[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Decided to go out on a song. I will return again.

Mount Eerie /// What I actually Am

When I was sturdier I’d talk about how certainly we all will die.
Eat shadows, bury candles, die.
When I was sturdier I thought:
“So what? I am forever mountainous!”
I bravely said:
“No death of any kind could matter to my mountain mind!
Come years, come surging, I am tall!”
When I was “sturdier” I was secretly scared,
And the fear was blinding.
As you can see, I am no rock.
As you can see, in mountain wind
What I actually am is thinning clouds.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Giles Corey /// Blackest Bile

All around me
in the air hangs a wreath
of blackest bile, and smoke
that I can see

I open up my heart
and let it all in
and it kills all my love
and hope for everyone

And it hasn’t been easy on you,
I know that more than most.
I am born to be alone,
I am just some lonely ghost

All around us
hangs an air of darkest doom,
and it flows out my lungs
and slowly fills the room

I open up my heart
and stick my fingers in,
but you will never want
what I have to give

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Death In June /// He’s Disabled

As pilgrims here, we sometimes journey
To who knows what; to who knows what?
Come and sing this simple story
That god forgot; that life forgot

‘Cause don’t you know god is disabled, is disabled?
He is disabled
Clouds may gather all around you
But he is disabled, he’s disabled

He’s no friend to the friendless
And he’s the mother of grief
There’s only sorrow for tomorrow
Surely, life is too brief
Surely, love is too brief

‘Cause don’t you know god is disabled, is disabled?
He is disabled
Clouds may gather all around you
But he is disabled, is disabled, he’s disabled

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Six Organs of Admittance /// Bar-Nasha

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Mount Eerie /// Who?

What do I want with my life now you’re gone?
I want your ghost gone.
What do I want with this wood now that it’s sawn?
I want the stump gone,
And the land it grew on
Oh Black Lagoon, you have my shoe
So I go shoeless.
I go muddy crawling through.
What do I want with my home now that I’m gone?
I want the shades drawn
And the overgrown lawn
I would gladly abandon a limb in the trap’s jaw,
Just as long as I crawl on
With no trapper to call on
Thorough and true, by stem and root,
I know no-one now
Now I say “who?”

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Man’s Gin /// Smiling Dogs

Dripping flies thought of you smiling

And all the while my chest was pounding

Eating the books and the words of old men

Bleeding thoughts from trapped people below

And running across their faces

And disgracing their kin and kind

The skies drippin’ from my hands and when the burden upon me lands

I smile in the eye of my dead land

And all the wanderers following, the followers wandering behind, the followers wondering why

Yeah, I spat in the eye of that once vacant sky and I’m blinded in my own lonely land

Gasping for air, grasping gray hair

That fell out long ago beneath the one you loved most

Clogging my dreams and choking blood, flow

The dripping flies watched all your crying

The men are gone the widows are whispering

Brass women pass by to watch the dogs lie

And all the men once thought of as honest

The sky’s dripping from my hands

And when the birds upon me land

I smiled in the eye of my dead land

And all the wanderers following, the followers wandering behind, the followers wondering why

Yeah I smiled in the eye of that once vacant sky and I’m blinded in my own lonely land

These are the lyrics as I’ve interpreted them. I read in a interview that the vocals aren’t always meant to be understood and they enjoy having people interpret them in their own way, like they had done with older music in this style. I’m still blasting this album a lot, fuckin’ AOTY.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

The Mountain Goats /// The Coroner’s Gambit

When Death came calling today,
I heard the gentle grace of his cadences
I couldn’t say no
I couldn’t say no

When he showed me his new silk scarves
Laid out on a shiny black plastic tray
couldn’t say, couldn’t say, couldn’t say, couldn’t say, couldn’t say no.
I couldn’t say no.

And I’m sorry I couldn’t.
Do you know how badly I wanted to?
Didn’t want, didn’t want, didn’t want, didn’t want, didn’t want to lose you,
But his smile was dazzling mmmm,
And his eyes were sparkling like moonlight on the water at midnight.
Couldn’t say, couldn’t say, couldn’t say, couldn’t say, couldn’t say, couldn’t say no.
I couldn’t say no.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Mount Eerie /// My Heart is Not at Peace

If my heart were at peace
Would it be a blossom?
Or, satisfied, would it be a stone?
My heart is not at peace.
I woke up hungry.
There is wind but there’s no song.
 A satisfied heart,
Half sleeping through the days
In the wind, in the home.
If my heart were at peace
I would have closed the doors and windows.
Satisfaction feels like a tomb.
I was writhing in the tomb
My heart a frozen boulder
The “romance” and all I’d rejected
Comes like music on the wind.
The violence in my heart,
The stone in the mountain,
All destroyed by the burning wind
All revealed by the sweeping broom

