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1. |
Satellites
04:31
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Friends used to lead
A drunken charge into the summer
In your bedroom on Southbridge St
You wake suddenly, startled from a dream
In libraries
In libraries a spider season
Say you’ll phone me on your way back home
In the quiet light of epiphany
There’s a sneaking suspicion
That something is missing
All our past lives
Past lives won't help us tonight
Everyone’s in love this year
We’ve had our taste of freedom
Now it’s time to spit it out
You’ve had a taste now wash your mouth out
Your babybird brother pecks at your shoulder
It’s time for work, so wake up
It’s time for work, so wake up, wake up
You wear a uniform for someone I don’t know
You wear a uniform for someone I don’t know
Five years at the airport
But you’ve never been on a plane
People leave and they dont come back
People leave and they dont come back
People leave and they dont come back
People leave and they dont come back
People leave and they dont come back
Our children lead
A drunken charge into the summer.
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2. |
King Salt
03:46
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I am a third wave
Trying to be brave
But you fix me with your fierce forensic gaze
Asking for forgiveness
A moth tied to a flame
You don't have a penny to your name
Ian McEwan is in love
Ladies and gents
You heard it here first
Married to a pragmatist
He is amazed that you exist
Praying to St. Christopher
For everything you've lost
Confusing value with cost
Speakers speak of darkness
As a language we can use
I close my eyes and wait for living proof
Ian McEwan is in love
Ladies and gents
You heard it here first
Married to a pragmatist
He is amazed that you exist
A longed for return
The breath that left my lungs
I wont look back
A disgraced priest
Excommunications blessed relief
I wont look back
A third world war
A tape hiss factory floor
I wont look back
I wont look back
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3. |
No 1 Son
03:43
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Stand and watch the river rushing by
Filled with Friday fish and fading light
It flows from the spilled table salt of the suburbs to the sea
Washes over everyone asleep in the final country
Reading writers that take it way too far
Subsumed into their terrified white hearts
Afternoons are lost in pornographic reverie
Underwriting hesitation marks if you're unhappy you'll be free
They are on their way to absence
And they sleep in bedrooms bathed in blue
Running out of roads that rise to meet them
And lies to see them through
You go out and run til you are thin
Baptised by sweat, absolved of sin
No.1 son in a war zone turning twenty one
Curled up like a question mark sat on the tip of someone's tongue
He is on his way to absence
And he sleeps in bedrooms bathed in blue
Running out of roads that rise to meet him
And lies to see him through
Do you see red the way we all see red
And read the writings on the wall?
A chipped tooth, a ragnail nostalgia
Empty as a drum
A rusted horizon line
The slow fade of love one day at a time
We are on our way to absence
And we sleep in bedrooms bathed in blue
Running out of roads that rise to meet us
And lies to see us through
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4. |
Seven Years
05:26
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Civilwarland in decline
Offers up its hand
To the mouth of every stray that
Licks the soft white flesh
Of salarymen too bored to even take another breath
Eleanor is at the sun
Trying to undo
All of the damage done by
The use of the present tense
She’s waiting on a friend to make her feel weightless again
Everyone here loves you
Everybody’s hoping for the best
In the shadow of a summer
You fell in love with the cruellest kiss
Last night I dreamed I was
A whisper on the wind
A warning of a coming quiet
The taste of blood was in your mouth
As you took my hand
And walked me through these demented lands
Everyone here loves you
Everybody’s hoping for the best
In the shadow of a summer
You fell in love with the cruellest kiss
Standing there in my black way
You were the one punching fuck
Only play with the children
Fridays drunk after work
I was pissing up white walls
Dreaming of spiders in my mouth
Drowning in the dry heat of
Another summer in the South
I was stoned and strange and rearranged
I was red eyed and dry and high but I
Never left your side
I was always by your side
Everyone here loves you
Everybody’s hoping for the best
In the shadow of a summer
You fell in love with the cruellest kiss
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5. |
Clucky
03:42
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A pin prick under
A full flush of stars
The white witch of winter
Swallows the neon nothingness of pubs
Two cars sleep in every driveway
Every bedroom bathed in blue
Mute shadows fall and flicker
In the gravity of a million tiny moons
Started out the tallest man on earth
Soon turned black as a bible verse
Slumped counting sleeping pills like sheep
One clean shirt can last a week
First fireworks of the new year
Shatter the night and disappear
Best wishes and whispered I love you's
Neighbours too far gone to hear
Memory just holds you down
Leaves you blue as a bruise
Stoned and strange and rearranged
Under communion wafer moons
And I was back in the haunted summer of '85
Watching dead men cross picket lines
They stood up for the Pope and they stood up for the Queen
High and low and nothing in between
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6. |
Husbands
03:18
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You are praying for
The end of lust
For everyone to cover up
For the fucking all to stop
I am here with you, now
I've always been here
Never trying, ever failing
Never found the time
I’m staying at the Thompson Hotel
Just burning spoons and going
Floor to floor and
Room to room down`
Corridors of cabbage roses
Half blind
In secret L.A.
