Track Listing

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1. Concave

Concave…theatre of the absurd
Like a heat wave…Eighth Street and Twenty-Third
Feeling unframed…dripping down the Chelsea steps
Tasting your name crushed up against my lips
In the cool, blue half-light of the car-park lamplight

Strange pull…the tyranny of the divine
Cool and painful…shivers up and down my spine
A new distraction…bumping up against the dark
In fits of passion…twisting like Joan of Arc
In the white-hot pure flame of a wide-eyed clear haze

You’re sloppy-deep in thought
But there’s so much nothing to do
Why don’t we go get lost in the afternoon?

And the sky struggles to be born, all pink and liminal
Bleeding, half-alive, like an animal
And you brush your chestnut hair and smile wide as the sky
Like the concave of your eyes
And the scent
…Upon your warm orange skin’s glow
…In the graveyard bedclothes
Turn the lock on the door
Pull the cord from the phone

2. The Last Recidivist

I’m feelin’ uptight, hungry for the half-light
Taste it like a ceasefire, shocks me like a bare wire
A premonition haunts me, lasciviously wants me
My skull so often taunts me, just like a house that haunts me

I’m feelin’ hard-pressed, breakin’ into cold sweats
Thirsty for a deep breath, plummeting to my death
On a kamikaze mission, a sticky-sweet affliction
Some sordid kinda fiction, in love with your addiction

“What’s the worst that could happen?”
He intones while the blood drips from his hair
“What’s the sound of dispassion?
I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care
I don’t care anymore”

I’m on the short list, I’m the last recidivist
I feel a certain discourse gaining like a dark horse
So wake the window leapers
All the winter sleepers
Toast the kids in rehab, and put it all on my tab
We’ll fashion up some wax wings
From balsa wood and kite strings
Of delicate dimensions and dubious intentions
Above the sorrow and the pity
The suburbs of the city
Betrayed by every last call
This world’s a fucking strip mall
Carved in cold embittered midnights
A jagged scar of street lights
We’ll hurtle high and fall hard
We’ll wake up in the backyard

3. Everywhere and Nowhere

It’s been a year of sad disclosure
Of tragic news and visitations
We feel so far from the medication
And taxi rides, so high
I wonder, how have you been sleeping?
Does it still hurt every time you breathe in?
Does that old film still make you weep?
Are you still dying to believe it?
Like so much light in so much darkness
A silver womb where you can hide out
Until the street that brought you hearkens
You’re so surprised when it’s still light out

Now your name is cannon fodder
On their tongues it’s a convolution
No rounded vowels for a gringo daughter
From the cops of The Revolution
And if it’s sickles then it’s hammers
Or drunken hotel-lobby armchairs
And if it’s midnight in Havana
We must be everywhere and nowhere
So here’s a toast to biting the hand that feeds us
And to Babstock quotes hanging in the air between us

I’ll spin this globe with my little finger (eyes that shine like candles)
You pack your bag and write that letter (light in so much darkness)
We’ll see how far the charm can take us (midnight in Havana)
To some place where the coffee’s bitter
And just like lights off of the highway
Unravel like translucent ribbons
Like headlights in the rearview mirror
Seem like they’re everywhere and nowhere
Yeah we’ll be everywhere and nowhere

4. ..And Then The Riot

I had a clear prophetic dream
Subconscious, slow-mo, jump cut, small town murder scene
Inside a warm arterial glow
I heard the Fembots on the radio
And then the riot
Exploding stars and crashing cars like sentinels

It’s the famous final laugh
It’s the much maligned historic epigraph
Like a dreaming embryo
Like a time bomb underneath the snow
You’ll never know when she’ll blow
First the quiet, and then the riot
A simple choice, a single voice, a clarion
They first defy it, and then the riot
Emits a sound that’s understood by everyone

We could while away the days together
Ignore the dictums on the wall
Or we could man this barricade together
And warn the world ‘No Pasaron!’

Like a shudder from the ocean floor
A sudden stutter in the status quo
First the wave and then the undertow
And then the riot!

5. Your Birthday Party

Now everything is under control
Do you like it like that?
I’ll confide I can’t decide which is true
If I’m more afraid of what I might do
Or of what I might not
Seductive sense of sorrow
From counterfeit Cabirias
In sleepy towns all over
You’re saddled with that Cadillac heart
So beautiful, but is it so smart?
In a city of sharks
It’s beautiful, immutable
Inside your head
Unsinkable, unthinkable
The street runs red, a violent red
Inscrutable
Your conscience caught you leaving the scene
There’s no knowing just how clever you’ve been
It’s a long way home
When the voice that taunts you is your own
And your laughter is a veil of grace
Hiding tears that glisten from your face
In any case, well, it’s all a dream
From the solitude of prayers unseen
To the crimes of the century

6. Giulietta The Just

You used to be so hard to console
Now everything is under control
Do you like it like that?
I’ll confide I can’t decide which is true
If I’m more afraid of what I might do
Or of what I might not
Seductive sense of sorrow
From counterfeit Cabirias
In sleepy towns all over
You’re saddled with that Cadillac heart
So beautiful, but is it so smart?
In a city of sharks
It’s beautiful, immutable
Inside your head
Unsinkable, unthinkable
The street runs red, a violent red
Inscrutable
Your conscience caught you leaving the scene
There’s no knowing just how clever you’ve been
It’s a long way home
When the voice that taunts you is your own
And your laughter is a veil of grace
Hiding tears that glisten from your face
In any case, well, it’s all a dream
From the solitude of prayers unseen
To the crimes of the century
Nothing’s really ever how it seems…
Do you like it like that?

