1. |
Grip Strength
03:33
|
|||
|
There was a time when all of this was the best night of my life.
But lose your connection to the community,
and stand desperately outside,
watching and unwelcome.
Have you lost what's real?
Hold on.
Hold on, even though what separates is strong.
Hold on, hold on,
and someday when what separates is gone,
you'll know love's strong.
Happiness is nothing if not shared.
I'm waiting to share but holding out for the right one.
I keep it in a pile marked, "currently good",
and if you asked me, well I certainly would.
I can no longer hold this
confession.
Hold on.
Hold on, even though what separates is strong.
Hold on, hold on,
and someday all that separates will be gone.
This wouldn't need to be so hard
if I could just get you to say yes.
But as it stands, it's just so sad.
It's just so sad. It's just so fucking sad.
And when I woke up- or, when I wake up,
I'll knock on your front door.
I will bring the shake up
and give you a hard time about the time we spent apart,
because there was a time when all of this was the best night of my life.
I keep in it a pile marked, "currently good",
and if you asked me, well I certainly would.
I can no longer hold this.
Hold on.
Hold on, even though what separates is strong.
Hold on, hold on,
and someday all that separates will be gone.
So be anchored in that which is changeless, faceless, nameless.
May I be a protector for those.
And if you reach up,
reach your hand out,
from that hole you've been stuck in,
mine is right there.
I'm laying over the edge to pull you up,
so hold on.
|
||||
2. |
Burn the Maps
03:44
|
|||
|
I close my eyes and I lose my heart and I won't make it home again.
I close my eyes as I'm suddenly certain
we aren't going home tonight.
The temperature's changing with momentum.
The motion stays its course,
an unstoppable force-
until it meets me.
When as far as you know there's nowhere left to go
but no reason to stay,
there is nowhere new,
but you knew this change was coming.
I close my eyes and I lose my heart and I won't make it home again.
I close my eyes because I'd much rather feel it than watch it all go black.
But trauma's got my back.
Jam all of the music into my ears, all that I can hear,
and store the rest in empty pockets: jaw, lungs, stomach.
There is nowhere to go but down with the undertow
and sink with California.
Hold tight, we're sending Ricky for you.
I close my eyes as I'm distinctly certain there is no help on the way.
But there is no hell left to pay, our debt's forgiven.
And the absolution burns where it seeps into the scars we have earned.
I am decorated.
I'm not calling you out,
I'm just calling you out to play.
Seems like all there is to do
ever since I lost my way.
I close my eyes and I lose my heart and I won't make it home again.
|
||||
3. |
Coeur d'Alene
03:34
|
|||
|
Maybe I'll move to Wallace, Idaho.
Maybe I want to move to Coeur d'Alene
because the snow covered pines on the I-90
were the most beautiful I've ever seen.
Now there are some things I want to do
so I'm going off to be alone until it's time to die.
And you'll know why.
And there you go.
There were these one-off places that used to feel special,
like they mattered because we'd never be there again.
They were distinctive, unfamiliar...
They've become nothing now that I've lived here.
Living in a new city all the time leaves you free
of ever having to know where anything is.
You can just say you don't know.
And there you go.
At a gas station at The Corner Store off route 212 in Montana
I was looking at pictures of their protests - Occupy Broadus.
Let’s find a good enough reason to stay,
and when it's over, move away.
As long as I don't die where I can't hear the ocean.
Can you take it with you when you go?
Unless it's love, the answer is no.
|
||||
4. |
Hard to Watch
03:58
|
|||
|
I'm ready to go
I can't decide if I should start or stop or wander
Sit and wonder
There was nothing to lose
I held nothing to begin or breathe or end with
But I'll carry it through
There's more than enough room
When it gets dark
So overly, so overtly self aware
To share
Without response
It never echoes
It is nothing at all
It's getting so late
I should have put myself to sleep so long ago
Relegated to the back, unfit for service and
no one at all
It's too hard to keep saying goodbye
It's so hard to watch the things you build die
It just happens again
and again
Then it gets dark
So overly, so overtly self aware
To share
Without response
Empty of echoes
It is nothing at all
|
||||
5. |
Los Angeles Twenty Seven
04:10
|
|||
|
Let’s all move to Echo Park
and walk to Dodger games.
But November to March we’ll retreat
to the hills
of Los Feliz.
Through chasms of song
I’ll drag my death along,
haunting as we go,
‘til it falls in.
We’ll watch the (Chavez) Ravine sun rise
at six-fifteen in winter.
It’s just so much more liveable
than waking up to gray.
Through chasms of song
I’ll drag my death along,
haunting as we go,
‘til it falls in.
We’ll ride to where the bike lane ends
at Sunset and Elysian.
And I’ll yell, “shave those sideburns!”
at Don Mattingly.
Through chasms of song
I’ll drag my death along,
haunting as we go,
‘til it falls in.
|
||||
6. |
Soldier Up
04:07
|
|||
|
Free rein is a dark horse,
and rhythm guitar is a wash like the ocean.
Let’s dig in and let go the grip of home.
I number my days in no definite way,
I’m a clean pair of boots on a battlefield grave.
Wherever we go, ever in tow.
And Death!
Death, tremble to take me, love.
Assemble and make me tough,
better than who we are.
Speaking from a dark place,
message dictated but never read.
Go on give in and let go the grip of home.
I have triangulated just where I belong:
Its points are the ocean, the city and song.
Wherever we go, ever in tow.
And Death!
Death, tremble to take me, love.
Assemble and make me tough,
better than who we are.
She, understandably, is ready to be free.
Should be no great mystery.
Pacific blood floods through my heart.
