1. |
||||
|
He's a cold operator, a tin foil masticator on the make. He's a prized procrastinator - a chronic masturbator - half-awake. She's an unexpecting donor, soon to be a former owner of a heart. It's a difficult procedure so be quiet in the bleachers when it starts.
Bedside Manner = Gallows Humor
She was applying her mascara so that made her unaware of her mistake. Accelerating faster, her foot was on the gas and not the brake. Emergency reception soon to be a hasty lesson: full alert! It's a cardiac retrieval: just pin it with a needle to his shirt...
|
||||
2. |
||||
|
Show me some weakness. Play some piano. Turn off your computer, it’ll be there tomorrow. Take off your headphones. Come sit beside me. Have some Moscato and please don’t remind me of all the great reasons you’re going to leave me and list all the people that you’d rather be seeing.
Hand me your lighter. We both have a lot we want to do today. Too many "all-nighters" with more still on the way. Stress turns to worry and fear turns to panic and logic gets blurry: it’s really romantic. I can’t make you love me. You can’t make me change. Change is for Transformers and love ends in pain.
So let’s stop being sober. Let’s see what we can do. Before this dance is over, before this chance is through. There has to be some reason ‘cause it don’t make much sense. Something brought us both together despite our difference. Wherever this is going, if and when it’s supposed to end, there’s security in knowing that you’ll always be my ex.
You will always be my ex.
Exile. Exile, set me free...
|
||||
3. |
A Suitcase Or A Coffin
03:50
|
|||
|
Coming down over Ploiești with only one engine not shot off the wings. The sun has just finished setting. The artillery sings. The navigator is having some trouble, he's bleeding from two holes in his side. The radio is broken and muffled: the signal has died...
Bombs are awaiting release now, the belly doors are just starting to swing. Covered in hydraulic grease, I lose my footing again. The plane pitches sharply and I roll over the shells and down to the right. Now I find myself falling through the night with the bombs on all sides...
I see that it's my time to leave over a country that I've never seen. The only thing that's left I could need is a suitcase or a coffin.
|
||||
4. |
The German Judge
01:55
|
|||
|
The plane touched down at 3:15am. Heinrich Kurst, the judge from East Berlin, he checked into his room at the Grand Hotel. He ordered up some food, he wasn't feeling well...
Why is the German judge impossible to please? He's the only survivor of a tragedy at sea: a U Boat disaster off the coast of Tripoli.
At the lighting of the torch he had a dizzy spell. Uneasy in his seat, he still wasn't feeling well. Holding up his card, the crowd would shout obscenities. This would be the last Olympics he would live to see.
Why is the German judge impossible to please? As he exits the table and he slides onto his knees, he hears the crowd cheering as he succumbs to disease.
|
||||
5. |
Cut Her Off
02:58
|
|||
|
This is the place I come when I want something to mute me. I shut my mouth and I let you do all the talking.
Everybody knows. Everybody sees evidence and lies only you believe: you're like this all the time. Now you turn into a ghost as you play the host, filling up your nose as you change your clothes and change your mind.
You're sensitive. You say you know exactly what I'm thinking. So you base your reply to what you already predicted.
Now you're sitting on the floor. Do a little more. Then you reassure me with your noble occupations. Now you're fussing through your purse. Tell me who was worse. Isn't it a curse to be so adverse to the understanding of anyone with differing opinions?
Cut Her Off...
Everybody knows. Everybody sees evidence and lies only you believe: you're like this all the time. Now you turn into a ghost as you play the host, filling up your nose as you change your clothes one hundred thousand times...
|
||||
6. |
||||
|
As I caress you with the cactuses, bashing in attractive heads, don't be sad, don't be shy, don't be beaten. At times he's on his back again, it's time to take his medicine. Breathe in, breathe out, repeat these steps again.
Amazing people...
Walter's on the roof. Turn away. Turn away. He likes to use his shoes as codpieces, looking to inseminate. He's been awake for several days, half-asleep and happy to be on the streets again.
And don't, don't you forget... No don't, don't forget to die.
