1. |
Deadbeat
02:43
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This is the room where I realized how it would end
Impending doom and deeds I can't even defend
Will this be the year when all your heroes leave?
Don't shed a tear, don't ever learn how to grieve
Yeah, I admit I never did much on this earth
But I am sure you'll make more of your illegitimate birth
This is the structure, the house they'll find me in
With lost organ function and yellowing parchment for skin
Will this be the year when the rains never abate?
Floodplains disappear, religions descend into hate
It's too late for me but you just might see the coming spring
Before I go, I'd like to know what another day brings
This is the forest where I lived when you were born
In a medical chorus of beeping and screaming and horns
Will this be the year when you forget I exist?
I don't want to stay here, I guess I'd just like to be missed
Don't be upset, I only regret I wasn't around
If you despair don't look to the air, I'll be in the ground
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2. |
They F U Up
04:27
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Do you think you're constantly sad because it always rains
Or because your council flat is shoddy and stained
Or 'cause you lost the Empire?
Do you think the copper feels bad that he shot him?
In the colonial soup up in Tottenham
Boys are lighting street fires
Do you ever wake up and ask where your hairline's gone
Or when your face got so pallid and drawn
You can't remember, can ya?
Do you every walk the grounds of the cemetery
And wish it had turned out differently
You're a joke, Britannia
When will you learn we can't get rid
Of all of the things our parents did to us?
When you walked home from school, the rain kept falling
When your mother sent you out, the rain kept falling
When your father packed his bag, the rain kept falling
When you sang to block the shouts, the rain kept falling
Like it would never end
Do you ever wish you were a member of the Rolling Stones
Off on tour with wife and kids at home
Shagging American groupies?
Do you ever wonder if Pakistan and India
Really ever wanted or needed ya?
At least you got a few rupees
Do you ever wish Elizabeth could outlive death?
'Cause without a queen you'd have nothing left
Just empty gardens
Do you mind your off-white children running around
Fleece hoods up, trousers falling down
Keep your cameras on'em
When will you learn we can't get rid
Of all of the things our parents did to us?
When you walked home from school, the rain kept falling
When your mother sent you out, the rain kept falling
When your father packed his bag, the rain kept falling
When you sang to block the shouts, the rain kept falling
Like it would never end
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3. |
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All the space you asked for, eighty laps around our star
Frozen behind a blast door, a mile under where you are
When I wake, and take my first breath, when I wake
I will feel like I just might have conquered death
When I rise, my new eyes blurred, when I rise
I hope I don't even remember who you were
I feel electric current, let the icy poison flow
Bill my health insurance, make my broken heartbeat slow
When I wake, and take my first breath, when I wake
I will feel like I just might have conquered death
When I rise, my new eyes blurred, when I rise
I hope I don't even remember who you were
And everything we ever love will fade away in time
I'll have a brand new body, scientists will find a cure
No lost love to haunt me, a planet cleansed of the impure
When I wake, and take my first breath, when I wake
I will feel like I just might have conquered death
When I rise, my new eyes blurred, when I rise
I hope I don't even remember who you were
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4. |
The Famine of the Mist
05:12
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The thing about living in a distillery town
Is all we ever get up to is drinking too much booze
And if we might be giving thought to robbing folks at gunpoint
We will target under-30s 'cause they've got something to lose
In this crater of a homeland we've got cans and cans of rations
And we're used to breathing poison, we'll be safe if we can get
Into the steel cavern where they manufacture blackouts
Yeah, they manufacture blackouts when there's nothing to forget
At least until the sun disappears
Yeah, until the winter lasts for years
We've got time to kill some bottles and wonder why we even exist
We're waiting for the famine of the mist
Oooh we're waiting for the famine of the mist
The thing about living in a railyard town
Is all we ever sing about is leaving on a train
Though hardly no one does 'cause only freight can ride
And it's easier to stick around and wallow in the pain
But I knew you'd make it out now you're a nurse or whatever
In the suburbs north of Denver just a few counties away
You're all wherewithal and beauty, I'll love you forever
Yeah I'll love you forever or at least a few more days
Yes I will 'till the sun disappears