My pulse greets the tide at a high water mark.
And then I’m swallowed whole,
in a breach of patrol,
until my breath is gone.
And Death!
Death, tremble to take me, love.
Assemble and make me tough,
better than who we are.
She, understandably, is ready to be free.
Should be no great mystery.
|
||||
7. |
||||
|
Before the snow arrives to coat the tracks,
to cover all the months mistakes-
misfortunes, mishaps, bad luck and bad breaks,
And until trees of green let me relax,
the falls won’t kill, but the impacts...
And darling, what a mess that makes.
And every break now is such a thrill.
And waiting for you has made me ill.
I am the last known coordinates of your sinking free will.
I am the one sin you have left to fulfil.
Paint me a picture, I’ll make you a mix tape.
Throw down your bread crumbs, and we’ll fake our escape.
But she wasn’t holding the gun when she was shot,
now what appears to be is not.
But it’s time to turn around.
Troy is calling you home.
I might have followed you (from home)
but I’m the heir-apparent to the throne
of the unknown,
a full-blown, full-grown drone.
But we live too far north.
The light’s gone, night’s long, wind’s strong,
so long.
Oh god,
and the forty-second parallel shrugs and turns away.
And every break now is such a thrill.
And when the wreckage is totalled, I’m sending you the bill.
I am the last known coordinates of your sinking free will.
I am the last crime you will ever fulfil.
Paint me a picture, I’ll make you a mix tape.
Throw down your bread crumbs, and we’ll fake our escape.
But she wasn’t holding the gun when she was shot,
now what appears to be is not.
But it’s time to turn around.
Troy is calling you home.
We all need things that shoot.
We all need things to shoot.
We all need people that shoot.
We all need people to shoot.
Find a way, find it all, find the truth and stalk the ground.
Hide the way, hide it all, hide the truth and turn around.
|
||||
8. |
The Right Dirt
03:06
|
|||
|
Cheer up, sleepy.
You’re an empty room to a heart full of debris,
and my Vintage 30s.
An overloaded jackpot,
I’ve lost the plot and I can’t breathe.
And I am functionally make-believe.
We ripped that plant out of the ground
and carried it around for too long in a bad dream where
I couldn’t find the right dirt.
Wake up, sleepy,
from drink song exile,
it is all a lullablur.
Autumn Walker’s grown and gone.
Did you make up your heart?
Is that what makes you run?
Get up, sleepy.
The tree fort’s compromised,
the tire swing’s been lost.
(They’ve crossed our) line in the sandbox.
And we’re taking shots like BBs off a battleship
that pitches with the waves.
My emotion sickness staves.
We ripped that plant out of the ground
and carried it around for too long in a bad dream where
I couldn’t find the right dirt.
We shook and slandered what we found,
buried it in sound and grew strong in a sad scene where
I never found the right fit.
|
||||
9. |
||||
|
Rocked,
heretofore and henceforth.
Disgust is the middle of this dense war.
Etched by blows, a richer tome.
If you’ll wait, I will follow you home.
Home
Report. What sank?
To a depth, to a debt gone blank?
We always knew there was something wrong,
so I search for it song after song.
Take me home.
I played this out,
I wrote it down,
paused a moment for the loss.
We may never have gone back,
but now we can’t.
Here we’ve gone West,
West and West again.
Over oceans, over mountains,
until there was no more West to be had.
Now with sense and with sincerity-
whose effects, preserved by rarity-
I am breaking for the construct of “home”
I’ll follow you home.
|
||||
10. |
||||
|
Oh god son!
Step into the light.
Inflame, irk, instigate, incite.
It’s a gesture so contrite.
Smacks of mendacity and spite.
Beyond the chasms and the void,
angered, anemic and annoyed,
I know what once we had enjoyed
we have now trounced, we have destroyed.
But a song will be sung for you,
and a dinner will be brought to you,
and then a morning’s going to come for you
and it’ll be your reprimand.
Lengths we went to will be taken back.
Ropes that bind you will be shaken slack.
But let’s hold off on goodbye.
And we can call out!
For what it’s worth
We’ll bring ‘em all down!
We’ll pack a fucking hearse.
And we can all shout
until we’re fucking hoarse
and that’ll be our reprimand.
We’ll give a nod to
just what it meant,
and run roughshod through the sacrament.
I was a god, too,
I was heaven-sent.
Who could ever understand?
Never closed eyes, but the inverse:
light from a much younger universe.
I’m fourth function!
with fourth-functionary friends.
In the quiet,
in the still of shock,
in between ticks of a ticking clock,
I can’t wait to say goodbye.
We can call out.
We can fall down.
We can call out.
We mutineers, we’ll comandeer
the splendid fear trapped in the sphere
between the mirrors between your ears.
Now here’s to all the insincere!
And only the snow can begin to explain:
I’m a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
Take what’s written! You can have it back.
I’m a blackout, I’m a heart-attack,
I am no longer compelled.
Goodbye.
|
||||
The Gator Detroit, Michigan
It's guitar, bass, and drums, but so are all your other favorite bands.
The Gator recommends:
These are great songs by some really great guys with great dogs.
go to album
Some Shit In Our Shoes
by Cheapshow
A song for every month of that year, running the full gamut of emotions.
go to albumIf you like The Gator, you may also like:
featured on Bandcamp Radio Dec 8, 2023
go to album
Jagged post-punk from Sydney captures the sound of the ’70s in its acute angled guitars and detacted vocals.
go to album
Revved-up and totally askew post-punk from Buffalo’s Ismatic Guru, with guitars that corkscrew like mad.
go to album
featured on Bandcamp Radio Nov 10, 2023
go to album
