1. |
Old Money/New Money
04:37
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Trouble my trouble, can’t get anymore
Trouble my trouble, won’t get anymore
They’ve been acting like they’ve never been poor
There’s a tone they don’t use where they once did before
Brothers and cousins that have walked out the door
Father and mother don’t see me as there own
And the house that was built where once was the war
And the trouble they see I don’t see anymore
The devil in me has forced me to rise
To take as my own a sister for a wife
Who has no guilt in her to show
She was elated just to know
That of the secrets in her bones
Were not of her own
Nobody knows just what she’s laughing about
She’ll see to it that
If there’s a crown that can be placed upon our heads
When all this living leaves us dead
We will go out into the snow
Forever unknown
(If you will go I will go your way
Oh, my soul! What a price to pay).
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2. |
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Solemn goes the time in their regency
He has come to find displeasure
That is keen to be released
So he turns to her and asks what can he do?
She screams a laugh,
‘A privateer is all you’ll ever be if you carry on with me’.
Their blue eyes are on their way
And their blue eyes will break the day
Forlorn like a hero he waits for you
Sunday Psalms in his hand and a love
That cannot stand in your way
So you pass right through him
Leave a ghost behind
That will haunt him for awhile,
If only for awhile, it for a while
Your blue eyes will go their way
While his blue eyes have had their day
Go into the night and not look around
For people who might declare themselves proud
To any event that leads to the sound
Of their hearts
That leads to the sound
Of a bird in song
An opaque kind of light
Fills the room
A curtain drawn
There is nothing much else to do.
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3. |
Hate Your Jazz
03:41
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She don’t need me coming around anymore
My backstairs strumming is starting to bore
Neighbours are shouting out the Golden Bough
But I’m still reading from the Helm of Awe
The Swan road from the window is calling her name
I didn’t see it coming her flame fare welled
A Garden of Coral and Loki by the pool
Sun of the houses a mind’s worth getting cool
Freya’s tears can come and go as they please
I never needed much from the things she brings
When it’s only dead things dead things she brings
A billow of maidens will wash this all away
Bait gallows in their mouths the valley trout
A wound hoe to keep out the Gunn’s horse outside
He’s knocking on the door and won’t let up
I think a bane of wood will do him some good
Don’t you think it would? Well maybe it would.
I don’t need me coming around here again
She says she doesn’t think we could ever be friends
I sit by the window drinking her tea
She hates your jazz and you hate her poetry
Alas the moon is about and beyond our ken.
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4. |
Laughter In The Dark
04:29
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In these dreadful days of recalling the ghosts of the past
Picture book and never raining with smoke in the eyes
Somewhere it must be gathered all of the things
Before they let you down
A girlfriend that waited for no one was all that she asked
Sullen mouthed, her hands held aloft as if holding the sky
From a hell of a season, is it wrong that you should want her now
I will wait and know what it’s like
To hold the marble youth we despised
For all that I now desperately lack
Can be carved into the quiet sound
Of laughter in the dark
If the past is pasture will you ever learn
That the prologue you're after is already burned
So tear up the letter and let the leaves
Fall into the grass
Seeming out of place the mole on the back
Dangerous if cancerous so cut with the knife
At once disfigured, is all maligned just to feel the black
A reflection of you disappears
Replaced by something more clear
A light that freezes in time
The awful meaning of what it is
Laughter in the dark
I was never much the type to sing from the heart
Or to ever call it out, the youth we once had
When there is silence
There can only exist
What we almost knew.
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5. |
Dancehall
05:47
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It’s been our understanding or it’s been a kind of lie
That when your callers hit you it doesn’t hurt inside
We know a lot about you, we know the time aside
But nothing of the matter that hides the saddest star
And if you had to go, well where would you go
The roundabout proposals, the shifting points of view
Of all the grave misgivings that have given up on you
A pose to fix in silence and sit there for a while
The notebook idly looks on the suitor’s passing smile
And if you had to dance, well who could you ask
The taking of the task, the master in the mast
In the dancehall
In the rolling of an eye
In the needle
In the moment that you died
When you wake up will you ever need
The pieces they send
Pieces in the sand
All of this heavy weather, all of this so and so
A copper-bottomed fella would have to let you go
Behind the awful curtain, upon the martyred cause
Into the end we dream of when dreaming never ends
And so it came to pass, so it came to pass
The master in the mast, the bastard in the tank
In the dancehall
In the rolling of an eye
In the needle
In the moment that you died
When you wake up will you ever need
The pieces of him
The pieces that he left
And if you had to dance, well who could you ask
And if you had to go, well where would you last
Doleful in extreme, the room was never clean
Axioms are untrue, the bough has split the broom right through
And in this gloom certain latitudes are given to
Oh, breaking though and calling out
Calling out for you.
