1. |
Home
03:17
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I don't know how to talk to you
All of the things I've put you through
All of the wonderful things we've seen 'til now
Will take us to right where we started out somehow
And it's alright
After all the nightmare battles we've endured
And I'd like
After all of this for you to be assured
When you're tired of the gruelling realm we roam
It's time for us to go home
Once we were like a team of two
You loved the things I made for you
It would feed you, sustain you and give you a headstart
And slowly you've starved and we've climbed ourselves apart
But we'll be fine
If we take the path that everybody takes
We'll be fine
We can learn from all the previous mistakes
I'm just glad
I'm not doing this alone
And you'll always be here to take me home
Don't worry about me
I'll be fine
Let me go out of sight, it's ok
I'll call back, call you up,
Let you know if there's a way
But if you'd rather I didn't phone
Well that's ok
I'll see you when I get home.
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2. |
Blinding Summer Light
03:50
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I wanna go outside and write your name
In sunlight on the backs of both my eyes
I hope you're not surprised
When I use my scarred retinas to
stare your scrawled and cursive name
onto the dusty surfaces of
things I used to love before you
It's hard but what can I do
And then I count the days before
Allowing both my retinas to heal
So I can see your face in perfect clarity
Oh I will see
Your face in front of me
And then behind my eyelids I'm with you
Imagining the things we're gonna do
In phosphorescent brown and black and blue
In fine and blinding summer light with you
I didn't even want to know your name
Until the sunlight sparkled in your eyes
It took me by surprise
And suddenly the paradigm
Of thinking I was fine
Was shifted into realising that I
needed you all of the time
And when I close my eyelids I'm with you
Imagining the things we're gonna do
In phosphorescent brown and black and blue
In fine and blinding summer light with you
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3. |
Sex Before Marriage
03:24
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4. |
Charlie's Birthday Song
03:44
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5. |
Kelvinbridge
02:12
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I don't know what's going on
Please remind me
Everything that has gone wrong
Is behind me
You put things down on the floor
Nothing for me
I look up just like before
And you ignore me
I don't know what's going on
Please remind me
All the good times take so long
But they will find me
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6. |
Dream Gate
01:02
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7. |
What Did You Do
01:36
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What did you do
To get some
Job like that what
Did you do
Did you sleep with the
Branch manager
What did you do
Did you try
Your very best
To be the best one you could be
Did you try your very best
Hand in a nicely justified CV
What did yo do
To get that job
What did you do to get the job that you wanted
You're spending evenings looking after cats
And i'm alone with creepy looking rats
What did you do what did you do
Did you suck a dick or two
What did you do what did you do
Did you try real hard to do your best
Cause I
Wanted that
And now I'm cleaning up after rats
What did you do what did you do
I wish that I was you
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8. |
||||
Nobody asked me to play at VidCon this year
Nobody wanted me on their panel at all
Last year I played some songs and went away
And this year it seems as though they don't want me anyway
Nobody asked me to play
At VidCon this year
They say 'we don't want you'
And I cry a single tear
Gonna do the secret panel
And everyone can see
That you're all VIP
And I'm just Industry
And Vondell's even worse, cause he's only Community
At VidCon this year
Nobody wanted to ask me to do things
At VidCon this year
But all of the fans want me to do things
Ask me to sign things i'll do it happily
Ask me to play, and that'd be even better please
nobody asked me to be on a panel
even though i know lots of things about panels
That's what panels are right
You just sit and talk about panels
Panels on things like
Wood panels
Floor panels
Secret panels
No-one wants me
No-one wants me at all
No-one wants me to sing in that hall
They only want people like Shane Dawson
Even though I draw a crowd when I'm doing stuff anyway
Nobody asked me
Nobody asked me
Though I'll do stuff anyway
Nobody at VidCon
Nobody at VidCon wanted me to play
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9. |
A Little Irony
03:08
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Time should stop moving
And never go beyond today
If we could find a way to stop
The world would be okay
If I'd thought about it sooner
It wouldn't have been downhill
But I'll make the best of what I've got
While I've got it still
Do you wanna know
A little irony about me
I don't know if I should say
This little irony about me
But it's funny cause my heart has started
Beating
It never has before today
It must be something in the way
She looks at me
She started screaming
Before I made the earth stand still
Of all the people I could kill
It had to be
Do you wanna know
A little irony about me
I don't know if I should say
This little irony about me
But it's funny because love was just a
Feeling
Irrelevant before today
But now I've gotta find a way
To make her real
Freezing
Was just for me to get away
But now I need to learn to stay
And make her real
When all the world around me
Moved so unpredictably
A moment never lasted long enough
For me to see the reason why
Love never came to me
It moves unscientifically
But now you're trapped and I can
Find a reason now to ask you one more time
Do you wanna know
A little irony about me
I don't know if I should say
This little irony about me
But you'll move me more forever
Than you ever could before today.
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10. |
A Reminder
02:01
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11. |
West Street
03:39
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One hundred and fifty thousand voices
Saying the same thing every day
One hundred and fifty thousand pairs of shoes
Wearing away
Shuffling round beneath the surface
A thousand people standing still
I can devour them with my edifice
Moving at will
So much to do when you're a servant
So much to give when you're a slave
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12. |
This Shore
02:06
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This shore has rhythm. A fractal beat
On surf and sand. A wave. A wave.
The ding ding, the hum,
This hiss and smoke from Manhattan’s mouth is loud
But young. It will pass. Shore
is forever. A wave. A wave.
A wave in wet paint on metal,
Wet orange reflections, captured light set forever.
Wet paint is like brick in this city.
The sky is made of air,
The doors are made of wood,
And the heads are made of paint.
East river water is made of paint.