Yes I will 'till the winter lasts for years
(In my) dreams I'm standing in a field of flowing rock
Strangling every man you kissed
They won't survive the famine of the mist
Oooh they won't survive the famine of the mist
The thing about living in a volcanic field
Is you never really know when the lava's gonna run
Four thousand years adds up to a lot of nothing
When you're trying to predict when the next eruption comes
The one they had in Iceland in 17-something
Killed half of all the livestock and a quarter of the men
And destroyed the crops of Europe, well I'm thinking we'll deserve it
Yeah I'm thinking we'll deserve it when Dotsero blows again
Yes we will, when the sun disappears, yes we will, when the winter lasts for years
I'm not sad that the future is ash since the past is just the clenching of a fist
I'm ready for the famine of the mist
Oooh I'm ready for the famine of the mist
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5. |
Fading Twilight
06:19
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Now: the fading twilight of the midwestern winter
I am gazing at your perfect limbs
And washing off the filth of two days on a Greyhound
As the frozen piping gurgles up its hymns
Soon I'm getting high with your roommates while you read about theology
I'm thrashing on your couch all anointed
You get back from your final and find me in a K-hole
You aren't mad, just disappointed with my choice
The voices make it hard to cope but I swear to God I won't stop hopin'
Like Christ and Mary Magdalene we'll get together in the end
When you've given up sainthood and the worst of my sins are
Like the fading twilight of the midwestern winter
Now: the dying shadows of the northeastern summer
I am waiting outside for my ride
Scrapping for copper in vacant neighborhoods
And dreaming of the words you will write
In the pages of Harper's or the Atlantic Monthly
About how war is the mirror of the self
The guys in my crew, I tell'em that I knew you
But not that I won't ever love anyone else
Do you ever think of me as your jeep drives south from Turkey across the border?
I hope Kurdish militias take care of their foreign reporters
I pray the sunburned scars of whatever evil has been done there
Dim like dying shadows in the northeastern summer
Now: the swirling tempest of a Gulf Shore September
I'm nailing plywood to the window frames
God protect this parish, so close to the shoreline
And so far from the Minnesota plains and Scandinavian names
The Lutheran faith, it ain't about hatred
And it helps me stay clean and make friends
I've learned to play the organ and I sleep in the church basement
Am I happy? Well, I guess that all depends, depends on whether...
When you win your Pulitzer for bravery in deed and writing
And helping us all understand just why so many men die fighting
And you rest your prosthetic on the podium, will you remember
Love like the swirling tempest of a Gulf Shore September?
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6. |
Still
05:29
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She had the voice of ten thousand dark angels armed to the teeth
And preparing for war
Sometime in her thirties she just stopped singing, can't remember what for
She said she had the luck of the Irish in the late 1840s
She'd tell me stories like she'd met some boy and
She'd driven home just to swim in the quarries
Tears were rare but pills were copious
She said who needs a future when you've got opiates
When someone you know picks her own time to go it can be sorta scary
Everyone said kind words to the dead: she wasn't ordinary
I never felt awkward when we used to talk, I hope she thought of me often
The rest of them headed outside to get high but I just stared at her coffin
She never thought of me that way, she preferred it platonic
I was the guy she called to explain the reasons why hip-hop sucked after The Chronic
She had such good taste in music and such bad taste in men
She'd meet them on trains or at festivals, then waste a few years just settling in
And raising their kids but bearing none of her own
It's fucking unjust she ended up alone
When someone you know picks her own time to go it can be sorta scary
Everyone said kind words to the dead: she wasn't ordinary
I never felt awkward when we used to talk, I hope she thought of me often
The rest of them headed outside to get high but I just stared at her coffin
I still think of her lying there still after so much motion
Dreaming of space travel drunk on a park bench with darkness approaching
Now the one in the sundress looks familiar
She might have been her roommate in college or out-of-town cousin
Or maybe a work friend I met at some dinner
You know how white women that age all look the same
We both agreed it's a shame
When someone you know picks her own time to go it can be sorta scary
Everyone said kind words to the dead: she wasn't ordinary
I never felt awkward when we used to talk, I hope she thought of me often
The rest of them headed outside to get high but I just stared at her coffin
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7. |
