not her time
You can’t make it her time
Can’t make it her time
Come down, Cosa Nostra
Clarity and Claritin
Come down, catalytic
Car exhaust to do you in
Come down, cantaloupe and
Honey, do it while you can
Come down, caterwaul and
Honey can I be your man?
And if it’s not your time
You can’t make it your time
If it’s not your time
Caterwaul, catewaul, caterwaul
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3. |
Responsible
03:19
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Bones are falling from the trees
And I can’t get my car to start
It’s broken down just like my heart
And my wah wah pedal
Crow takes wing from the branches above
And I swear to God she winks at me
I don’t know why, but I’m watching her fly
And it makes me feel better
RSVP
Unrequited
Ready, aim, fire!
No one is responsible at all
The wind is blowing apples through
My kitchen window every day
Stack ‘em up and save ‘em for the kids when they visit
I wanna be more than a flickering number
I wanna be more than a demographic
I wanna be more, that’s not too much to
Ask for, is it?
Unresponsive
Correspondent
Just plain corossive
No one is responsible
At all, all
No one is to blame, because
No one is responsible
At all
Been raining bones for three days straight
I still can’t get my car to start
The guy down at the Pick-A-Part
Is a cold-eyed geezer
Says, “Son, your car ain’t worth a dime
But how much for that broken heart?
I’ll keep it with the other four
In the back of my freezer.”
Irresponsible
Inhibition
Reuptake—fire!
No one is responsible at all
No one is responsible at all
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4. |
Unhaunted
04:55
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Empty house on my street with the doors chained up tight
And a window with candles that burn late at night
Children quicken their pace as they walk on by
From all the stories they’ve heard and they’re too young to die
And I miss her so badly I wish I were there
To see the spectral lights and feel the chill in the air
Empty bottle of wine and nobody to toast
I’m so jealous of other people’s ghosts
When I want her to haunt me she leaves me alone
No creaking floor, no flickering flame
Black candelabra and black cat bone
No disembodied voice to breathe my name
Got a box with a lock of her hair that I saved
And a bag filled with dirt that I took from her grave
Halloween once again and I’m here by myself
While her ghost is out haunting somebody else
When I want her to haunt me she leaves me alone
No creaking floor, no flickering flame
Black candelabra and black cat bone
No disembodied voice to breathe my name
Unhaunted
She’s leaving me
Unhaunted
Don’t want to be
Unhaunted
And she had such faith in the world beyond
But I’m truly afraid that she’s truly gone
She won’t come to me as some tender wraith
In a column of vapor with her face
When I want her to haunt me she leaves me alone
No creaking floor, no flickering flame
Black candelabra and black cat bone
No disembodied voice to breathe my name
It’s November the First under a hangover sky
She’s bound to leave me unhaunted whatever I try
All my breaking and entering won’t raise the dead
And I’ll still be unhaunted tonight in her bed
All the leaves on the ground blow around in the wind
Like a family of rodents relieved of their skin
Halloween on a dirt road, 1983
I believed it was real, it could happen to me
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5. |
What You Don't Wish For
04:23
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Take care what you don’t wish for
It might be passing by your door
Take care what you don’t wish for
It might just not come true
It might come home to you
She says it’s not good for a man to live alone
She asks you are you a believer? She says
Her brother did such things he killed her family
You never know if she means literally
Hearts might heal
But you can’t unbreak a home
Hearts might heal
Take care what you don’t wish for
It might be passing by your door
Take care what you don’t wish for
It might just not come true
It might break you in two
She says be careful with your heart, my friend, she says
Look what I let mine do to me
She says she knows that she’s a catch, and so she is, but
She lets her girlfriend run her over
Hearts might heal
But you can’t unbreak a home
Hearts might heal
Take care what you don’t wish for
It might be passing by your door
Take care what you don’t wish for
It might just not come true
It might break you in two
She feels the pressure gathering behind her eyes
She sees less of you by degrees
You’ve given her a home and she’s given you hope
But now all four of you are breaking
Take care what you don’t wish for
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6. |
Playing With The Lights
06:59
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Incidental lightshow
Unexpected bloom
Bouncing, bounding, flying, soaring
Leaving to a view
Anywhere there’s fire
Anywhere that’s high
Captured now in clay and crosslegged
Looking to the sky
In the eyes of a mantis
In the stars on the ceiling
You’re here, you’re there
You’re everywhere
Playing with the lights
Cards upon the table
Tools upon the ground
Mantis on the chandelier
Kick drum loud and proud
Off the beaten path now
You can call me if you’re stuck
Etched in skin of ones who lost you
Vines and sky and truck
In the eyes of a mantis
In the stars on the ceiling
You’re here, you’re there
You’re everywhere
Playing with the lights
Late night conversation
Always just one more
Never thought I’d miss the nights
You kept me up ’til four
Are you down to kick it?
