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This was inspired by seeing my old would-be high school (had I not moved away) performing Les Miserables. I had also just got my accordion, so for some reason I decided to make one epic song for an EP. There are some allusions to Final Fantasy music which I always loved growing up.

lyrics

Serenade

The times aren’t with us as they once were
Or have been for years of dying days.
The sun descends upon us quickly,
This plot of land God’s given away.
And though we try to till the ground
We’re just salting the earth.
It gets worse from here.
But the tales are told hope exists somewhere.
Today we set sail in all directions, though waters are dark,
And set foot on gleaming landscapes alive more than ours,
And if I should for get my true love’s name I’ll just sing.
The rain can’t find a good place to fall.
And who would want to feel this clay soil when underneath,
Where we’ve buried our sorrow, the ground shakes?
Magma flows beneath our footprints, and bitterness beneath our scorn.
And everybody here is tired, and though still living, so forlorn.
And all the pain we give away directly correlates
To remorse creating this beast
We’ve tried to kill and isolate
But all in vain, and all the lost
We’ve it to hunt, we’ve it to blame
And still we try to kill again
When of this creature we are born
And thus I must attempt it as all the many before
Just hoping this time it works
It gets worse before it gets better
And the heat raising under the ground
Makes the floor vibrate and we hear it die even more
Our disillusion gnawing through our skull
Is the same thing that created this beast in the first place
Even if we succeed it starts again.

A causeway to nowhere

They say when you sit upside-down for long enough
Your vision will correct itself
But as for me I’ve never tried it long enough
I’ve never took the time to concentrate
On one thing long enough to turn it around
So maybe these just aren’t working
I’ve always had the eyesight of a vulture
Flying nowhere but in circles even though
Everything avoids the desert these days
I guess we’ve smartened up to the turning of the tides
When the rainfall slowed down anyone figured it out.
So leave your belongings right here and you’ll still feel at home.
We’re shipping off for a causeway to nowhere.
Sleep with the fish we’re all bloody carnivores.
A heavy soul with scars so deep from punishment gives up a meal to poor children
Less fortunate; a wastrel does not a saint make.
A soul faithful wishes must reduce to stealing to feed his starving family,
Tell me does not a thief make.
So then why, God willing, I have to watch you waste away
Forgive me, I’m far from a saint.
The collection of matchbooks and paper trails
Just fit together to burn
The incendiary steam of passion
Maybe the streets aren’t so cold tonight
You’re used to the pulse of the moon
And your heart slows down.

Hell is bitter cold

No use explaining, pushing a weight up a plane of 90 degrees.
Change with the leaves, fall rusted to death when my pigment’s gone.
Walk and walk for miles and miles, after so long all the blocks start to look the same.
Orange and red and brown aren’t different colors anymore.
The sun burns farther away with every day, the days are short,
Hell is bitter cold.
My legs are filled with lactic acid, my lungs bereft of oxygen.
This abundance of histamine, the ultra violet waves burn down,
And I’m so discontent, this melanoma lasts until the frost bite
With my fingers frozen off, what sculptor would make a swan out of this?

The sun, the leaves, the empires fall

The first sight is always the worst
When you remove the bandages
I know you’ll have to adjust
But we’re sure you’ll be fine in a matter of time
And there are lots of things you still can do
If you just put your mind to it
Everything’s awkward at first, but you’ll manage
Prior cases have turned out just fine without them,
With medication you won’t feel the pain yet, you won’t feel a thing
And of the five senses this one’s the least important to capture, to touch and to feel,
The only thing that matters is what goes on up here
As long as you can see and hear and taste and smell, it’s just like normal, you’re all set
What good has complaining ever done
And we know you’ve been patient enough
So let’s get these bandages off
And see just how well you’re recovering
And then send you off on your way
There, there, it’s not like the stories you hear that say
“It gets worse before it gets better.”
The sun, the leaves, the empires fall
It’s only natural.