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Man’s Gin /// Nuclear Ambition Pt 2

Outside the bars are closing

Fingers have grown frozen

The chosen one was opened and I prayed

I prayed that you would find me here

And warm me by your fire

But dogs without heads are in the street now

Endless hunting dogs in heat now

Pistol whipping every last asshole

Shots in our backs from Richard Nixon’s stronghold

The fear in your eyes says “Don’t go nowhere”

I need to know where I can buy a drink

The fear leaves your eyes and wont get you somewhere when its time to fistfuck everything

Yeah it’s live and let die when you’re going nowhere

It’s live and let live just don’t for work for me

I wanna dive in a concrete ocean.

I wanna fly on a neutron bomb.

So blow it all down, hallelujah,

Hallelujah and explode.

And give me the blood and the neon too yeah, burn my laughing pretty skull.

So nuke the swine

And blow it all open

And make peace with your god while it’s still in season

The proof in your eyes says the truth is fake yeah

The heart in your chest told evil rumors

In a world gone wrong and I’m wrong too yeah

And God be damned when the music’s over

You push me off a ledge and you come too yeah

My spirit dies in stain-glass windows

In a world gone wrong and I’m wrong too yeah

God be damned when the music’s over

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Seventeen years ago, they told me to teach you everything I know.
I let the fire rain down, rain down.
Watched it flare up inside his heart.
Saw it tearing him completely apart,
Head to toe, I know.

And blood will run through the streets of Rome today,
And roll across the ocean.

Fourteen years ago tonight
watched him tearing through the garden killing everything in sight.
I let my curiosity get the best of me.
I saw the source-less anger eating at him from inside.
No one around him to stem the rising tide.
Evil from his head down to his feet
Quinine’s bitter.
Sugar’s sweet.

And blood will run through the streets of Rome today,
And roll across the ocean.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

I just found my new favorite drinking song. Smiling Dogs is becoming my album of the year.

Man’s Gin - Hate.Money.Love.Woman.

Everyone’s a stepping stone when you’re broken

Everyone’s a stepping stone when you’re crippled

Everyone’s a stepping stone when you’re not here

Everyone’s born to be broken

But money I hate you, I hate you, Money I hate you, I hate you

Money I hate you, I hate money I hate you, I hate you.

You and I are stepping stones

You and I are stepping stones

You and I are steppingstones that are crippled

You and I are steppingstones that are broken

But money I hate you, I hate you

Money I need you, I need you

Bloody I bleed you, I need you

Woman I love you, I love you

Money I hate you, I hate you

Money I need you, I need you

Bloody I bleed you, I need you

Woman I love you, I…

Woman I love you

Woman I love you

Everyone’s a stepping stone when you’re crippled

Everyone’s a stepping stone when you’re broken

Everyyone’es a stepping stone when you’re not here

Everybody’s born to be broken

But money I hate you, I hate you

Money I need you, I need you

Bloody I bleed you, I need you

Money I love you, I love you

Woman I love you, I hate you

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

No this is not my guitar

I am bringing it to a friend

And no I don’t sing

I’m only humming along

Up here in the air

I’m just mumbling at the clouds

Wanting to be known

While I pass the lonely hours

I came down from the room

I saw you in the rain

Laughing with some people

Hair dripping down your face

Your calm hypnotic eyes

Your Scandinavian glow

I felt them like a flame

Candle in my cold bones

Tonight you were my muse

As I belted and I strummed

Trying not to drown

In the helicopter drone

Alesund

From the crowd I heard

You sing a pretty line

Was it there so much longer

That I wanna cry

I thought about it long

Had you repeat it in my ear

“I couldn’t place a thought without you being so close”

Alesund

Should’ve played it then

From the intro to the end

When they offered me the stage

At the bar we landed in

But I turned and walked

Away from all the fun

And back into the black

Seaside night of Alesund

Alesund

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

On the day that Dennis Brown’s lung collapsed, spring rain was misting down on Kingston.
And down at the harbor, local cops were intercepting an inbound shipment.
And for a while there it was chaos
As they handcuffed and then roughed up some sailors.

On the day my lung collapses
It’s not going to be much different.

On the day that Dennis Brown’s habits caught up with him, school children sang in choirs.
And out behind the Chinese restaurants
Guys were jumping into dumpsters.
And the stench was overbearing,
But they were past the point of caring.
On the day my habits catch up with me

I’ll be down among the jumpers.

And when the birds come home in spring, We will fill them full of buckshot.

And jets of contaminated blood will cloud the rivers and the lakes.

It took all the coke in town to bring down Dennis Brown.
On the day my lung collapses
We’ll see just how much it takes.