1. |
The Apple
03:05
|
|||
|
There is and there ain’t wisdom on the tongue of the fool.
There is and there ain’t better things to think if not to do.
The crone showed off her one good fang,
Moving the clouds in the sky with her ring.
We had always thought it was an apple just kind of hanging where you had to use your brain.
There is and there ain’t a moral to the stories that you live.
There is and there ain’t reason to remember to forgive.
All the ghosts came back to town.
We had only run out of tobacco on the way down.
We had always thought it was an answer just kind of hanging where you had to use your brain.
There is and there ain’t an ending you will someday get to see.
There is and there ain’t other ways to be.
Here comes the fairy that lives inside
The only kind of story that will always survive.
We had always thought it was a blessing just kind of hanging where you had to use your brain.
What the hell did you expect to see, a secret understanding on his face?
What the hell did you expect to be, a prophet of the opposite of space?
Shift your breathing unto mine.
Never will you see before the origin of time,
All that was and all to come hereafter just kind of hanging where you have to use your brain.
|
||||
2. |
For the Dead
02:37
|
|||
|
You can’t return time, you’ve already paid.
Now do you still love what you see?
Be cautious, dear, but don’t be afraid.
This place is a ghost around thee.
Forgive them you love, forget them you hate.
Forget all that you’ve chosen to be.
You and all children are doomed to a single fate.
This place is a ghost around thee.
Seek you through the garden. Find your body woven in bramble.
Say then, “I’m a mess of miracle, a mess of love. I’m a feast for the angels.”
All the dead were the young.
All the dead.
See then what scares and then breathe ‘til it calms.
There is no other way you can be.
With children come wars and with war come the bombs.
This place is a ghost around thee.
World without end, hallelujah, amen.
Do you still want it to be?
This should have been a ghost town, but look what you did.
This place is a ghost around thee.
World without end.
|
||||
3. |
Home to You
02:18
|
|||
|
I lost my mind to you.
You know I did.
I’d lose my mind to you again.
You know I would.
I will come home to you.
I will come home.
I will come home all the way from this phone.
Damn.
I was headed for the stars,
Diving at a mirror
That sucked me in and on and on.
Time just went on and on and on.
It’s been a long time since it was a long time since then.
The winds have changed the dunes,
Just like they always do.
My ragged breath, my numbered days,
My ancient soul will never change ever again.
It’s been a long time since it was a long time since then.
|
||||
4. |
From Amidst Oasis
02:10
|
|||
|
You would have wanted to see it vanish.
You would have wanted it gone.
We took the hard road out of Eden,
Through razor-wire and guards.
The kitchen floorboards screamed beneath the circling of your thoughts.
We told white lies in stereo and disbelief, but kept on.
From amidst oasis, I know the desert a mirage.
You could have waited ‘til something happened.
You could have waited at all.
No little tower could have reached up to heaven,
Be it a speck looking back from the moon.
The trauma of tomorrow blurs its ghost into today’s kiss.
There’s a threat in the promise things will always be like this.
From amidst oasis, I know the desert a mirage.
With my dying breath, I’ll swear the desert a mirage.
Alive with a spirit of vengeance, lucky to live in a dream of a garden of wonders,
From amidst oasis, I know the desert a mirage.
|
||||
5. |
Backwater Novelist
01:47
|
|||
|
I remember it was you.
Couldn’t shake it, couldn’t break it – it was you.
You probably just forgot.
We were astronauts,
With our guts hanging out and ballooning up.
You were burning up.
His cold hands made you hot.
You were dying, so he turned his head and you were gone.
We’re the undereducated backwater novelist,
The unfertilized stump mighty oak shoot.
A lot of anger is bearing down on you.
We’ve got your kids.
Short stretches of long roads
Walk harder for what’s known
Of how much up ahead there is to come.
You were coming down
From heights we’d never seen
When we met, we were singing life, but you were gone.
I remember it was you.
Couldn’t shake it, couldn’t break it – it was you.
|
||||
6. |
Time
02:56
|
|||
|
And so we came to the deadliest deadlies
To learn how to die,
Found goodness in truth
Like there’s no such thing as a bad truth.
Babel broke the bible,
Or we could glean from the garden
That learning it wasn’t ever a paradise
Meant knowing it wasn’t ever a paradise.
O, the poison!
All my lovers’ empty skulls
O, apocalypse alive!
O, the knowing!
All my enemies are bones.
O, apocalypse alive!
Give it time.
Oh, uh oh, just give it time.
We crashed in a field of angels,
Baptized in unborn flames
So when hellfire licked away from the engines
It made a ripple through forever.
And hadn’t we already stolen enough joy
With our precious little telescopes?
Knowing there’d be an end to all things
Made knowing itself an end to all things.
|
||||
7. |
Living Things
02:00
|
|||
|
We fought waves in dreams,
Got caught on the teeth of the shore.
We filled our cell with freedom songs.
And, though our voices betrayed sorrow,
Our hearts were strong.
In tidal floods, with room enough to breathe,
We swam in clouds of living things.
And when the wolves came tearing
Splinters through our walls,
We praised the whims of fate.
The outside world revealed all yellow-eyed and clawed,
We knew ourselves awake.
We saw our lives as numbers made of dreams.
We swam in clouds of living things.
We fought waves in dreams,
Got caught on the teeth of the shore.