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6. |
Gin & Altars
03:21
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Bits of glass on the ground
A table lamp that you found
Skipping off the merry-go-round
Sideways up but always down
I’ve got a rock in my shoe
A mouth of gold is nothing new
Gin and altars all day long
Gin and altars in our song
Silence speaks the words you keep
In a bottle you mistreat
Galleons reach the idle dead
But the berth was in their heads
It’s getting awful grave
Nurse to beer the wound she gave
And with this morning folding down
Like the flags we put out
Streets take on a glow
When you’re walking alone
There’s a fear in his eyes
Which I’ve learned to despise
Even though the cards that were laid on the bed
Could’ve been something he once said
There’s blood in my eyes
No sympathies in sight
Your downy skin alive
St Stephen with a smile
His arms open wide
It’s like when the chosen have already chose
It’s like when the broken have broke all their bones
A festival of light blindsides the right
A juggernaut jack-knifes into my side.
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7. |
Angie In Double Stitch
04:35
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When a lady’s position is impositioned by a calling of the wild
Can we not say of her that she to be not wild
If not ‘fore me before me and in there to something we all knew
The more unseemly side of my business is still cordial for you
Boo, boo, boo it frightens you
Coo, coo, coo I’m scared to
Translations burr the words misheard
And leave us confused, we deduce
A separate plane of thought rendered
Apart and brought in to view
Screw a queue in lieu of nothing to do
Accrue, assume, abuse anything new
I am no innocent
I will carry myself on your back
In the rain
A bored gift or some such we are waiting for, waiting for
A shard of glass to shake your hand and nothing more
(Well maybe a little more)
Soon, soon, soon we will bloom
Into, into, into the devil’s dew
Pack your bags full of laughter
Make the wedding plans
So much safer
Don’t make this any easier than the sinking of your heart
A wanton wish gets closer to me wanting to leave you alone
I will claim your land as my own and leave a seed to be sown
Restless hands cop an eye full
And will think nothing of tearing you apart
We are forming now as a species too wondrous to be ignored
Take this hand and the floor will open up the shiniest dawn
That you could hope to enter so let’s gather round and sway
No trapdoor to side step over
Only my love that will wither you away.
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8. |
Pick Up Your Windows
03:32
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Pick up your windows and climb into the day
Tap on the counter and make sure you pay your own way
Underline your name and sign it off to the past
Where you are going they will not even ask
Of days that passed quickly and never were dull
The leaving that this is taking is enough to make you feel odd
Nobody is looking they’re watching their own day
Slip past the camera under the bridge and away
Look up your words and throw them into the air
Watch as they fall down all around their heads
Take out your notebook and read yesterday
Keeping on caring is what makes you them
If you are going it’s as well as you’ve been
Before the shutters all come down and the sun can’t come in
Go on running ‘till you can’t feel your feet
And your hands have raised up your face from the heat
Go on; go on take a run at the sun
At any point you know you can get out if you choose
Patchwork your stories and tie them up in a bow
Make up the endings any place they could go
Nobody will remember it’s all become such a task
There is no difference from here and into the last
Those days that passed quickly and never were enough
The leaving that is an ending is beginning to fall apart.
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9. |
Spring Days
04:06
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Abandoned unborn by my begetters
I was still dead a few spring days, days ago
No beat in the breast, no breath in me
A kinswoman she covered me in the clothes
The clothes that she wore
No kind but kind indeed
Coddled and swaddled
As close as I had been
A baby of her own
Until as had been shaped, so shielded
Though no kin the unguessed guest grew
Great with life, greater with life
She fended for me, fostered me
She fed me up til I was of a size
To set my own bounds
Oh so much further afield
She had fewer sons
And daughters
Because she did so
The bird that she knew and the bird now grown
Is a cuckoo you see now taking his turn
For the cuckoo in me will push us apart
If we meet again then we should meet again
The girl we both knew laughing so
As if to say in a funny way
How you get there is not what makes you stay.
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10. |
Rosy In The Afternoon
03:10
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On your way out you know it’ll never be the same
Picking your fights with Old Father Time
But if he’s not around then who’ll pay the tithe
Did you think he had a heart of stone
No one ever asked for the parts that we play
Mary was right to know it that way
With a King and a Crown
It is as you say
But only in a heart of stone
Now they’re gone so throw it away
To the arms openly splayed
And oh! What a heart of stone
Sleep away, sleep away the day
Nothing will come of it anyway
So take up the cross and go it alone
And go there with a heart of stone
What a load does Simon not know
When we go into the darkness of the day
And stay there with a heart of stone
She will go into the night
To be alone by your side
And cry for the last time
But never with a heart of stone
Never with a heart of stone.
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LJA Brown London, UK
LJA Brown is a singer/songwriter based in East London.
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