Are you here tonight?
Are you laughing in the stars and
Playing with the lights?
In the eyes of a mantis
In the stars on the ceiling
In the soul of a blue dog
In the music and laughter
In the tattoos and rainstorms
In the moth and the flame
You’re here, you’re there, you’re everywhere
Playing with the lights
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7. |
Wire Girl
04:07
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You don’t wear your skin any more
Won’t let him in any more
You can’t risk contact with the Captain’s tears
You don’t count the days any more
Don’t feel the spray any more
It’s been a part of you for all these years
Wire girl, wireframe world
And rusted iron hair
Inklings of your infrastructure inching for the door
Steel wool muscles pull
On copper lungs and heart
Slivers of your superstructure strewn across the floor
Cast adrift, the skipper and his mate
Crew of fading shades
The Captain’s fancy rampant on the deck
A girl long dead now sketched in hurried strokes
Wiry wisps of smoke
Metallic skin the ocean stars reflect
Wire girl, wireframe world
And rusted iron hair
Inklings of your infrastructure inching for the door
Steel wool muscles pull
On copper lungs and heart
Slivers of your superstructure strewn across the floor
Washed ashore, the crew and captain gone
And you still hanging on
By hooks you’ve fashioned from your tangled skin
A girl no longer tethered to the past
Brave new world that has
Such see-through sculptures in it
Wire girl, wireframe world
And rusted iron hair
Inklings of your infrastructure inching for the door
Steel wool muscles pull
On copper lungs and heart
Slivers of your superstructure strewn across the floor
Across the floor
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8. |
Doubtful Sound
05:17
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Not so high and lonesome as a question mark implied
Not as wild as mercury, but close
Doesn’t get much lower than the waterline at Doubtful Sound
Driving rhythms drive me to the coast
Sally showed up in the mail
When I helped her post her bail
Looking spotless, looking pale
Sally followed me around
To the shore and back to town
She drew the crescent, drew it down
She took me down to Doubtful Sound
Poisonous and venomous marine organisms
Clothbound books embossed with skates and rays
A butterfly distraction on a Sunday in a plumbing shop
The ringing in my ears goes on for days
Sally’s long and tall and blonde
Sally plays me like a song
When we turn each other on
Sally fits me like a crown
Sally sure does get around
She’ll be my verb and I’m her noun
She took me down to Doubtful Sound
Look into her cat’s eye, you can see she’s not too deep
But she’s higher and she’s brighter than the moon
Doesn’t drive a Mustang, but she overdrives with overtones
That rise and fall like swells in the monsoon
Sally joins me at the hip
Sally goes down like a ship
Turn her up and let her rip
Sally followed me around
To the shore and back to town
Can’t help but wonder where we’re bound
She took me down to Doubtful Sound
She took me down to Doubtful Sound
She took me down to Doubtful Sound
She took me down, she took me down
She took me down
She took me down
She took me down
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9. |
Live & Direct
04:34
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White paper leaves
Scattered across the Ventura Freeway
She’d bet her last cent
That this had been someone’s unsold screenplay
Violent and crass
Filled in with underdeveloped clichés
She’d written one, too
And now she was driving it out of LA
Her modern romance
Written entirely on spec
She thought it might sell
But what she really wants to do is direct
Live and direct
She ditches the car
She breaks the heels off of both of her shoes
This credit card
Can’t take too much more abuse
Hikes to a hotel
Checks in and opens a tab at the bar
She opens the script
But he catches her eye before she gets too far
This tired hotel
This low desert town
Her modern romance
Nothing but fury and sound
Live and direct
He can’t keep it up
She can’t keep it down
Dreams and hotels
Burn them all down to the ground
She turns on the light
She sees the script lying there on the floor
Goes back to the bar
Where she sits lighting matches and being ignored
She holds the flame to Scene One
And she lights it and thinks what the hell
She couldn’t care less
If this blaze gutted this whole damn hotel
Her modern romance
Written entirely on spec
She thought it might sell
But what she really wants to do is direct
Live and direct
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10. |
Newberry Spectacle
02:45