We filled our cell with freedom songs.
|
||||
8. |
Out of Your Skin
01:57
|
|||
|
Swam out of your skin
Tide drew me back in
(then he said then he said then he said)
I didn’t mind
All of the time.
And here we begin:
I didn’t lie when I told you that time ends where it begins
Or that the sky was unfolding when I swam out of your skin.
Reach to touch the touch with my tongue, the tide just drew me in.
All that I could’ve loved suffered young and we don’t start again.
Fucked in a place of daydreams where we’d innocently fled.
Knowing we’d be forever, we are filled with dust instead.
“Dust to all and all that was dust then,” he said, then he said,
“All that I could’ve loved suffered young and we don’t start again.”
I didn’t lie when I told you that time ends where it begins…
|
||||
9. |
Los Angeles
02:31
|
|||
|
His glasses broke the day that he fled home,
Swearing he’d remember even birth,
And every stone along the streets he’d roam,
As he unwrapped the paper from the earth.
But Los Angeles…
Winter saw him coming from the west.
Devils offered nothing for his soul.
Life without a mother hurts at best,
But home is not a place that eats you whole.
Los Angeles…
And filtered through the alleyways and bars,
We find the gutters of another town,
Where city light still blocks away the stars
And to return would only be to drown.
Oh yeah, Los Angeles…
God damn the stars.
God damn Los Angeles.
|
||||
10. |
All That We Got
02:19
|
|||
11. |
Pills
02:47
|
|||
|
I roll the pill around my palm.
From the beginning to the bomb,
The only thing I know ‘bout me is that I’m lying.
We know the structure and the form
Of the movie where we’re born.
Hey, I already read the book – it ends in dying.
With all the power of paper
A fallen tower of coin
The drugs make us safer,
But a judgment comes joined:
When you end, you will know what you weren’t ever.
And chemicals dream to be my soul,
Though my veins are blue and full
With miracles of modern hearts, be their end futile.
The gifts of parents gone at last,
When all this chemistry is past,
But you will show me truth and I will call it brutal.
With all the power of paper
A fallen tower of coin
The drugs make us safer,
But a judgment comes joined:
You will change for sure, and maybe for the better.
And though I never formed a plan,
I changed what was to who I am,
Cut my cocoon, I guess, my transformation shoddy.
But, when I come upon the pond,
I touch the shimmer, taste the song,
And lose all nerve except those threaded through my body.
With all the power of paper
A fallen tower of coin
The drugs make us safer,
But a judgment comes joined:
Why should you worry ‘bout the stories of the cosmos?
|
||||
12. |
Your Own Good
02:14
|
|||
|
I was on about the stars or something,
Maybe ‘bout the desert,
Miracle after miracle,
And what sent them to me.
You said, “I want someone to take care of me
“Without trying to make me better.
“Say, ‘You are the madness inside your heart.
“ ‘Do what’s for your own good.
“ ‘You are the madness inside your heart.
“ ‘Don’t seek to destroy it.’ ”
|
||||
13. |
Spring Blasted Through
02:17
|
|||
|
Spring blasted through the heavens, a soft blue storm of warmth and plenty.
As we pass through the mushroom, you’ll get stranger but you’ll be fine.
Danger, it isn’t doom. Change your mind.
We come into existence before we wake, before we witness.
Cast away your old mind, the birth you had no choice in.
Pay attention this time. Start again.
|
||||
14. |
A Garden
02:15
|
|||
|
Of the voice that only speaks through silent pictures in your skull,
If the visions make the earth itself seem young,
If you ever knew the reason when the story took control,
Would you think that only truth could move your tongue?
And what flows through all things will also flow through none.
Did you come from a garden? Will you come to one?
Prophets are called true or false instead of right or wrong,
As though secret truth could never hide in fraud.
You never in your secret heart believed a single song,
Or that a human voice could reach a god.
You will have me when you want me, you will want me when I’m gone.
Have you noticed that this way will never end?
Even so, despite a broken soul, visions of the bomb,
Can you lie to me in ways I’ll comprehend?
And what flows through all things will also flow through none.
Did you come from a garden? Will you come to one?
There’s no blessing in knowing – riddles fall from above.
Unravel your endings. Make peace with your love.
|
||||
15. |
Your Arms
01:35
|
|||
|
You said the air in here wanted your breath.
You said the air was alive.
You can’t mean universe the way I mean universe,
Even if you’re right.
You’ll hear my heartbeat over the wind.
…
And the end of all things is coming for all things,
Even you, even me… Oh.
Talk me back into your loving arms.
|
||||
If you like Old Man Charlie, you may also like:
Tense, moody, guitar-forward songs from VanWyck that emphasize tension and fragility.
go to album
No Walls Mixtape
by Ani DiFranco
Ani DiFranco acoustically revisits classics from across her career, with assists from Amy Ray, Billy Bragg, and Maceo Parker.
go to album
Not A Party At All
by Lambs & Wolves
Charming German indie pop with the keen melodic sensibilities and melancholic undercurrent of some of the style's best practitioners.
go to album
Virtual Heaven
by Infinity Crush
Despite its themes of isolation and loneliness, Caroline White's latest batch of folk-pop confessionals is an LP brimming with confidence.
go to album
The latest from the UK’s Chris Brain is a gorgeously wrought album of tender acoustic folk music.
go to album
We are only Sound
by Lucy Farrell
The long-time composer's debut folk album has exuberant and meditative moments.
go to album
Rich, pastoral folk meditations on nature and healing from the UK singer-songwriter.
go to album
