1. |
Gully
03:12
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Paddling out, deadened sound
Don't go to far, don't come too close
Bated breath, flopping fish
Don't cut the line, but don't reel in
I saw the city and I saw the plain
But I missed the middle terrain
I was weighing the air
For pleasure or pain
A dull quarter rests on its edge
A stop light a permanent yield
My brand new shoes have no reviews
So I'm not sure how I feel
Do you sit or do you stand
With your latex gloves or lattice hands
When the tide comes fast, do you grab ahold
Or risk the weather outside the mold
I see my life as a revolving door
With exits and entrances blurred
The parking lot and the waiting room
I say my goodbyes slurred
As the gully water splashed up
The cairns came tumbling down
Turn your back on crystal traditions
And you'll feel like a clown
What happens to dormant radios, telephones, unbreathed air
Either my compass is broken or gravity's subjective
I wonder if I'll even see you there
If the real map starts where the atlas ends
Will I find new curvatures and bends
Under the overgrown brush and the dirt clod slush
Is a fear that never ends
It never ends
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2. |
Adrian Street
05:29
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It's bad to feel hungry
But it's worse to feel full
The windows are open
And the blanket is wool
And if I call you tonight
Don't forecast the heat
Because I'll always be freezing
On Adrian Street
I hate when I'm tired
And I'm mad when I'm wired
And then absence of both
Leaves me just as inspired
But I'm standing up straight
To maneuver my seat
Kinetically still
On Adrian Street
The river's source, the river's mouth
From up above there is no north, there is no south
It's raining down, it's raining up
I knew it rained, when I looked into your cup
If my whisper's too quiet
And my yell is too loud
Then I'll pack up my things
And walk into the crowd
Where all voices align
On some unified beat
Your time's always cut
On Adrian Street
I know where I'm standing
Is right where you stood
You're a calcified crater
In my livelihood
But if retracing your steps
Means grounding my feet
Then I'll extract all the fossils
On Adrian Street
The willow bends, the willow breaks
I shook the sun, and now I'm shaking in the shade
If it never rains I'll still look up
I can't bare to see the empty in your cup
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3. |
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Writing eulogies for old ideas
That got lost and I don’t know why
As I wander home through a construction zone
With its sights set on the sky
The ground is not the lowest point
A world lies just beneath
When the sewer line and clouds combine
I’ll be smiling with the teeth
I’ll smile with my teeth
Friday night evades the cones that block off flooded streets
Friday night, a builder’s home will never be complete
Friday night with the broken stairs that sweep me off the floor
Friday night and the window’s shut tight
But I can still hear through the door
When the hospitals clean their clocks
They do it at 10 and 2
For car accident repeat offenders
The sky isn’t naturally blue
Fear is just some lowly word
On a scale of A to Z
A bird could build its home anywhere
Yet it chose this very tree
I’ll come back to this old tree
Friday night evades the cones that block off flooded streets
Friday night, a builder’s home will never be complete
Friday night with the broken stairs that sweep me off the floor
Friday night and the window’s shut tight
I think I’ve been here before
A dog, ages a week in a day
Tree rings and half lives, I don’t say what I want to say
Sometimes I wonder if this is the year
That the dam opens up and the water just guzzles the pier
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4. |
The Sound of Restraint
02:55
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This is the sound of restraint
This is the sound of restraint
I stood there boarded up while you meddled with the paint
This is the sound of restraint
This is the sound of restraint
This is the sound of restraint
There was no hurricane, I never tried to speak it plain
This is the sound of restraint
I’m beginning to wonder
How much I’m shaped
I’m beginning to wonder
How much I’m shaped
By the dead space
Before you say
I’m okay
Shhhhhh
Did you know a butcher lives and dies
By the health of the cow?
A butcher prays in the morning
"Please exist for me now! Please exist for me now!"
