1. |
||||
|
My brother calls from Ankara
And tells me there’s no room there for us
So I know a man in Tripoli
He’d gotten my neighbor into Italy
“So what do you propose instead?
“Ain’t it better to drown than to die in our beds?”
“Every evening on our TV
“They’re pulling babies outta the sea”
A crashing pad in Alexandria
We live in 1 room for a whole month
Our food runs out and our visas end
Then one midnight the door opens
The raft is filled up to the brim
I help my wife and baby in
And a siren in my head goes off
And tells me we’ll never get across
And I wonder, During every moment of my life
Was I doomed to arrive in this place, on this night?
Interlude from “The Island of Dr. Moreau"
So was all that for nothing?
Was my whole life just featuring
In some unholy despot’s war?
Why the hell was I even born?
I’ll see you in 1,000 years
I’ll be the one chewing his tears
I’ll be the one chewing his tears…
|
||||
2. |
Marie G.D. Antoinette
02:36
|
|||
|
The first lady of American theater
Sprawled across the couch and country
Every night that isn’t Sunday
Ramparts raised her, banners betrayed her
Women’s League Auxiliary
Passin laws of decency
But all the boys are clapping all their hands
Paper on the windows and the transom
Lookin out the window, mournin every passing telephone pole
Polio and mumps and rickets
Polo and croquet and cricket
Cultures clashin, while she’s hot-flashin
“Give em cake for all I care”
Circuses, 140 characters
Actors and actresses around the table
Garnish for the plates, but not the wages
|
||||
3. |
||||
|
The workers put their hands upon the Ouija board
And call upon the ghost inside the market force
And ask it, “How much is our labor worth?”
Before it answers, Congressman Ryan’s at the door
He squeezes in before they ask the ghost again
And on the planchette he imposes his own hand
He cries out, “How much do these dogs need to survive?”
Before it answers, someone says, “Easterbrook’s outside”
He helps himself and takes a seat or 2 or 3
To preserve financial proportionality
And asks, “What’s the least we can mark to trickle down?”
Before it answers, the shareholders begin to pounce
And Hannity gets inundated with their calls
“These workers represent a Communist cabal”
“Who even showed them where the board was being kept?”
“I miss the old days, when we just told them what it said”
|
||||
4. |
||||
|
I’d say till the seas fill up to their brim
Or the world burns down—the flame lit from within
That my love for you won’t suffer a dent
But the truth is I ain’t all that confident
That one--or both--of those events
Aren’t lurking on our horizon
And I don’t see the romance—the romance in
A love whose end is as imminent
As the warheads and the atomic wind
So I’ll lean my vow—my vow against
Something with a smaller—a smaller chance
I’ll love you till there’s a living wage
Till the robot heart in Dick Cheney breaks
Till the gun lobby gets its quota met
For murdered grade school children
Till a woman’s right isn’t under siege
And torpedoing the economy
Gets you more jail time than an ounce of crack
Till the last Humvee is leaving Iraq
What I mean is forever
Is I’ll love you till race-baitin fails
To get rednecks to vote against themselves
Until love of country goes beyond
Givin tax breaks to the richest ones
What I mean is forever
Yes I’ll love you till healthcare’s a right
Till we give up trying to penalize
The impoverished out of poverty
That’s as if my solidarity’s any better
What I mean is forever!
|
||||
5. |
|
|||
6. |
||||
|
The greatest men in history
I look at them and I see me
I share in their accomplishments
Because I share in their pigment
And now my chattel's in the capitol
The combustion engine? I was in on the patent
I was in the room when they split the atom
Sure, I could lose a couple pounds
But didn't I KO Louis in just 12 rounds?
And now my chattel's in the capitol
I'm a masturbator of the worst denominator
So I inherit their esteem
Despite my contributing nothing
You might call me a hanger-on
But we're all like that where I come from
We all believe one arbitrary,
Incosequential similarity
Between ourselves and Bonaparte
Means we should be the ones in charge
Or at least we need an ethno-state
Perhaps one that comes already-made
Since we're all overweight programmers
We don't know our way around jackhammers
So building roads and hanging utilities--
Really anything manual--puts us ill-at-ease
But anyway, these days it's great to
See how that's working in Appalachia
I'm a masturbator of the worst denominator
|
||||
7. |
English Black Tea
03:49
|
|||
|
“I been up all night on the windowsill”
Said no one who ever paid their cable bill
So, I’ll never write such a song
I got too many neurons gone
I wrote once to find just how many were left
But apparently, they’d left no forward address
Though the lizard brain sent a reply
He said, “I’ll too be gone, by and by”
All of my heroes died in their sleep
So why did I think I could fly by the seat
Of compliments strangers paid me
In houses of English black tea?
I’ll never prove anyone wrong
It’s just me and GR and we’re pumpin out songs
That friends pretend to enjoy
I’m too stupid to be annoying
|
||||
8. |
Good Guys with Guns
03:20
|
|||
|
“An isolated incident,” that’s what they all say
And the next time this happens, they’re gonna call it the same way
You might think it’s strange how the record keepin’s done
But rest assured it’s 30,000 genocides of 1
Last night on the leaderboard they put up a new name
It tickered like a score across the bottom of the TV frame
While a talkin head lamented the lack of good guys with guns
Who mighta stopped the 58+ genocides of 1
I hope this LaPierre dies in bed, than runnin towards a door
And gettin trampled underfoot while someone puts up a new high score,
And that the last thought the projectionist in old Wayne’s brain runs
Is “Lord, ain’t it lonely here in my genocide of 1?”
