Acetylene
(Many thanks to Chris Eckman for sending these to us. All lyrics used by permission.)
1. Fuck Your Fear
A rumble in my bones
A cold sting on my lips
The reckoning is almost here
Fuck your fear
New gravediggers born each day
Diggin' holes right where you lay
The reckoning is almost here
Fuck your fear
This don't seem like the end
It seems more like a bad beginning
Don't hesitate
Fuck your fear
Weakness coughs, then ricochets
Our boredom bleeds us wide awake
The reckoning is in the air
Fuck your fear
Dead folksingers lie in state
Acolytes scrape off their plates
The message falls onto deaf ears
2. Coming Up for Air!
Suckin' alabaster in a ventilator shaft
Chewin' on surrender because it's cheap and it lasts
This ain't hell, it's a holding tank
Where memory and the future draw a big, fat blank
I know this tunnel leads somewhere
But it takes mystery and a torch
And a reason to care
I know this tunnel leads outside
Down to the river where the elephants die
Comin' up
Up, Up, Up, Up
Comin' Up for Air
There is no better story than a man in a hole
This is where he laid still
This is how he rolled
This is how he fed, on the marrow of his bones
This is where he shuffled
Playin' doomsday alone
A suicide miner
With a depth charge timer
Rathole lover
Diggin' deep for a cover
You suffocate first
Then you learn how to breathe
The sweet of the sewer
Shows you the way to leave
make room for the cleanup crew
They're the last to the scene
and the first to be fooled
The townsfolk line thick
Along the riverside
Lookin' for a place
to watch the elephants die
3. Devil In The Details
The devils in the dull details
The devils in the coffin
of the details
There will be no finer day
To take my breath
survival is all parody
Contorted and extorted
For amusement
colossal youth on megaphones
please call us home
we need to come home quickly
singalong
Did this job make us crazy?
Or we're we so screwed up
we took this job?
Play dominoes with knucklebones
We feed the beast
Till he's too fat to walk
There are no devils left in hell
There simply are no devils
Left, in hell
deliver us from deliverance
deliver us, from all these awkward pauses
you are as brave as you believe
you are as brave as what you won't repeat
You are as lost as you need to be
You are as lost as what you won't admit
The future is a slow retreat
The future is a muscle you don't have
gonna shake tonight
4. Whisper
Baby, baby
Foolish baby
Wipe your foolish blame
Crazy, crazy
Crazy, baby
Wipe your foolish blame
I've been thinking bout this all week
How were lost on a losing streak
Armed guards at the last mini-mart
Shootin' it wide of the mark
Roadblocks goin' up in the dark
Hi-rise towers take a tightrope walk
Truths a whisper
A shaky whisper
chase it, then it's wrong
Time is panic
Hushed and rankled
You feel it, then it's gone
They take us in for identity checks
They've been roundin' up all their best bets
The refineries flare in the night
Roman candles from some other life
What's best, is somewhere in your hands
My best laid plans, your hands,
My best laid plans, your hands
Your hands, my best laid plans.
Shout! Got nothing to show for this
Shout! Where is the now?
Where are the next three minutes?
Shout! Got nothin' to show for this
Shout!
5. Kalashnikov
Kalashnikov
Closed circuit silence
I know I test your nerves
When I watch the watchers
They say the deserts bare
The forbidden zone
But I feel somethin' breathin' out there
Feel it in my bones
When we're out there in the zone
Your gonna have to trust me
When it's just us two alone
Love will be our only history
The commando squad
Is bored and poorly fed
Surveillance is their dog
And it's hounding us to death
I heard their gonna move us
To another transit camp
They're bulldozing the suburbs down
Putting up a razor fence
Bought an beat-up short wave
From a black market trader
But it's all just a high, shrill tone
That's why they call it thin air
I guess I'm getting ahead of myself
But we can't be both inside and out
I guess I'm getting, ahead of myself
But we can't be both inside and out
Inside and out, inside and out!