But come tomorrow
I have doubts
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5. |
Fruit From Illinois
04:36
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California’s grapes are raisins baby
What am I supposed to do
Wait too long
And nature turns on you
I can glean the sadness
Of a washing machine
When it putters and sputters
It’s giving up its dream
Of a quiet, endless clean
If it's real
It isn't right
But if it's real
I'll still try in spite
I place my hands under a light
I claim periphery as sight
What stanza three couldn’t be
I will never read that note
Tucked inside your winter coat
Kick that rock, change the time zone on that clock
California’s grapes could never last
With the vines in knots
And the fault lines scratching fast
As I try to own my past
Some flowers die
By calendar flip
Do they know it’s coming
Or do they think that it’s a blip
All roots dissolve at a clip
Of stagnant then a slip
If it's real real
It isn't right
But if it's real
I'll still try in spite
I place my hands under the sun
I claim that story as the one
Stanza three, becoming me
But I will never read that note
Tucked inside your winter coat
A growing boy, eats the fruit from Illinois
Every passing second is a second no more
California’s grapes in the ocean, baby
You can throw the pits away
My hair is getting thicker every day
I think I know the sadness
Of a washing machine
When you turn it off
It slowly loses steam
As it slips into a dream
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6. |
Butcher Knife
07:30
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Butcher knife, don't cut this out of time
Every loving word deflects what it defines
And now I’m stacking up your sweetness to the sky
An exquisite corpse is a way to survive
Drill a surgeon's hole through an orange rind
Pull out the pulp what's on your mind
The heart to the brain is an uphill climb
But who picks up the gum on the county line
Like a dulled-down spoon with an anti-blade
Or a two-pronged fork that the peas evade
I ran in the road to count the cars
I sat in a hole to watch the stars
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7. |
Wind-Down
03:43
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Please keep the little hairs lodged in the razor blade
So it takes a million strokes to get a proper shave
Don’t fix the mirror cause I like it with a slit
I could be anything when standing before it
Wind down
Wind down
Wind down
Wind down
Reasons to go, reasons to stay
I’m grounding my feet, I'm running away
I don’t want to go, but I think I should leave
There’s a tide in the lake, and a leg in my sleeve
I want an easy chair that doesn’t make it hard
To sit and think about the beauty of a yard
It’s just some distance to a plot behind a fence
But they
Space out the mileposts when the highway is immense
Wind down
Wind down
Wind down
Wind down
Modern reasons to live, modern reasons to die
When I got in the cab, I started to cry
I dialed you up, you didn’t see my call
You were reading a book, it was nothing at all
Modern reasons to live, modern reasons to die
There is no new way to give it a try
When you live in a shack on the outskirts of town
They send you the census through the pipes in the ground
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8. |
Wrinkle Town
04:00
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Every train in every city
Is in someway station-bound
And me, I’m on the heaviest freight
On the way get un-found
Stations rest in teams
'Till the third rail through-line beams
Thousands spent on weekly passes
To get dragged along the seams
A child sees the hunch in me
An old man sees the spring
As I try real hard to take a breath
And truly focus on the thing
Time passes in countless ways
There’s hours, weeks, and days
When you think about the letters
You tend to miss the phrase
My dad always quotes Yoda
And points out to the trees
My dad always quotes Yoda
And eats his sugar-free muesli
He says: ‘Son there is no try’
‘There's only do’
So I keep coming home on Sundays
And putting on his shoes
Open space
Blocked by an evening glare
I keep chugging
Toward anywhere
Every conversation
Is like a game of truth or dare
Where there are no other players
No one else is there
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9. |
Tears as Mirrors
04:01
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Every night
I watch the sky
And wait for it to fall
I catch the airplanes
As they fly
And place them in the hall
When no is around me
I pretend
I make the rain
I guide the droplets
To the street
And point them toward the drain
If the morning
Pulses through
I’ll know it’s probably cool
To let the clouds
Collapse into
A local swimming pool
While the birds
Look to the south
And ask: Is it time to fly away?
I think I’ll keep
Them in their nests
And let them sleep the day
If the sun don’t shine
It’s likely cause the sun has died
And is floating in the tide
Of an ocean culled from all I’ve cried
Every night
I watch the sky
And wonder where it ends
And can the airplanes
When they fly
Reach something that transcends
Can they brush
The border
Of an abstract we don’t know
Cause I smoke my hope
Like a cigarette
And then throw it in the snow
If I changed a mirror
To a pile of broken glass
Does a sum become a sum become a sum
Like natural gas
If you cried into a mixing bowl
I'd lap it up just fine
I'm not old enough to separate
Your reflecting pool from mine
If the sun don’t shine
It’s probably cause you're still inside
Beneath an imitation sky
A mural painted on the fly
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10. |
Today's the Day
04:37
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Today’s the day
To get angry for the thrill of it
Did you think of all the rent you’d shirk
When you felt your foothold slip
Today’s the day
The rain won’t stop the baseball game
As the water chokes the infield dirt
The shortstop pulls up lame
Pulls up lame
Pulls up lame
When a crow taps its beak on the window
Who’s to blame
Pulls up lame
Pulls up lame
When you call me by whatever feels accurate
What’s my name
Tonight’s the night, I know
You'll see the growing shrug in my shadow
When your car brights pin me on a brownstone
The cracks will show
Tonight’s the night, I’ll see
How the road narrows in front of me
A body fails but the brain succeeds
When logic’s like a tree
Like a tree
Like a tree
Standing tall in the whipping wind
As it loses all its leaves
Like a tree
Like a tree
You feel time and I feel time
Differently
Surrender who you’re supposed to be
Sitting, aching, full and empty
Naked like a former clown
Winding down in wrinkle town
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Otis Infrastructure New York, New York
Otis Infrastructure is a three-piece experimental rock/pop trio based in Brooklyn and Jersey City.
www.instagram.com/otisinfrastructure/
Otis Infrastructure recommends:
too young to be this old
by Ratburn
Every Ratburn album rules, but this one in particular is closest to me. Beautiful rock music. "Stupid" is one of my favorite songs of all time.
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Best friends.
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Delightful and delirious shoegaze from this NYC group, with syrupy guitars and dreamy vocals.
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You Just Might Regret This
by Swansea Skag
Swansea Skag cuts a defiant path through indie, writing songs that embrace lo-fi balladry as effortlessly as they do wild experimentation.
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featured on Bandcamp Radio Feb 18, 2014
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Proceeds from this live Pinegrove album, recorded during their last tour, will go to benefit the Southern Poverty Law Center.
go to album
