1. |
The Blackout
04:14
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Solar winds took down the grid statewide
In all likelihood he survived, it's a shame
My heart's a bison dying on the plains
My heart's a bison dying on the plains
My neighbors say in a couple days
The engineers will get the lights turned on
Take the bedroom hon, I'm fine with the futon
On the night watch until the worst is gone
Cities would burn if his lawyers knew
But I swear to you this was not a mistake
My love's a dragon swimming in the lake
My love's a dragon swimming in the lake
A dawn, a moonrise, an ocean of reflecting eyes
A family of foxes on the lawn
A lot to think about before he gets his talons out
I'll help you move these boxes to your mom's
Have you ever seen quite so many stars?
The child is his, you have to go, I know you should
My soul's a bloody hunter in the woods
My soul's a bloody hunter in the woods
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2. |
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I only care to spend the evening at the Suncor grieving in my folding chair
Watching the blood of Alberta flow through metal veins and boil into the air
I can feel her right beside me, whistling like she isn't even gone
Big rigs moaning up above us, glowing towers staring down the dawn
Her benzene eyes
She said the poison makes it more fun
I don't know why
This metropolis eats its young
I-270 nights
Oh, the beauty
My refinery lights
Oh, the beauty
Her parents never liked us hanging out in Commerce City watching how
We turn past life into fuel for the future then burn the future for right now
So I'm not welcome at some ceremony where their phony pastor lights a flame
It's cool, I guess, I understand their anger, we all want someone to blame
I saw the autopsy
Some sort of fungus of the lung
Such a tragedy
This metropolis eats its young
I-270 nights
Oh, the beauty
My refinery lights
Oh, the beauty
This obituary, sickening toxic vapors,
Her duffle bag of canisters and papers,
A brief article on tar sands from the Wall Street Journal
Grief is fleeting but all that carbon is eternal
We burn the dead
The worst criminals never get hung
Copper, steel, and lead
This metropolis eats its young
I-270 nights
Oh, the beauty
My refinery lights
Oh, the beauty
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3. |
Gravity
04:05
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When I finally buy a phone and call a few folks from home
They're all talking 'bout the school bus
Our finest scientific minds say there's no such thing as time
Just consequences moving through us
Damn, well I feel even worse if there's no other universe
[] where you escaped the fire
But there cannot be a past if they transport natural gas
on the same track where it hit the choir
Was there any force drawing my body to you
It never ends of course, I'm falling in a dark grave too
Even now we are entangled souls
No longer stars, just black holes
I'm still jealous of the friends your mourning mother mentioned
From AP Physics back to Head Start
Everything we think is chance is just a false flickering glance
of what really pulls us apart
But the local news will say twenty years ago today
An act of God, a faulty signal
Curse those networks of spin, goddamn that's not what happened
They're singing lies out of a hymnal
Was there any force drawing my body to you
It never ends of course, I'm falling in a dark grave too
Even now we are entangled souls
No longer stars, just black holes
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4. |
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Fuck Men's Warehouse, what's even the use of a new funeral suit these days
Stinging lights on, we lingered too long, they'll be happier when we're gone
Casseroles for bereaved families who just want us to leave so they can mutter and grieve
I regret all my talk of death, there's just so few of us left
Sketchy reports from pediatric wards in the cities of the north
They say a few base pairs out of place is all it takes to forfeit the whole race
All my friends are skeletons, their bones are shining through their skin
I'm thinking our extinction could be greatest, I never guessed we'd clean up our own mess
Hats and sunscreen can't shelter our unborn from the ultraviolet storm outside
Bunker up, son! Our numbers are so slight and the winter sky so bright
No one mourned the dinosaurs so why shed a tear for us and our fences and our lust?
One or two generations hence they'll make jokes at our expense
Don't yearn for what we could have been, we were never gentle men
When we're done running out of kin, someone better can begin
Strum the lyre, hum the hymn, oh, the pale fire is growing dim
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5. |
Slag Heap of the Gods
02:57
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Thank Lord Jesus his baby didn't take
The lady from the VA always calling, calling
Megachurches echo when the Lockheed Martins sing
Baby, we should move away from the Springs
So your horrid ex-boyfriend is stateside again
A chest of medals and a terrifying grin
Sure his tour lasted one too many years
Until the war replaced his mind with the grinding of gears
Oh of course it started over something stupid
A few saber rattles later we were bombing little kids
Know that poor bastard who returned is not the man who left
All you owe him is a forwarding address, a clean cut's best
Blades in the heavens where the pagan masses pray
Ashes of the empire keep on falling, falling
Burning mountains echo with that herculean song
Baby do you think we're doing something wrong?