In a plainspoken spring
In movement, in people
Five minutes do not exist
And husbands live in luxury
Have no history
A magazine, a butcherdream
A white house on the hill
I’m staying at the Thompson Hotel
Just burning spoons and going
Floor to floor and
Room to room down`
Corridors of carrot flowers
Half blind
In the half light
Half blind
In the half light
Singing days of miracle and wonder
Days of love and mercy
Dazed by youth
Turned your light down low
Dreamed of tall ships sailing out to greet some queen
While Waterpistol lulled you off to sleep
In a crow’s nest of worry
In a snake pit of money
Promise the rag and bone men
You’ll roll the address again
I’m tired of the Thompson Hotel
Tired of burning spoons and haunting
Every floor and
Every room down`
Corridors of cabbage roses
Half blind
In the half light
Half blind
In the half light
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7. |
Sleeping Twin
04:05
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We are a fiction, we are amazed at our existence
We stay drunk for thirteen days
A pool for the children
Their ancient skin, their loveless fists, our disappointment
Arms held out for the summer
Ruination on Channel 4
I hope the world is worth waiting for
Sleeping twin, sleeping in, just us to start with
Separation from within, your nails down my face
Our ancient skin, our loveless fists, their disappointment
Second children in the trenches
Firstborn is deciding what to wear
A modern home where i'm not there
Hear the landing creak
See your mother weep
Every living soul
Knows before they speak
Words are weapons to be used upon ourselves
Among the elect
A justified sinner
Pennies for eyes
To help you cross over
All the rest die like joy on a Saturday night
Blacken pages in the morning
Jacket on and out the door
The modern world
Is worth waiting for
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8. |
Various Witches
02:33
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Now you are gone, there is no one to tell me
If I'm one in a million
Or ten a penny
I watch white sheets wave on washing lines
They tell me to take it
One day at a time
I used your secret name and
Ruined a year in a single day
Long to return breath
That left my lungs
Each night I lie awake, love
And I listen
For the distant slumber of the Whifflet train
I learned all their words for hope
And a hundred words of hate
I know they can make it home
Before it gets too late
I used your secret name and
Ruined a year in a single day
Long to return breath
That left my lungs
Here with the various witches
Wiping away your kiss
Maybe I was away
Thinking about things
American Water
Tanglewood Numbers
The Natural Bridge
Starlight Walker
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9. |
All The World
03:25
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Sometimes it's like he speaks through you
You don't believe that
I believe that
But I do
As I watch your cracked lips turn blue
The make-up is crawling off your face
This is what passes for insight under a dull
And sickly yellow light
All summer, stayed at home with 'Rex's Blues'
A record with a sadness we could use
Spent a lot of time in darkened rooms
With a needle and a spoon
The miles fly by when you are
On the road to ruin
Everyone is waking up
If you did not exist
Then someone would make you up
From the world's last whispered words
All summer stayed at home with 'Rex's Blues'
A record with a sadness I could use
Spent a lot of time in darkened rooms
With a needle and a spoon
The miles fly by when you are
On the road to ruin
You washed your hands
And watched your hands
You washed you hands
And watched your hands
Strange things happen when you
Turn thirty three
Stations of the cross just hammer home how hard
Having principles can be
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10. |
Nightlights
03:06
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In the shadow of eight
Every Friday I kiss the indent made
By the body of my waking nightshift life