Amazing people, don't forget to die
Mao Zedong had lousy teeth. Napoleon had rotten feet. And Caesar would tweezer every little hair, perfecting past the point of any and all repair...
|
||||
7. |
Production Value
02:07
|
|||
|
She was crying when she got off the bus at Wilshire Boulevard, Miracle Mile. She had condensed her life into a suitcase, she kept her life by her side. In her hand there was a piece of paper. On the paper was a name and number in the handwriting of a producer. She found a telephone and then they sent her a ride.
Film me. Steal me. Tell me lies...
Well the car pulled up and she got inside and they drove through the city and the ripped-back sides. The driver turned around and said, "Do you get high?" Well little did she know that she'd been caught in a lie. I said it feels alright. It feels like...
Production Value!
|
||||
8. |
Fall For Your Foes
03:21
|
|||
|
I've been trying to change my instincts. Your patterns are impossible to ignore. First you kill something just to bring it back just to kill it then to bring it back again. You can't kill something you can't touch anymore.
Get out of my bed and into another. Get out of my head and go find another. im Too much my Dad and you're too much your Mother. I love her.
Our ritual of redundancy has empowered me with apathy. All you'll ever get from me is all you already got from me.
When the silver linings are too thin to see, I always bring a roll of foil with me...
This is the sound of one hand collapsing.
This is the vacuum of no one reacting.
This is the reason the grief kept repeating.
This is the void in the absence of meaning.
This is the posture that's constantly leaning.
This is the poison for which you are fiending.
This is the end that's without completing the words that you'll be eating...
"I know you'll come back to me. This time I won't have anything left for you."
|
||||
9. |
I Made You Hate Me
02:45
|
|||
|
Is it the birth of the sword or just the death of the sheath? Is not a major reward, feels like a minor relief. It's not a roll in the hay, feels like a punch in the teeth. I got a flag in my back and an arm in my sleeve.
It's just you and me...
Is it the pitch of the arrow or the breadth of the sea? There's not a ring on your hand, now someone called the police. You tried to hide in the dark, I put my shirt on and leave. I got the cuffs on my wrists. You got a nose and it bleeds.
I lie awake in the dark. I walk around in my sleep. Ever since you been gone I don't know what to believe. There's not enough drugs in the world to relieve the stress of the sadness that's my sole company.
'Cause I made you hate me...
|
||||
10. |
Let's Do It Again
04:39
|
|||
|
I swallowed back so many words as I've taken it on the chin. You taught me how to flinch again in fights no one can win. I picked up all the fragments of the heart worn on my sleeve. I glued them back together more times than you would believe. I suffered through your childish rants and your cold, scathing critiques. I suffered through your jealousy and the violence it breeds. I let myself be blamed for every problem you create. I watched you boast maniacally and fluctuate in weight...
Let's do it again...
I sat through all the emails and the texts and secondhand informing me that you found someone that is easier for you to stand. I've stumbled on the photographs of your lovers next to you, as you smile so much bigger, happier than I ever could make you. I've listened to your songs written about these other boys. I tried to smile along with them as I was silently destroyed. I smashed my place to pieces begging you to simply stop all the cruel and untrue badgering that made the neighbors go and call the cops...
You're my girl and you'll do it again...
|
||||
11. |
Blanket Show
03:12
|
|||
|
With a lack of remorse for your lack of regrets, you mimic the father that you never met. He gets the blame for the way you are now, but he blames you back for the way things turned out. The shit he put you through is now the same shit you do...
I can hear the television from down the hall, while the apparition comes through my wall. I can see it standing at the foot of my bed, staring at me through the sheet over my head.
With a loose-lipped and violent new girl on his arm, the bottles were emptied to silent alarm. They had just run out of their last bit of luck, when someone recognized the stolen truck...
It's hard to bury you when you keep coming to.
Stabbed in the face in the apartment. They still go through that awful night. The killer's face is just a shadow. The floor goes red, her face goes white...
When they reached the Rhein they were surrounded. The pressure came from every side. The bridge was gone, some people drowned there. Blood on the banks, blood in the tide.
|
||||
12. |
Pink Bismuth
05:22
|
|||
|
Scattered creature of habit: attractive and alone. Scattered but it doesn't matter. I'm taking you home.
