1. |
Hurt Me Like Hell
03:54
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There's sirens wailing in the distance and the cat is clawing at your door, oh the repetitious nature of respiration, contract and then expand
And the beacon shining in the distance revolves at some odd BPM and it's sending out a message to the receiver, the central command
And maybe the CIA didn't plant it after all, but I saw so many commercials for it on TV, and all the lonely drink machines funding our old high school were the first respite that we had from low self esteem
and you hurt me like hell, you hurt me like hell, I catch the taste of salt and then I feel it start to sweel, oh my god you hurt me like hell
And when the morning comes I won't eat too much breakfast now, by the evening how I want you out, tired of choking on over the counter pills
and I know you want me flagged down by those predators up overhead and they're sizing up my lack of affluence, every time I smile out it spills
so let's keep these lips sealed up tightly and hide our truest worries from our close friends and all until the ruse becomes just a bit too far fetched, when the dog won't hunt and the cat wants in, let's just go back to bed again
you hurt me like hell...
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2. |
Set and Setting
02:08
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You say you're waiting on all the clouds to blow away like you'd be out there under sunny skies like you weren't just waiting in stasis with every season passing by from the snowfall to the heat that came like a fire to this capital, the one that helped us win the civil war so dream of yourself as a molotov, I know you've pictured this before
And I'm not talking about the set or the setting, you've had it so easy now you're just going overboard, it's not about the comfort in the moment it's all about what you do with it
And you say don't call me out, I did the dishes and cleaned the house and it's so cozy in here now, I feng shui'd the living room and took all of the garbage out, but nothing pretty can escape, it can't even solidify, you don't even use your hands some days and you're giving all of your art supplies away
(repeat chorus)
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3. |
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To those ghouls of the past that I love so much I live in reverie to this day, wanting breaking into someone's home and redecorate it in the visage that used to stay, because I dreamed that I woke up in the apartment that I lived in before the last apartment I was living in, the bright red couch the busted coffee table and all the bats, ghosts, and spooky forests still up on the wall
Wires strung up high to purple and orange lights, all these familiar yet hauntingly painted faces, and the same names in all the same places, it happened each year like you knew that leaves would change, and the pumpkins started rotting almost right away but we got speakers and guitars and rocked the night away, sober or lifted this feels so much more alive than it did just a day before and you'd work through so many more meager paychecks to ride that feeling out for just a little more
but then November comes and ruins everything and it's cold when you wake up and you walk to work without a real coat, and it's so chilly you can't focus on anything, you tune out all the customers and only think about the next year, and then reality comes and ruins everything, we're in a different world and all those former guests have moved on, we'll never throw a party like that again, no one I know would even want an invitation
Driving with you friends to the grocery store can be the simplest joy you'll know when the moon is in the right phase, when you still have friends with whom to go
Having people over to celebrate the simple way that we pass our time here, it cannot be taken for granted when you love your life even for one month out of the year
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4. |
Hurry Up
03:35
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You saw me at a party it almost made me freeze, I didn't make much effort couched in my hood and sleeves, I hoped you wouldn't notice how little I had left, I felt as bare as the acrylic bones painted on my chest
I wanted to become transparent or maybe just a little more opaque, it was lucky that I brought my own liquor I was dancing to the radio I felt so out of place and I can't believe how nice you were to me
Now I'm waiting on the eschaton to hurry up and immanentize, I'm waiting on the disappointment in my Holy Father's eyes, I'm waiting on Anubis and Thoth to tell me what I weigh, I'm in the chamber waiting for the cesium to decay
And nobody likes me when I'm anxious, don't get me wrong I am the first one to agree, you were looking right at all of my transgressions and I just want to thank you for trying to wipe the slate clean and I still can't believe how nice you were to me, I fucking can't believe it
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5. |
Class Traitor
03:10
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Sometimes I still miss my coworkers, sometimes I still miss waking up at 8 am, I'd see your face as I fill my coffee, turn on the radio another day begins
Did I throw this away? Or was it taken from me?
Like when they doubled the rent at our house, and sent the cops to stop our movie and stamp us down, we're getting starved out of the neighborhood, you got out before me, a local boy still you're making good
Didn't we all try to get away? I know I made a few escape attempts, either way I was caught red handed, this will be my punishment, a class traitor
I'm moving up in the world, class traitor
And now I miss you like the deserts miss the rain, and now I love you like I hate the government, I want you here like you still live right down the street, I wanna hear you like Sam Grindstaff's voice again, I wanna know you like the inside joke I made, want you present like the thoughts in my head right now, while I'm on the porch looking up at the universe, you're in the yard turning your stomach inside out
And I'm a class traitor. Don't know what you'll miss until it's missing, class traitor.