It’s wet and every night the light
from its twin in concrete waves,
Waves, shows it colour and contour and form
And lets it play; a thick sodium slug
That sticks to the sides, shimmering.
This land has deep vibrations,
Anger and strong footsteps, rumblings
And penetrations and this
Shore-to-shore shake that keeps it
Up. Wet, dry, hot, cold, down,
It’s a furious nightlight;
Ding, awash in a river
Going east to an island and floating
Easily on the wind like a gull;
Ding, going east to the ocean and
A gulp, a wash, a river of spit
And an ocean of shouting flotsam.
Paint this city black. Paint this city black.
Shout amongst this hum, this hiss
And Manhattan’s smoke and mouth your words
So every silent phoneme is a subway tunnel!
Ding, a wash, a gulp, an ocean, a river.
Ding, strong penetrations, footsteps, vibrations.
Ding, Thick colour, concrete, night and paint,
Ding, the heads, the doors, the sky is wet.
The city sleeps beneath a pillowed sky
And suffocated hum and hiss and smoke
Can not disturb a wave. A wave.
This city sleeps surrounded by the shore.
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13. |
Baltimore
03:48
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Don't nobody care about my head
And it hurts like it never used to do before
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14. |
Ibrox
05:33
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15. |
Skin
04:37
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It was the day after my second album Painfully Mainstream was finally released. I stepped out of the shower, my fingers corrugated by the water, and saw a little white flap of skin at the tip of my thumb. I dried myself off with the damp blue towel from the floor all the while looking at this flap. It was big, a hole in my hand that wouldn’t close up on its own, made of a dead layer of myself that it was time to remove. I pulled at the flap and watched in horror as it slid the skin off my thumb whole, like a sausage casing. It hung, limp, while I instinctively tried to back away from it, but of course, it was attached to my hand and so what else could I do but keep pulling, like a glove now, all five of my fingers detached from the translucent, alien thing that my body was birthing from its surface. As it began to separate from my elbow, I felt it tear at the top of my neck. I was almost sick, but I knew I couldn’t stop pulling, so, retching and terrified, I gave tug after tentative tug until the skin slid over my shoulder and I pulled my whole arm free. I looked at the virgin limb that I’d uncovered. It was grey, like a rainy day, and my veins were pulsing at my wrist in ways I’d never seen before. All my moles had gone, as well as all the hair. It was almost like a newborn, except where babies’ arms are full of insulating fat and untrained muscle and big unthinking innocent pre-proprioceptory movements, mine was poised and predatory, making tiny, wise adjustments to its tendons as I turned it and clasped it. I pulled the rest of my torso free and stepped out of the skin, leaving it limp and puddled on the floor. My new body was bone dry, and lightweight. I felt spry after shedding a whole dead layer, and sensitive to the touch. I felt my new body for the first time.
When my new skin was a week old, I sat at my piano to try starting something fresh. I was keen to see how my new body would work this out, but instead of rising to the occasion, my slimmer, streamlined fingers were skittery on the keys, ten miniature bambis on eighty-seven frozen lakes. The guitar was no better. The strings sliced my un-calloused tips and made them bleed. I was tired. Laughing made my new cheeks ache, and crying made them rashy. A week went by with no improvement and in desperation, I turned to my wardrobe. When I’d first removed the skin, I hadn’t known if it was to be of any use ever again but clever old me had had the foresight to keep it for a couple of months, just in case, and so there, airing on a hanger, were the fingers that had made all my chords before, the face that had felt all my tears before, the feet and shoulders and chest that had for nineteen years been my old translucent home. I reluctantly tugged it on. It was cold against my new skin, and heavy. It didn’t fit as tightly as it used to, and would bunch and sag, but it was fine around the fingers, and fine around the face. For a while, I was me again.
Weeks passed. I wrote more songs that could have sat side-by-side with the pieces that populated Painfully Mainstream. I considered re-releasing it as a double album. Then one day, I started to deteriorate. Holes were appearing in my skin suit, first at the pits where it would disintegrate, and then around my nipples and on my neck, tiny holes at first that would grow larger and more noticeable with the wear of every passing day. It took two weeks for the suit to be in tatters, but I steadfastly refused to take it off. The more it fell apart, the more comfortable it became. The more it felt like the real me.
It was a month before I noticed. With every passing day, my skin suit had been getting tighter and more contoured, and I relaxed into it, when any dermatologist could have told me that the last of the suit had slid away and what I was wearing now was my own skin, permanently darkened by the oils of the suit and gradually taught how to survive the everyday by the ever thinning layers of protection I had given it.
It was different now though. My new fingers had worked their way around what the skin had taught them, and held my knife and fork in an interesting way. They had a new relationship with the keys on my piano, half remembering the fond familiarity the old skin had taught them, and half remembering with care and consideration the uncoordinated confusion of their first try. My mouth started formulating words in a way my old ears had never heard, but the new ones were ready and able to drink them in and add them to the mix. I had a new way of working, and it would take me a year to become accustomed to it.
It was the day after I finally released Explorers 6. Everyone was happy, and I lay back on my bed, satisfied and idly toying with a little white flap of skin on the end of my thumb.
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16. |
Victoria
00:33
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17. |
Alien
03:43
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There is an alien in me,
It lives below my surface
I try to cut it out sometimes
It doesn't know what hurt is
And I don't know what to do
It gets too much to mention
A parasite upon my thoughts
It's eating my attention
There is an alien in me
I'm crying when it's feeding
It wriggles underneath my skin
And I can feel it breeding
Its veins are my veins and we share
A soul, a spine, a psyche
It doesn't seem to know I'm there
It carries on despite me
I live outside an alien
I'm carried on its body
Sometimes I feel its muscles ache,
Sometimes it does things for me
Communicates when I'm asleep
A psychedelic warning
Leaves little notes for me in dreams
And stains my mind for morning
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