NEWS • SHOWS • TOUR DIARY • BIOGRAPHY • LYRICS DISCOGRAPHY • GALLERY • PRESS • MUSIC • CONTACT • LINKS • LYRICS ALBUMS FILL UP THE ROOM (CD/LP) K Records, October 23, 2007 Apple I could live by the river with both of my feet in the blues Re-organize nature while I compartmentalize the sky, too I could do what I do And the rest of the world would have to pretend like they knew With my roots in the water Like some cigarette cellophane tooth The heat in my head that would boil in your bed And pull me into you I could fill up the room with these things I been thinking about you It’s true. (Even If You Die On The) Ocean for Erik Carter & Bas Jan Ader I found the garden gate unlocked so I went in And picked the perfect spot where I could bury my youth But hounds of love and hounds of war Hounds galore Those hoary hounds were pouncing Each with waxy wooden tooths Remember when it dawned on you The day that you knew that You could live forever and still never make a masterpiece To shut those pups up in the least But everybody knows That’s the way it goes Even if you die on the ocean Every Wednesday afternoon Me and you bleeding on the newspaper classifieds Dragging out the drinking down for high school kids who Died out on the highway in the middle of the night Sing a song that means you love Everyone who’s ever come within the sound Of any of your cloudy words But get your song together first Save it ‘til you’re sure Hang it on the door Sing it from the top of the mountain ‘Til everybody knows Exactly how it goes Even if you die on the ocean Even when you die on the ocean Children screaming speeches into microscopic tape recorders Wired to the mire of the moat And I was still at odds with several thousand nonbelievers Both above and below Smoking silhouettes outside the school with all the cymbalists The simplest way I knew to go And we could talk ourselves into the dreary deeps Before we realized there was a hole in the boat And everybody’s answer to the world Was “We should start another world!” And I said, “What do you propose? Because you know The world that we’ve got going now has to be The hardest place I’ve ever been. It’s got me shrinking in my skin, but then again, I guess That everybody knows That’s just the way it goes.” Even if you die on the ocean There’s just so many crowns And everybody drowns Everybody dies on the ocean. When I Lose My Eyes Me and my best friend sleep without any clothes With books on the bedspread in languages no one knows All the windows are open All of the low lights glow And we flood all the rooms of our homes until we float And wash out to the street down below And when I die, then I’ll sleep in the sides of clouds Over the mountains I’ll hover above your house You’ll hear me haunting You’ll hear my cries and howls Ringing between rows of the teeth in your mouth It feels like the end of the world inside you When this sweetness infinitely holds us And I fall into you The hex on my heart made it harder and harder To finally find you You and your sister Alone in the upstairs room Speaking in whispers at three in the afternoon Were you surprised when you started to see Right through her skin and the things she said to you? You know the whole family eventually all went blind Or their vision got blurry Simply a bad blood line I won’t be angry when I lose my eyes My hands will have mapped out the world by that time And my sight, It might forget what to do when the things That I’ve seen and I’ve been When they come back for me The whole world will sing through the tips of my fingers And I’ll feel everything like I was listening to the rain When I lose my eyes there will be something more Something my vision was far too afraid of When I lose my voice there will be songs beyond the bubbling And braying my singing was made of before When I lose my hands there will be brand new words And fingertips floating on top of the ocean for you When our lungs shut down we will rejoice and shout Building butterflies out of our breathing, believing end. Make A Plan Swimming through a situation Overwrought with apple seeds and awful poems And it’s perpetual Everybody everybody everybody everybody Told you so They say “I told you so.” Singing before seven and you’re crying by eleven And the bridges overflow But everybody laughing at you Is missing all the action that you buried there under the snow Jenny never worried about the future When she used to have a chaperone She wasn’t happy though She would lose her mind a sentence at a time And call me on the telephone It was uncomfortable Singing before seven and you’re crying by eleven So the story goes But god is always laughing every time you make a plan So you can never really know And everybody’s gonna tell you something different, anyway They think they know but they don’t So if you’re looking over the edge Where the skyline extends And you don’t see your friends (they were right behind you…) But now what did you learn From those factory girls And the rest of the world coming to find you? Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny So theatrical So theatrical Keep it with your secrets In the cabinet with epaulette’s and birth control And don’t let no one know Singing before seven you’ll be crying by eleven And your tears could float a boat And god is always laughing every time you make a plan So you can bury your hands in the snow. Peg (see also: Green Mansions) Right now I can barely tell if I’m sleeping or awake In a little while It’ll be the morning You won’t remember being lost In the after hours Take my number down Write it on your hand Call me in the morning Which of these worlds is going to find you? Is gonna remind you what you have to do? And why do you feel like you’re being lied to? Why don’t it feel like anything new? Peg, it’s almost wintertime Is it snowing where you are? Wait another hour It’ll be the morning. Money In The Afterlife (see also: Money In The Afterlife) What will we do with all these words when we