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6. |
Sherry at Fox Theatre
02:37
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You almost died since last I talked to you, now I still feel cold but somehow the empathy seeps through and is there love deep down waiting to be thawed out? four cracked ribs and a whole lot to talk about
I tried to make it so you won't listen to this song, we never found a lot to which we both could sing along but the last thing I loved that you said to me was "Sherry, Baby"
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7. |
Kestrel Flies Home
03:10
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Scanning lines of sunlight, tracing you as the contours of the shape that you displace within the negative space that preceded you here, like you're in a tributary undisturbed and with no turbidity and you're laying on the surface and floating out towards the sea
And I am face to face with something I did not want to see again and I will sleep alone tonight and try to still feel okay the next morning, I am trying hard to breathe through both of my nostrils, I was trying so hard to breathe the whole last week, so why were you still sleeping next to me?
Now I can not escape, all tangled in strands of hair soaked in neon dye, all the brightly colored grasshoppers, the apples on the trees nearby, and now I can't avoid the local gang of feral cats, and look what they do -- vagabonds who travel from yard to yard like they were inspired by you
And I am face to face with something I did not want to see again and I will walk to work today and I will walk to class a year later, I woke up alone today and felt like staying sick a while longer, maybe til we're graduated or maybe just til I get my passport
I will sleep alone tonight and try to still feel okay the next morning, I am trying so hard to breathe
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8. |
Actual Lions
03:56
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Ghost and the Darkness, we are much more than metaphors we are man eating lions, no really we are actual lions, and yet you were the one who slaughtered the cattle and killed the game, gotta spill some blood to burn the calories that let fly the wheels of industry
And on that train they're still rolling over the Tsavo railway bridge, to convey out the raw materials with all the secrets that they hid, back to die in the lonesome West, like how our bodies rest posed and taxidermied
You can hate me, but you made it this way, you can kill me too
Now the USA is watching you with tired and suspicious eyes, better smile for the photo op, 12 year old girl with a Kalashnakav to protect her family, no this is not what the caption reads: No Gods no Masters to the East or West, down with the Caliphate and the Capitalists, with Bookchin on our side, God Damn it feels good just to be alive, we still have room for pride, we're not afraid to die, Peshmerga Forever!
You can hate me but you made it this way, you can hate me all you want
And you can fear me, but you made it this way
Now I'm on the MARTA train selling DVDs, singing "you made it this way"
I am the bovine with mad cow disease, singing "you made it this way"
I look just like this at the wrong time or the right time
A runaway from my parents' house in the nighttime singing "you made it this way"
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9. |
Receptive Aphasia
03:04
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If you saw me now you might say I look like an Australian Cattle Dog with a bandanna for a collar, homeward bound on the wrong continent in a yardless apartment waking up the neighbors as I howl and holler
And if you saw me about a year ago, you might say I look just like a struggling Beta Fish in a terra- non-aquarium, lungs not coping with the context, the suffocation magnified in this cold glass prison spheroid and convex
And why would you ever want to die when you've got no idea what comes afterward? You sound so conceited when you say "nothing could be worse than this," you know how easily it could be, so ask yourself if you think that it should be
And if you see me tomorrow you will say how much I look like something weird and indescribable, graph with the nodes connecting adjacent words cut out of the corpus on paper scraps then strewn across the floor in a random fashion
why would you ever wanna die when you've got no idea what comes afterward?
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10. |
Sorry Listener II
04:00
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(courtesy of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgk_DB5eJc0 no rights reserved)
Because we're driving the historical vehicle with the rear-view mirror, it appears to us that we're headed straight into a brick wall at a thousand miles an hour. It appears that we are destroying the earth, polluting the earth, destroying the atmosphere, wrecking the oceans, dehumanizing ourselves, robbing our children of a future, so forth and so on.
I believe what is in fact going on is that we are burning our bridges. One by one we're burning our bridges to the past. We cannot go back to the mushroom dotted plains of Africa, we can't even go back to the era of and cayuse and six shooters of 200 years ago. We have burned our bridges. We are preparing for a kind of cultural forward escape and this question, you know, is there cause for optimism? The answer is it depends on where you placed your bets
[...]
All culture is being destroyed, all culture is being sold down the river by the sorts of people who want to turn the entire planet into an international airport arrival concourse. That's not the victory of somebody's culture over somebody else's culture, nobody ever had a culture like that. That's just the victory of schlockmeisterism and crapola over good taste and good sense. If I were dependent on the notion that human institutions are necessary to pull us out of the ditch I would be very despairing. As I said, nobody's in charge. Not the IMF, the Pope, the Communist Party [...] nobody's got their finger on what's going on. So then why hope? Isn't it just a runaway train out of control?
I think the "out of control" -ness is the most hopeful thing about it. After all, whose control is it out of?
-Terrence McKenna
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Athens Horse Party Athens, Georgia
A DIY bedroom-based CD label from Athens, GA.
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