So, I guess their freedoms just sorta mean more than ours
Though to be fair I wouldn’t run to turn in all my guitars
That is, unless you told me guitars kill 30,000 a year
In which case, you can rest assured this song could be performed on a glockenspiel
|
||||
9. |
||||
|
I woke up by dumb luck
And you came across
Like an arrowhead on fire
Askin in mid-flight
"Where was the funeral pyre?"
From my ganglion to yours
With my face upon the floor
Don't debate me, baby
I've been here before
Blood sheds at random
But hearts break by design
Either ripples outwards
All the same, all the time
From my ganglion to yours
With my face upon the floor
Don't debate me, baby
I've been here before
|
||||
10. |
За Много Години
05:43
|
|||
|
Morning on the mountain and the bus is just arrived
My bags’re down on the ground and you don’t look surprised
You don’t look excited and you don’t look outta place
Half your life’s been spent inside a heart about to break
And I just can’t believe
That I’m acting naïve
When I say, “We’ll meet again under a brighter sun”
But you understand better than I can that all I’ve ever done
Is rub my hands together and look you in your sullen eyes
And say to you ever-new and -greater goodbyes
As a tear takes the long way down my face
And you tell me I oughta take my place
And I say “For all the ways I feel and for all the ways I should,
“Half of them are terrible and the other half ain’t good”
Then a weapons-graded, wish-I-weren’t-created loneliness
From knowing that I ain’t comin back from whichever abyss
I decide to go down, whether wanderlust or greed
Whether what I really want or I will tell myself I need
It finds me by the window while the tailpipe gives a billow
And just like that I’m alone, just like how I began
The prime-ignited orb of light in an awful firmament
So why did I deny you? As if I could spare a friend
Is it cause if something never starts it never has to end?
Well then why’s the sunlight bother rising?
What’s that space for between horizons?
Oh man, for all the ways I feel and for all the things I say
Half of them embarrass me and the other half’s cliché
Then at the road outside of Dolen, I am outside of myself
Watchin all the seconds fall like dust upon a shelf
They touch the ground as memories in front of all our eyes
Like a cut the blade as yet to make but’s already cauterized
And all my life has gone the same way—
Womb into tomb all in the same day
And suddenly the gears freeze and I’m just droppin pins
Till I’m hearin you from the bruised youth you’re standing knee-high in
“You should hurry back—the sun is dying on the ridge
“And the breaks of blood in the blue above are the hues of evidence
“That your assignment here is ending
“Would you promise on the letters you won’t send me?
“That of all the ways you’ll feel, and of all the ways you might
“None could ever hold the train of when you watched me fade from sight?”
|
||||
11. |
||||
|
There were tragedies on the commons
And I believed I could solve them
But to catch the bus you gotta wake up on time
So, I just kept on drivin
Gettin 13 miles to the gallon
And a cubic foot of glacier re-sea-ified
But if everyone else had just brought themselves to stop
I could’ve idled my engine around the clock
And been just one little drop in an endless sea
Only problem was, everyone else thought just like me
While babies made all my T-shirts
And I felt guilty to be sure
But it’s not as if I was exploiting Americans
So as much as I hate to say it
It was between me going naked
And them breaking limbs in looms, so call me Nancy Kerrigan, or whoever
100 years ago to be a robber baron
You needed furnaces, and Pinkertons, and oil derricks
But in these days of free trading economies
A ride to the mall is all you really need
And the burger I enjoyed last night
Was a stack of methane farts in life
That helped wash out some family in Micronesia
It’s like all the choices I was making
Were increasingly integrated
Till my sins all ran together like synesthesia
But that’s the thing ain’t it? I always had a choice
And in the same way a person hates hearing their own voice
I never wanted to admit the truth:
That every second of my life, I’ve decided against the right thing to do
I once saw a film where a young man
Growing up in a gangland
Decided joining a crew would be losing nothing
So to show them he’s on the level
He robbed and killed like a devil
And gave em somethin to lord way high above him
And so I guess that’s what they got outta me
I was implicated in a supply chain of suffering
So I could take my place on the teat on some awful ploy
And I can’t think of why I shouldn’t be destroyed
|
||||
If you like Jesse & the Revelator, you may also like:
featured on Bandcamp Radio Jun 10, 2014
go to album
Mind, Man, Medicine
by The Secret Sisters
The Alabama duo's fifth album exults in dusty Americana, showcasing rich vocal harmonies alongside blissful folk instrumentation.
go to album
More contemplative folk from the Minnesota singer-songwriter, sustained by raw full-band arrangements and philosophical lyrics.
go to album
Irish singer-songwriter Oisin Leech's acoustic folk music is characterized by its muted beauty and intimate, solitary quality.
go to album
Various Artists - Gaza Calling
by Nuovo Canzoniere Partigiano
featured on Bandcamp Radio Mar 15, 2024
go to album
Space Bath
by Sami Freeman, feat. James Jackson, Beaunoise, Mia Pixley
A gorgeous journey through a kaleidoscopic array of sonic approaches melted together that feels old and new at the same time.
go to album
Ship To Shore
by Richard Thompson
The legendary Richard Thompson's new solo album exemplifies his many musical paths, from pop and cabaret to jazz to traditional folk.
go to album