6. Have You Ever Seen The Morning?
I tried to catch the bus
out towards your place
but the bus never came
so I started walkin'
past Mission Mall
no one walks, out past there, anymore
and when I got back home
there was no note
cigarette, still burnin' on the stoop
turned into the wind
pulled up my hood
got on the bus, as the doors shut for good
Have you ever seen the mornin?
well it's quite naked
and stoned
Have you ever seen the mornin?
twirl it's hands
and fall into the light
We shoulda called the cops
just to scare him
but now who really cares?
still, he shook, our last dime
I ain't grandstandin'
my pockets echo in the night
remember that trip, out west?
to your sisters. We got high and
watched the stars
we laid out, in her backyard
she touched my hand
said: I'm gonna love you, when your dead
7. Northsea Train
The rain crawls up the coast
I know you hate
This one-way chase
A drunk, his wife and her friend
The drunk tries to stand
The friend says lay right there
Now it's all tower blocks
And blood blue flags
And closed up shops
The guardhouse light turns off
As the rain stops cold
crawls back alone
They're lining up the last suspects
Beneath a rusty glow
The Northsea train's on time
Northsea train
The procession is unsure
It's full of strays
With mongrel names
They know not what they've done
And at least today
That'll be okay
Hooded coats in zigzag rows
Draggin' coal back to their homes
Northsea train's on time
Northsea train
Collecting pieces of us all
As if their cargo, will break our fall
Northsea train's on time
Northsea train
Vanquished from all
Rhyme and duty
I'm struck and stranded
Vanished neath the beauty
Northsea train's on time
Northsea train
8. Acetylene
Rules of the game
Have gone and changed
Snapped!
Somethin' snapped!
Dog kings
flesh dreams
Death's tune
high noon
Wild talk, wild talk
The flame I breathe
flame I breathe
Acetylene!
Ventriloquist
earned your cut
with your mouth shut
can't take
More of this
Dictator face
On a postage stamp
Car bomb
expressway ramp
The road is torched
Already torched
Let it all crash
Just where it will
Then we'll see
that nothin's here
But what happens then?
What happens then?
recipes
for disaster
written on your cocktail napkin
Bless the beasts!
and the blowtorch
9. Before This City Wakes
At the cinema of flames
I work the swing shift
When I get off
I am inclined to drift
Through the downtown
So many victims of pleasure
That I've stopped counting
Soldiers of joy
Getting' hammered at the fountain
near the cathouse
They're playing techno calypso
At the apocalyptic disco
But I stand outside
Just to stare down the slithering crowd
Divide and conquer
is the new mathematics
But it's as old as the hills
On which all the mansions die proud
I'm gonna waste
Everything that you hate
Before this city wakes
I keep spittin' out
The first things that come to my head
A blistering list
Of the who, what, the when
And the wherefore
These times are stammers
And jitters, and echoes
A silence disfigured
A stupor born ranting
Like a stuck pig
Got my favorite booth
At an all night diner
And you've probably seen me
On a jagged, all-nighter
Mumblin' senseless
Assassination is the privilege of princes
But I'm getting sick of how everyone winces
when I'm close
Tomorrow let's meet
and I'll show you around
And I'll show you all the shit
that I couldn't tear down
With my bare hands
10. The Last Ones
We are the last ones
The last ones
Try that on for size
Open up your eyes
The last ones
There is nothin' to be said
Is there nothin' to be said?
Don't need to answer that
Promise you'll watch my back
The last ones
Heaven knows
Cross these plains of gold
We'll be headed home
Heaven knows
There was no place for us to go
And so we're headed home
We are the last ones
Standin'
The last ones
Demandin'
Try that on for size
Open up your eyes
The last ones
And the last ones
have the last laugh
And the last ones
steal the future and the past
And the last ones
Get all the things that never last
The last ones
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