7. Save Me, Alice Neel!

All I wanted to be…when I was sixteen
All I wanted to find…just one word that’s sacred
All I wanted to be…with no bullshit scenes
All I wanted to find…and not have to fake it
All I wanted to find…now it’s on my mind
All I wanted to be…not much has changed since I was sixteen

All I wanted to hear…that song in my head
All I wanted to see…your sweet soul surreal
All I wanted to hear…like notes from the dead
All I wanted to see…save me Alice Neel!
All I wanted to see…something revealed
All I wanted to hear…your sexy summer voice in my ear

A thousand shadows that the stars conceal
A million reasons for the way I feel

Savoury words and salty water
Bitter tears in sweet November
Dry as bones and brittle leaves and
I always sleep with the light on

All I wanted to do…is clean up my room
All I wanted to say…there’s no one above you
All I wanted to do…and whistle that tune
All I wanted to say…’cause you know I love you
All I wanted to say…I’m coming home soon
All I wanted to do…I gotta get a message to you

8. The Sharpest Pain
9. A Casual Overdose

A Saturday afternoon
Nineteen and seventy-two
You can spell anything
And I’ve got a magic ring
And hockey cards in my spokes
A casual overdose
Of Pop Rocks and phrase-mongering
But beauty’s a delicate thing
Out here in the open grass
Two tiny iconoclasts
Divvy some loot we stole
From Old Man Hadfield’s store
And bury the rest in a hole

A mournful November morn
Nineteen and eighty-four
You stutter the words like rain
And the steps of cathedral stain
With resounding, resigning notes
A casual overdose
But I didn’t come here to grieve
And I know you have to leave
But who’s gonna save your soul…
The Beatles at Hollywood Bowl?
Or The Revolution Betrayed?
Don’t act like your mind isn’t made
I’ll believe in you either way

A kind of renaissance day
Nineteen and ninety-eight
We’re the same in a different way
It’s this closeness that separates…
An awkwardly eloquent toast
From a casual overdose
Of punk rock and Chinatown hum
‘Til we are both overcome
So we join our trembling hands
And clap for The Weakerthans
And drink to our personal lore
Though we don’t make love anymore
We still share the euphoria

10. Darkhorse

I don’t believe in things
If they believe in me
I’m through with sympathy
Erase it
Displace it
You know that shit don’t work, why don’t you face it?
Dark horse…always a strange daze away

I soar like a satellite
And then I crash and burn
Your sisterly concern
Is misspent
I’m absent
Would someone tell me where the hell the time went?
Dark horse…only a stoned throw away

You’re always the last to feel a shadow falling
A haze, a thought mislaid, a punchline that misfired
Always the first to hear the sirens calling
I’ve never been so wired
I’ve never been so tired

No amount of blue remorse
Could slake that wicked thirst
When I put my devils first
And miscued
You lived through
The lies I only told you when my lips moved
Dark horse…always a strange daze away
Only a strange daze away
The fall of those strange days…

11. Winter Sleepers

Through all of the shirts and all of the skins
And all the half-hearted how you beens
The megaphone malice, the rumoured refrain
Through all of the rules and all of the fools
And all of the so dead after schools
And all of the bullshit a schoolyard engrains
You had to breathe in
And breathe out

Before all the chills, before all the pills
Before all those ’40s movie stills
Leered back like spectres, suddenly strange
When all of the world was all about chance
Was all about hold on to your hat
Her heels on the tarmac pattered like rain
She liked to breathe in
And breathe out

Home again, boy
Home again soon
From crib to tomb

Through all of the near and all of the far
And all of the wonder where you are?
And all of the false, and all of the true
With all of the stop and none of the go
Only these faces in the snow
And the fog on the window tell me it’s true
I’m still breathing in
And breathing out

12. Sincero

This is the year zero; this is the Monday of your life
And you’re a superhero even if only for a while
You take the sky; your x-ray eyes discern the lies
That we utilize to justify our thin disguises

If this is ground zero, your stoic fortress of the strong
There’s nothing to fear, oh no this is right where you belong
Combating vile destructive cowardly vibrations
The spite and pettiness and cheap recriminations

Battling Cynico, The Undertow, The Instigator
Busting Kid Ennui, The Third Degree, Ego-Deflator

Taunts and hurdles
Haunted, burdened
Rain soaked bone deep
Cold and lonely

Where are you, Sincero? We need you more than ever now
Your waving bandera, your boots and cape and furrowed brow
Are symbols of the light above
Your siren calls us
To steel ourselves against the monolithic smallness
Where are you, Sincero?

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Sordid Fiction

Release Date : September 30, 2004
Artist : Lowest of the Low
Format : CD, Digital Download, Vinyl
Catalog ref. : Universal Records