We'll disappear for a week. I wanted to wait until you had surrendered to sleep. Stop talking to the screen, oh will you do this for me? Denial is bliss now it's time to memorize the street signs with tears in my eyes: another crash course in ambulance driving. I guess you just wanted to die...
Your fabric it has a pattern, louder than my ears could see. Seven deadly medications: this time you've been committed to me...
And when you cut off your tongue I knew that I was in for trouble. What have you done in the bathroom with all these little bloody puddles? If I had a gun and I know you'd search and search to find it like a predatory bird that waits forever 'til it's worth the effort and strikes at the throat of its protector...
Sleeping in shifts. Writing bad checks. Hiding your tweezers. Pretending to sleep. I know you're not sleeping: you're bolt-straight and both your eyes are open.
If the phone rings, let it go...
|
||||
13. |
||||
|
With a lack of remorse for your lack of regrets, you mimic the father that you never met. He gets the blame for the way you are now, but he blames you back for the way things turned out. The shit he put you through is now the same shit you do...
I can hear the television from down the hall, while the apparition comes through my wall. I can see it standing at the foot of my bed, staring at me through the sheet over my head.
With a loose-lipped and violent new girl on his arm, the bottles were emptied to silent alarm. They had just run out of their last bit of luck, when someone recognized the stolen truck...
It's hard to bury you when you keep coming to.
Stabbed in the face in the apartment. They still go through that awful night. The killer's face is just a shadow. The floor goes red, her face goes white...
When they reached the Rhein they were surrounded. The pressure came from every side. The bridge was gone, some people drowned there. Blood on the banks, blood in the tide.
|
||||
14. |
Dirty White Flag (Bonus)
05:12
|
|||
15. |
||||
|
Show me some weakness. Play some piano. Turn off your computer, it’ll be there tomorrow. Take off your headphones. Come sit beside me. Have some Moscato and please don’t remind me of all the great reasons you’re going to leave me and list all the people that you’d rather be seeing.
Hand me your lighter. We both have a lot we want to do today. Too many "all-nighters" with more still on the way. Stress turns to worry and fear turns to panic and logic gets blurry: it’s really romantic. I can’t make you love me. You can’t make me change. Change is for Transformers and love ends in pain.
So let’s stop being sober. Let’s see what we can do. Before this dance is over, before this chance is through. There has to be some reason ‘cause it don’t make much sense. Something brought us both together despite our difference. Wherever this is going, if and when it’s supposed to end, there’s security in knowing that you’ll always be my ex.
You will always be my ex.
Exile. Exile, set me free...
|
||||
16. |
Provisional Army (Bonus)
02:52
|
|||
|
It's all my fault. Lay the blame: shame on me. How could you forgive this unless you forget that I've fallen on this bayonet before? Shame on me.
When the tracer rounds fire on the motorcade, the whisper of the silence will resonate. This signal is breaking up: can you hear me? A provisional army is stationed in bed with its pistols raised against their heads...
Runway lights gone out. Zero visibility. Continue with approach as planned. Silence on the radio.
|
||||
Cardboard Lamb Los Angeles, California
"On its 2012 full-length debut, “Don't Forget To Die,” the Los Angeles quartet makes an instant impact by overlapping baritone-voiced cool, strident guitars, nimble drum beats and a penchant for quirky, dance-inducing choruses..." - EYE, EAR, NOSE CANDY ... more
If you like Cardboard Lamb, you may also like:
Colossally good New Wave out of Portland, with the nerviness of Kleenex poured into hooky pop songs.
go to album
The Upstairs Museum
by Swan Wash
A new EP from Bloomington, IN's Swan Wash explores present-day precarity through wiry, rhythm-forward darkwave.
go to album
Deathrock that perfectly balances the muscular power of its rhythm section with intricate, melodic guitar.
go to album
Propulsive dark post-punk with catchy guitar lines and uncompromising spirit.
go to album
The new EP from these Richmond, VA gothy post-punkers could stand toe to toe with any of your gloomy '80s faves.
go to album
Brutal dark punk from the excellent New York group Pawns fuses razorlike riffs with pitch-black vocals to chilling effect.
go to album
Layering guitars and saxes over synths and drum machines, this Oakland duo's darkwave is as melodically potent as it is texturally rich.
go to album