die? Will they spend like currency in our afterlife? Always waiting on a world that will never come Always standing in line Sinking feelings, inexplicably But always leaning towards some sort of light So where are we going And how does it feel where we are now With all our sentimental songs siphoning out? What will we do with all the time we’ll have once we die? Will we trade our memories, Change all the endings, Revise what was each other’s lives? I’ll haunt the house you dreamed about But you never saw the inside I’ll sing in your voice And you could sing in mine So where are we going And how does it feel where we are now With all our faculties like rooms emptying out? With the tethering stress of the breath in our lungs And the sounds of the women and the men And the endless undone-ness of everyone And this sense that nothing is over and nothing’s begun yet. The Americans The way you talk could always make a fool of me Studying the patterns of your speech I was imagining a world just out of reach but brilliant, still And you were fumbling for something in your purse Wondering if things could get much worse And if you’d find a cure for all your endless ills There was a sound coming out of the way That you looked at me the day that we met Birds on the roof Cackle words like the pages of books upturned We were there and then we left With whiskey, blood and breath And the typical duress of being alive You thought the band was out of tune and overdressed Just your typical American b.s. There was a sound at the edge of your lips and the corners of your mouth The day that I left Birds on the roof mutter names out of context And summer burns down With a fluttering sound I was another rubber band around your wrist Staring at the stairway where we kissed were you Imagining a world that don’t exist and never will, Or were you looking for my number in your purse? Light another cigarette And sing and curse Until the dancefloor dreams and the world is still. Edison Girls In the time of the Edison girls I was listening to every word There was something happening Dressed in clothes that my family wore Left the world by which they all swore But stop before you say you will Cause we know that you never will It’s just a lie And there’s a tightrope running through the living room And there’s a sidewalk made of gas And there’s a light bulb broken at the bottom of the swimming pool And there’s a reason why I’m gone You can leave my name out of your book With the doctors, forefathers and crooks who invented history Who’ll invent the time machine? But for now I’m just hanging around Dream my dreams in cylindrical sound But stop before you say you will Cause we know that you never will It’s just a line And there’s a tightrope running through the living room And there’s a restaurant on fire You’re like a cyclone blowing through everyone you knew And there’s a reason for it now. Hands In The Snow By the time you read these words I will be gone And I don’t know if I’ll be back So before you ask, just remember that we’ve been here before I see through windows in the rain Through all the language left behind And I watch you drink invisible ink So I won’t know when you swallow your words I won’t be there to watch it all unravel To watch the union come undone The end could come at any time With harvest hands and TV eyes And the scientists know the way it is And we all know And we follow them down I hear you talking like a train On concepts you can’t quite explain Like a Dictaphone set especially slow And I don’t have the heart To tell you what a fool you are I won’t be there to watch it all unravel To watch the union come undone By the time you hear this tape I will be gone And I won’t be back So don’t even ask Cause we all know And we follow With our eyes on the sky And our hands in the snow. Come With Your Arms Come with your arms Come with your screaming, embarrassing heart Shining a beam if you come in the dark To show every part And make yourself light as the air Come with your hands Conducting a chorus of fervor and flags Packing your past into old plastic bags The darkness will drag ‘Til you feel like the only one there So how could you even begin to believe in The things people say The world in that way? And could you see me there With car keys and wheelchairs And things thrown away? Come with your bones And the long list of names that won’t leave you alone Posing as problems pretending they’re poems They glower and glow As they spit sanctimonious swears And come with your paws Grinding your teeth like the teeth of a saw With the horror that sleeps in the hinge of your jaw, The worst of them all Til you feel like the only one there So how could you even begin to believe invisibility? In a world you can’t see? We clatter and clamor We falter and scatter and fall off like leaves. Whitey Hands Sing into your hands ‘til everybody understands Exactly how you feel Springs of silver sound dripping from your fingers down Dripping from your fingers now Hang your armor out Stretch your arms above the clouds Let your love be loud Let your body be a house Let your cries drown out the crowds I can hear your heavy shouts I can hear you handing down anything you want (You can hand them anything you want) Any handsome oblivious song (grinning like a jack-o-lantern candy hands on Halloween the halo hanging round your head was just the way it felt you can make believe it or just keep it to yourself show it to your mother or just throw it down a well until it’s sticking to your fingers and the skin around your clitoris the ever-present evidence for everybody else dying with a million little invisible cells show it to your lover or just throw it down the well) Every wordless voice and what they want to sing to me Never said a thing to me The billboards made me ill But I bought it still Their nauseating symmetry At the end of everything we was Hold your hands up And let that be our love. 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