Terminal
03:57
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Predicting the future has got to be the worst superpower you can get
Instead of a slowdance I see loathing and regret
Instead of a preschool I see bones, bones, bones
Instead of pristine forest I see gringo second homes
Life is just a terminal disease
We are all continents returning to the seas
When the waterline decrees
I see the Left Bank and Brooklyn Heights
And the Sunset Strip in downtown construction sites
I see the West Bank and the Golan Heights
And the Gaza Strip in the military airport lights
Predicting the future has got to be the worst superpower you can get
Instead of your Beemer X3 I see your daughter OD on a drug we haven't heard of yet
Instead of ballet shoes I see gentlemen's club dancers
Instead of ambulances I hear a goddamn lack of answers
Life is just a terminal disease
We are all continents returning to the seas
When the waterline decrees
I see the Left Bank and Brooklyn Heights
And the Sunset Strip in downtown construction sites
I see the West Bank and the Golan Heights
And the Gaza Strip in the military airport lights
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8. |
Two Hot Dogs and a Coke
03:46
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Two hot dogs and a coke we shared
Radio on and the fireflow glow
It's not enough to keep her around
But we still got three hours of moonlight to go
Two cups of coffee and the smoke we shared
Tired eyes as the sun peeked up over the hill
It's not enough to keep her around
I remember her shadows, guess I always will
So she had to go, but I just can't understand
How to take those damn pills out of her hand
And I can't push better air into her lungs
'Cause there's no guarantee that the dawn will come
Two forties and the night we shared
Pour some out for Colorado's bereft, would you?
It's not enough to keep her around
But we still got three weeks of summer left
Two cynics and the joke we shared
Laugh at the evil, choke on our words, yeah
It's not enough to keep her alive
They said she had a darkness in her, can't be cured
So she had to go, but I just can't understand
How to take those damn pills out of her hand
And I can't push better air into her lungs
'Cause there's no guarantee that the dawn will come
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9. |
Night Terrors
04:20
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I was sleeping when you called, short of breath and coughing phleghm
Forgetting your night terrors are your new husband's problem
You were sure something awful had already begun
Mumbling 'bout gas masks, seemed a little like world war one
Contact me through my lawyer, delete my number from your phone
I didn't believe you then, oh how could I have known
There was a sick man bleeding on a shipping container
Under a flag of convenience off the coast of Malaysia
And the air seal cracked in the tropical heat
And the strain will be stateside in a matter of weeks
Instead of "take me back" I said,
"I already know we end up dead
I already know we end up dead
So can I please go back to bed?"
I was with your replacement when I heard you knock
I told her go hide in the basement while I make sure the doors are locked
But you knew she was down there, you could see it on my face
You always knew unlikely things like you could never be replaced
If you keep waking up screaming you're afraid that he might leave
Oh lord, I hope so, I choose not to believe things like
The bug developed antibiotic resistance
And there's speedboats of pirates humming off in the distance
And the culling is coming and peacetime is hell
And our love was stillborn we were just fooling ourselves
Instead of "take me back" I said,
"I already know we end up dead
I already know we end up dead
So can I please go back to bed?"
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10. |
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Interstate 25 is a God-awful highway
At 3am, but who alive would miss me anyway
Creatures of the night are knocking around between my ears
The check engine light is mocking my fool choice of a career
Like a president or a movie star
I won't die in a bed, I will die in a car
I won't die in a bed, I will die in a car
I tell tales that illustrate how hard it is to be
White and male in our American society
I am like the road: a tired topic that is getting old
Stiff and sore from driving, cracked and crumbling from the cold
You can't pray to my remains if you don't know where they are
I won't die in a bed, I will die in a car
I won't die in a bed, I will die in a car
If I get any sleep tonight it will be
A gift from Christ himself in lieu of apology
Like any hardcore troubadour I'm just in it for myself
One more drink before I lie down, oh, here's to my health
They say mixing pills and booze is as safe as Kandahar
But I won't die in a bed, I will die in a car
I won't die in a bed, I will die in a car
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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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