The masts are shrouded in storm

I’ve got no place to go
And no place where no-one would stare
The spotlights are always shone on me
If I had a choice I’d stay inside the curtains where no-one would see.
Most other people would call this a tragedy
But I don’t like to use such strong words
Such strong tones, they hurt the ears
Let us not wake the neighbors, and wake the strangers that never offer much,
As I have never done, and you’d think that once you’re here it would look the same,
But it never does, it’s so much worse from up close
The pavement stretches on and on
The waves bombard this vessel
You can hear the howling wind and wolves
Hear the rolling thunder
The gutters and the prison grates
Everybody head below
The masts are shrouded in storm
When the sun comes up the weather will warm up and maybe I’ll stop shaking
The street lights keep you awake
And the dumpsters are filled too high or smell to foul
To spend the night when time is right
I’ll bring down this stone with full force to my head
And I’ll finally get some peace

Ghosts and skulls and dystrophy

Last night I dreamed I was the perfect candidate to make you smile
And so I swore I’d not give up
We’ve had our share of hardships but we’ve always pulled through them
And this reason is good enough for me to stay
Partly because your eyes are too scintillating to turn away from
But it’s as if we’ve never hurt each other once
And I felt so warm that I was woken up
With no-one else around it’s comforting to hear
Footsteps on the roads getting louder
But when they grew deafening and came up behind me
I felt a strike against my head
That night I had a dream, the sky had opened up
And wanted to take me up to heaven
But they couldn’t lift me up, my shoulders in the air,
My legs would anchor me to the ground
And so I was dragged through fields of wheat and over the dead leaves,
And roses and the cacti
And slid on sheets of ice and freshly fallen snow
The burn more than they seem to freeze

Volatile Seasons

Cut the loss and clip the hedges into
Anything we can use to scare neighbors away
We don’t want any untimely interruptions
You can’t see anyone until you wake up
You must be so proud to get so far when you never think
Do you even know how you got here?
You are so beautiful like a rose hanged upside-down
And left to die
With color still intact, a corpse we dressed in its best suit to bury in the ground
You know that this is hurting me a lot more than it’s hurting you
And you’ve hurt me much more than you’d ever feel
What’s done is done and useless now, there’s no excusing what’s happened,
There’s no stepping back or straightening things out
It was cockeyed from the start and though, you offer up your hands or soul,
You never miss a cue to make it worse.
And it’s not the only way to see what happens right in front of me
The view’s just so askew it’s near opaque
The grass is so much greener than it was at this same time last year,
Albeit quick to grow and prone to burn
But these volatile seasons seem to tease upon our memories
And your eyes don’t show their clarity these days
Now that you’ve debased to nothing more than irises and retinas,
And optic nerves to sever and crash the circuits, the lights go off from here on out.

The medication’s wearing off

The only thing I know right now is I’m tied up and cannot move
And though my vision’s still a blur I can see the blood stains all over
And though I owe it all to you, I’m not in a great deal of pain
And if you neglect the time and place the atmosphere is not so bad
The medication’s wearing off, this latent scene we’ve built for ourselves
Shadows in which we lurked around have dissipated with the sunrise
Why don’t we kill this masquerade, sirens are barreling down back roads
And if you have a change of heart, you’ve no position when it’s through
So if you’d please to help me up onto my feet
Because I’m buckling at the knees, I know you understand there’s nothing after this
As the story goes on the pages start to move faster and so fast you might miss what’s going on
But won’t want to go back, the momentum was enough to scare you once

Algorithms and Anaerobics

It gets worse before it gets better
It undulates through the fetters
It feeds on us, consumes us all
We’ve tried but it’s unstoppable
Don’t make this any harder than it already is
(Fall in, fall out, fade in, fade out; face it, we’re creatures of habit)

credits

from Algorithms and Anaerobics (demo), released September 1, 2004
P Davis:
Acoustic Guitar
Bass
Accordion
Drums
Piano
Glockenspiel
Synth Arrangements
Vocals

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Pete Davis Princeton, New Jersey

zany folk music for nerds

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