Turn off my phone
Lock up the house leave one light on
Into your car and into the night
A collective belief in the greater good
Never seems to be
Of any use
Never makes the living feel alive
Tongue toothache
Temptation is its own reward
Begin the business
Of disappointing children
In a clearing lit up by the headlights of parked cars
I close my eyes
And forget myself again
Clumps of police tape tangled up
A summer’s forensic afterthought
A sad nest of black and yellow vipers
Soft snow falls on soft white skin
A blizzard of bodies to welcome to in
One more time with feeling
All the things you think that you can live with
And the things you feel that you can’t live without
And the spaces in between
You can lose your sense of wrong and right
It’s after midnight
And you’re alone again in the city of dreadful night
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11. |
Settle
04:51
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In sepia, in Kodachrome
In every single semi-detached home
We all practice letting go
It’s the summer of creation
You are nineteen and it’s time to live your life
Get in line
And when he comes for me
I will not go willingly
I will kick and I will scream
Down B roads and C roads
From the spilled table salt of the suburbs
To the sea
Lost in aisles
Of endless strip lights
Up on trial in the half light
Spitting sparks
In the half-light spitting sparks
Ten years late
A yellow house
A place where we no longer make a sound
You spend your summers in the south
Attending milk teeth testimonials
You’ve had your taste of freedom, now it’s time
To spit it out
Lost in aisles
Of endless strip lights
Up on trial in the half light
Spitting sparks
In the half-light spitting sparks
Panic stricken
Dirty dishes and
A moon I never knew
Running scared and shaking through
Running scared and shaking through
A pin of Laika fixed to your lapel
Cellar door, you once were mine
You disturbed a wasp’s nest praying for wiser time
A wiser time to come back home
A time to leave your top button undone
Listening to Independence Day
Thinking of the things we wished for
The stories that demand to be taken as truth
A kiss can feel just like a fist
Adding up your reasons to exist
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12. |
A Disaffection
05:22
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Last I heard you were living in
Your mother’s house
Just off Southbridge St
And you stay in bed all day
The neighbours are afraid
I am working for the working poor
Paid to greet their children at the door
Tongue tied and terrified
There but for the grace go I
The present tense obscures the truth
Conveys the urgency of youth
Their language shadows the land and sea
Repeat once more after me
Saying no used to be your own
The only thing that you could count on
Now days of skin and bone
Force you to hold your tongue
The present tense obscures the truth
Conveys the urgency of youth
Their language shadows the land and sea
Repeat once more after me
My god we’ll die here
My god we’ll die here
My god we’ll die here
My god we’ll die here
With their words for love and their words for hate
Hope and fear, despair and rage
Their language shadows the land and sea
Repeat once more after me
Round here we’re moving though the cold blue
We’re stricken by the moon
We fall asleep fat and happy
In houses built by guilt
Adulthood is filled with
Imposters and I’m one
One of the very best
We’ll be first up against the wall
Pulled from our kingsize beds
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Pale Fire Glasgow, UK
Pale Fire were formed in Airdrie and Coatbridge in 2011 by a group of bedroom musicians who had attended school
together.
Pale Fire make pop music for those people who feel pressure to put away childish things. The music reckons with unfashionable subject matter: the demands of adulthood. It recognises the need to honour your responsibilities while keeping alive your essential self.
... more
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