1. |
Best Mistakes
04:20
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Son of a first shifter
You were born to run in place
Or lean on your bike outside the Dairy View
Where the graduates and wastrels shotgun in their cars
Recover from work is all they seem to do
But it beams down from the towers
So you patch it straight into your veins:
30,000 watts of expectant fantasy
You hear the rumbles and the backfires
Echo down seventy-one
Disciples spreading the gospel of revelry
And these songs that sear your senses
As you're floating past the houses
Stripped of their defenses
And these moments momentous, leave you shaken and breathless
It's a sky of sparks from Brookpark to Story Road
You're blessed & cursed & catered to
You second guess & troubleshoot
As if you've known regret
But your best mistakes still lay ahead
Does she march with the percussion
Or slouch in some arcade
You pedal miles to find out every night
Someone to cool the fits and fevers
Or just to hold your hand
Someone to run with you when you run for your life
In the land of the losing season
It's just something that you gotta go through
Hear the cheering fade from the bleachers to the bars
Maybe the valley's got it in for you
Like the kids in detention say
Bracing for the oncoming death of the heart
But just dial up your station
Arms out and fairly racing
Towards a holy hallucination
And these moments momentous, leave you shaken and breathless
It's a sky of sparks from MacBeth to Orchard Road
Blessed and cursed and catered to
You second guess & troubleshoot
Like you're so tight with regret
But your best mistakes still lay ahead
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2. |
Full Blown May Day
03:59
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Hands still stained with newsprint
Ill-met in hand-me downs
The flats all rolled out faceless
As the upheaval came around
Shoulder still aching with a phantom weight
Hot visible breath in the cold
The curve of the denim, the stretch of the neck
An innocence that just won't hold
As I fall, no navigation
Plummet through the atmosphere
Controls go dark with the north star
O David, why'd you leave me here
So Gordon and the boys join me in hiding
With lots of red-eyed blues to spare
Controlled fires licking oxygen
Aching to spread in the air
One morning I thought the friction broke me
There was no one I could tell about that
Staring through the steam in the mirror
Couldn't tell what was staring back
As I fall, no navigation
Crashing through the sheets of grey
Dead silence on the intercom
O David, why'd you drift away
You should've been there, your left hand steady
Talked me down from the thundering skies
All these nights of full-blown May Day
Pulling ripcords and closing my eyes
Jackie of the powder blue shadows
Flicks a finger through the shimmering waves
Gordon laughs as my guts get knotted
He says I'm too far gone to save
Some nights I can still smell the chlorine
Still feel that retinal burn
Still hear the staccato distress signals
Floating out; they're not returned
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3. |
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Lana didn't need saving, but the good son tried just the same
Quixote on a ten-speed, running the tracks of toy trains
When the money started pouring, couldn't tell who was feeding who a line
Yeah but Lana showed the good son what really makes the trains run on time
And how the North Shore winds did moan
O'er all the mattresses out on loan
Such an enterprising flair
A little trick they picked up somewhere
Lee was the first to smoke, she masked her Salems with some Rose Noire
One night I tried to save her, cracking wise in some sophomore's yard
She said “I feel so damn rounded, but the boys like me to keep it nice and flat”
She made some sick wet sounds by the bushes and came limping back
And how the moon rose bloody in the sky
How her smile could not reach her eyes
Steady hand out for display
A little trick she picked up along the way
Invest in the surfaces
Learn to equivocate before you learn to kiss
What's upright gets upended
Time of your life, huh, kid
Things were different after that, I got some cliffs notes and a thrift store vest
Started rotating the father figures, kept the poetics close the the chest
I got some sodium and sugar to bury my synapses alive
Needed saving more than ever, but it'd be years before I'd even try
Cause the dream just couldn't be the same
Glitter washed out in the rain
So I traded it away
A little trick I picked up
No the dream'll never be the same
Once it got so soiled and stained
How we give ourselves away
A little trick we pick up along the way
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4. |
The Clamors
04:31
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I shuffle out for a cigarette
Why pretend to sleep
Bless a stove light & a radio
For the vigil that I keep
Son, you never gave me a reason
To sigh or to despair
Never came home drunk or even late
Still I'm deep in smoke and prayer
Cause I know you can hear the clamors
Deep inside, a frightful sound
Just like your mama can hear them
Lord what am I passing down
David left by the time you hit thirteen
We might a dodged a bullet there
He would've kept you from your canvas
Would've made you cut your hair
But I let you take out the Buick
To meet your friends, the wraiths and clowns
And I took out that second mortgage
So you could leave this brick wall town
And maybe leave behind the clamors
Such a gray, defeated sound
Like the pull of one more Winston
I hope I didn't pass it down
Oh bring some noise
Oh lift your sounds
Oh raise your voice
Go drown 'em out
Oh bring some noise
Oh lift your sounds
My serious boy
Go drown 'em out
By the city of the burnt river
Something beat down fills the air
But our lungs keep sucking it inside
Makes a body suspect and scared
But you walk in just before curfew
And tell me how the rag tags are
By the glow of the buzzing stove light
I muss your hair and thank the stars
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5. |
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Lorain Road, how it could lay us low
We'd race sundown through the valley
Stars above, an infinite scroll
And we'd scream into the median
As Elijah made his dad's car lunge and swerve
With dark lands & strange ways & the head on the door
Moaning back who we were, we were
Tripped-up and tangled under gossamer skies
Every God-forsaken Friday night
The sorrow gets synthesized
On a black-streaked sugar high
Beads clicking under stadium lights
Mock processions, autumnal rites
Ann says, “hold yourself tight if no one else will--
And no one else will”
So we'd roost in some pavilion until curfew came
Duck away from the cops and sway in the rain
And swear on the Necronomicon that come commencement day
We would commence to get away
Tripped-up and tangled under gossamer skies
Every soul-sucking Saturday night
The sorrow gets synthesized
On a black-streaked sugar high
Faces pale and burning, thrust up into the falling snow
Shivering vandals, too nestled to know
Smoking cloves on the swing sets, jumping hedges through the back roads
Oblivious to the oncoming cold
It's a cold more persistent than any on the North Coast
Shot of Elijah in a jeep, top down
Newly wed and crunching numbers out in Portland town
A clip of Ann out in Boston clowning with her baby girl
Two distant worlds
On the roof of my apartment here on Lorain Road
I'm drinking with my tape deck as down below
Death kids start shuffling toward the promenade
I toast them all as the sun slips away
Tripped-up and tangled under gossamer skies
Just rehearsal for the rest of our lives
And the black-streaked sugar high
Fades a little every Sunday night
Fading out of earshot and sight
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The Monologue Bombs Raleigh, North Carolina
Solo music project of Scott David Phillips. Raleigh, North Carolina.
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