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She lost time, she lost space
Stepped out of line and lost her place
She lost skin, she lost face
She lost gender age and race
And so the dead wheel rolls
She turned around and lost another
Down among that Newberry Spectacle
Had she but known just how little time was left to her
She could never know how little time was left to her
She savings, she lost grace
Lost the plot and lost the pace
Got short time and got short shrift
A victim of pronominal drift
And so the dead wheel rolls
She turned around and lost another
Down among that Newberry Spectacle
Had she but known just how little time was left to her
She could never know how little time was left to her
She used to think it was punishment enough
But now she seems to like it just fine
She’s come to feel that if they just could see the artistry
They couldn’t judge her unkind
She’s circumscribed within a triangle
Enduring the Pythagorean Curse
In between the jaws of the Nightmare Child
And something that might even be worse
Down in the Newberry Spectacle
Within the Newberry Spectacles
Whoa, oh
Longside the Newberry Spectacle
Deep in the Newberry Spectacle
Whoa, oh
Straight to the Newberry Spectacle
Down by the Newberry Spectacle
Whoa, oh
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11. |
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Norma Corona, what have you done
To invite such an inquisition, put yourself
Under the gun?
Creditors and jilted boyfriends
Are calling looking for you
Norma Corona, what did you do?
You wear your telephone crown at a
Come hither angle
But you’re letting us down, you’re letting us dangle
Ah ha, Norma
Norma Corona, how could you leave us alone?
Sometimes we know that it’s for you ’cause it’s Spanish, sometimes
We can tell by the tone
Taking your calls is taking all of our time
There’s nothing left
Norma Corona, WTF?
You wear your telephone crown at a
Come hither angle
But you’re letting us down, you’re letting us dangle
We got your number, that’s the
Luck of the draw
Caught up in your wake, caught in your thrall
Ah ha, Norma
People Magazine, we must protest
She was surely one of the sexiest
Fifty people alive on earth that year
Preferential treatment of the famous will not stand
We call for:
Full human rights for non-famous people!
State recognition for non-famous people!
Violent revolution on behalf of the non-famous people!
Like
Norma Corona, where did you go?
We’ll have you know we’re not the only ones who
Want to know
Norma!
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12. |
Double Blades
04:02
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Sometime it seems like a whole lot of trouble
Not to run down the people in front of me
Sometimes I find it’s easier to fall
Sometimes I find it’s best to sit in the bleachers
And just take in the scene as it passes by
Children doing figure eights and all
Sometimes you want to sit back and observe
Sometimes you’re ready to go
Sometimes you feel like you get what you’re wishing for
Sometimes you don’t even know
Double blades for you, my beautiful daughter
Double blades across the lake
Double blades across the ancestral water
Double blades so you can skate
Sometimes it seems like the sled that you’re sliding on
Gets a little bit off track
Slips off the left or to the right
Sometimes I dream that the bike that you’re riding on
Gets a little too far ahead of me
Slips around the corner out of sight
Sometimes you want to sit back and observe
Sometimes you’re ready to go
Sometimes you feel like you get what you’re wishing for
Sometimes you don’t even know
Double blades for you, my beautiful daughter
Double blades across the lake
Double blades across the ancestral water
Double blades so you can skate
And dreams come true
And dreams come true
Sometimes you wish for a heart-covered spy-scope
And you throw your coin into the wishing well
Sometimes the order doesn’t seem so tall
Sometimes I can’t even find one at Walmart
Or in any old drugstore in Keyser
Sometimes I can’t even find one at the mall
Sometimes you want to sit back and observe
Sometimes you’re ready to go
Sometimes you’re wishing for clear skies and sunshine
Sometimes you’re wishing for snow
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The Armoires Burbank, California
Anchored by the unique harmonies of Christina Bulbenko and Rex Broome, The Armoires present a tapestry of jangling guitar, keyboard and viola framing songs that evoke LA forerunners from The Byrds to X and the Paisley Underground, with a lyrical sensibility that is all their own. ... more
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