So your horrid ex-boyfriend is stateside again
A chest of medals and a terrifying grin
Sure his tour lasted one too many years
Until the war replaced his mind with the grinding of gears
Oh of course it started over something stupid
A few saber rattles later we were bombing little kids
Know that poor bastard who returned is not the man who left
All you owe him is a forwarding address, a clean cut's best
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6. |
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The Bonneville salt flats smell like urinal cakes
Where you're scaring the hoes in our usual haunts
I'll scream into this mineshaft as long as it takes
To get a response
For the voice to awake
Saintly husks, another reckoning come
I'll sleep it off on their awful/offal chemical lawn
Mormon blood tastes the same as anyone's
Like a glorious dawn
Like a rapture begun
The sun sets on Utah kinda mean
This suit is never getting clean
It's a difficult, difficult sight
Just a typical night, alright
Reaping souls alone goes sorta slow
I miss you more than you could know
It's a terrible, terrible pain
But this desert's fine without the rain/reign
The Utah Jazz have a ridiculous name
And Karl Malone is surely more monstrous than us
I'll tear the aging flesh right off of his frame
Grind his statue to dust
Put his ranch to the flame
I can tell by the tone of your texts that you're fentin' again
To forget what we did for a bit before COVID and such
I keep myself too busy to dwell on our sins
At least not very much
Or the hell sweats begin
The sun sets on Utah kinda mean
This suit is never getting clean
It's a difficult, difficult sight
Just a typical night, alright
Reaping souls alone goes sorta slow
I miss you more than you could know
It's a terrible, terrible pain
But this desert's fine without the rain/reign
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7. |
Camp Gaia
04:11
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I didn't know your brother well he was two grades ahead of me
He hung out with those jam band kids, and back then I was strictly into Rancid and Op Ivy
Sure, I'm ashamed
But we met up at your wedding he was getting pretty bent about Big Food malfeasance
And extended growing seasons in the boreal frontier
He sneered, it's hard to explain
Agrohippy journalists went up there to visit it
But grizzlies got the greenhouse and whispers of militias vibed of something sinister
And never tamed
Yeah I made my jokes when they called logging "genocide"
And prayed to the forest as a goddess
But at least they tried to forge a form of progress in a world of flames
It barely made the news but after fears of nukes in Belarus and biomasks for donkeypox
Nine ecopioneers were found dead in Alaska
They said his name
It's the age of pirates but did bosses from Exxon or Bayer really send assassins in
When a virus from the thawing permafrost
Could have done the same
When all we have are sad, sad stories of our failures
There's a glory in retrieving a hard drive from a trailer between McGrath and Galena
To read his remains
I've been writing freelance off and on, with your permission
I will fake a fishing trip inland up the Yukon to confirm suspicions
And give you someone to blame
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8. |
Perennials
03:15
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You picked me up all hot and insecure like a demigod
Four whole days of hitching can leave a body raw
Feeling phenomenal in the winter wind of Saginaw
With a redpop Faygo and a handful of tramadol
If it's true in a few billion years, a few billion years
An expanding crimson sun will eat the earth
Then I'm sure we will still be here, we will still be here
Calmly haunting everyone we once were
After my relapse I woke up sore in Florida
There's gold down in the salt off that foreign shore
I could have sworn I saw you clean the clinic corridor
With monogrammed towels and a permit for the ocean floor
If it's true in a few billion years, a few billion years
An expanding crimson sun will eat the earth
Then I'm sure we will still be here, we will still be here
Calmly haunting everyone we once were
Carnage at the docks, an awful spate of maulings
Snipers on the roof, decline and fall on every screen
I'm bleeding from a head wound in the El Cerrito Walgreens
Your voice is on the intercom tweaking out all of us fiends
If it's true in a few billion years, a few billion years
An expanding crimson sun will eat the earth
Then I'm sure we will still be here, we will still be here
Calmly haunting everyone we once were
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9. |
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I found a moonfish in the sand this evening
Never encountered close to land I was leaving
The vacation rental I was cleaning
Scales all the colors of a sunrise gleaming still
Eyes flecked with gold like a glittering of souls
All the friends I've lost in every screaming squall
All the steeples crossed, every rusting hull
Is staring back at me from the graveyard of the sea
I don't go out on the water all that often
Holes grow in a harbor coat and sea legs soften
Oh, how that low sky closes like a coffin
Every season the surf feels choppier
So my heart be free of sin I will never eat fish again
All the decades lost, all the fuel burned
All the oceans crossed, every tide returned
They're calling out to me from the graveyard of the sea
Alone now on a slab under the florescent hum
At a repast in the lab of the Seaside Aquarium
As the diesel-powered storms are growing ever close
The shore of Oregon erodes and the iron waves approach
Soon all of us will be in the graveyard of the sea
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10. |
The Final Song
05:30
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When the cemetery glow adds a brilliance to your glare
I'm holding a toy owl from the Monroe County fair
Local ghosts, the four of you were close I know
The final song we sing will echo from below
Echo from below
Runic patterns in the snow on the old basketball court
I lost one of my gloves as an offering of sorts
Can it last? This metastasizing love
The final song we sing will echo from above
Echo from above
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Nadalands Fort Collins, Colorado
Nadalands is the solo songwriting project of John Lindenbaum (The Lonelyhearts, The Distances, Rust Belt Music).
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