1. |
A Quiet Resignation
06:28
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I'm stone cold
The wind blows right through me
At home
Reflections get to me
I don't see a way through this
I've lost all hope
A quiet resignation
A quiet guilty plea
Should hush down the monsters
Who've got me on my knees
It's not like I could but I won't
They take me to the edge but I don't
Cast myself off into the river and head to the sea
Don't breathe
The feelings I'm stuck with will grow
Until I feel like I just might explode
The fireworks inside me go off but outside I'm just still
I'm still me
I'm just shards
Just parts since the whole fell away
I burn all my bridges and stay
And count all my riches as night turns into day
Surrounded by yes men
By sycophants and thieves
And come the revolution
We'll twist on the breeze
I took all you had just for show
And still I won't leave you alone
Leave me to the sea and I'll fossilise, ossify for eternity
A constant reminder of home
For all those who set out on their own
And who stare down the barrel and shout down the tide
And who do succeed
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2. |
Backbone
03:46
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You're a sensitive soul and god knows just how far you could go
If you reset your backbone let go of your old hopes and go
It's this senseless hypocrisy dragging you down it weighs down your bones
And this hopeless futility wears out your soul and it won't let go
We all reach a point where the pretence must come to an end
So you build up these castles from silence and in them you stand
Why would you do this to me? Why can't you see what it's doing to me
You're a sensitive soul, with nowhere to go
And you aren't and you can't be everything you were then
An old romantic too far over the cliff to come back
You're here, but just waiting, a fault in design made you sad
The last nail driven down into the lid
A missed chance to push the boundaries of what can exist
There's a weight in your soul, your blood runs too cold
You're wasted and lonely, you're inspired and you're only a sensitive soul
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3. |
Magnesium Igniting
04:11
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If I dropped you then you'd just accelerate
You'd feel no drag, no you just won't brake
If I dropped you then you'd just accelerate
You'd feel no drag, no you just won't brake
Don't change - to me you will remain idealised
You're the Dorian Gray I'm a picture of
A phoenix from the flames and you're rising up
You're the dusting of snow on my mountain peak
The perfect application of correct technique
Don't change - you're perfection in a form personified
As you age I open up and I absorb that change
Your cells are merged with mine and we are intertwined
You're better than you ever were to start with
You're better than you ever were at all
Magnesium igniting in the darkness
You're 24 carat solid gold
You left me in gear with the handbrake on
At a million iterations and approaching one
Four to the floor, you're building up
Euphoria, you're never giving up
A sine wave - you're just a fundamental - pure phase.
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4. |
First in the Race
04:05
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This was not his tragedy
The compass cracked and set him free
Who could forget that face? The flawless getaway and the effortless grace
Until that fateful minute it went wrong
Never 'til this second a tick off the pace
The planets all aligned always first in the race
All the time bombs you’re planning on setting
All of them can be defused
All the paths lady luck may be taking
None of them lead back to you
Now we see who you really are
Now it’s all gone wrong
What was once exemplary
Only one in all the world, distinct, unique
Now has cookie-cutter copies and counterfeits
Facsimiles, fugazees, identikits
No way to tell them all apart, to differentiate to find distinguishing marks
Standing still with all the waxworks and duplicates
With the tricksters and the con men and circus acts.
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5. |
Thought Experiment
04:50
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Can I change it up?
Want to see it working that way
Let my thoughts run wild
Inventive ways to help you dilate time again
Do I look bad?
Talk like I’ve seen a bomb drop?
All to help you find
Pointless ways to help you lose again.
There’s a spot in the distance that constantly shifts
Back and forth as the horizon slips
I crank up the power but my fuse just trips
As hubris grows I leave my mark
And spiral out my tendrils now
On empty guts my armies march
The stasis overwhelms me
See it stretching out
Amorphous and unending
Constant ebb and never flow
Expanding to the corners of your mind
Over countless sequels the plot unfolds
We’ve got them written down in code
You don’t understand but you’re all engrossed
On empty guts my armies march
The stasis overwhelms me now
A pointless gedanken I’m acting out
I’m gnarled and I’m contorted
Want it but can’t afford it now
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6. |
Platitudes
05:54
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Today your words and platitudes waste my time
Someday we’ll stand together somewhere divine
It’s gnawing at my faith and it’s clawing at my mind
It’s just one more pointless little lie
But I don’t mind, I don’t mind
We didn’t know exactly what you were going through
It wasn’t easy and in the end you didn’t get through
The barbed wire and the watchtowers
The endless nameless ache
It’s just one more thing that I can’t take
Another bend in a dead-end trail.
A narrative on rail tracks
I jump on the brakes but they just don’t connect
An epic course that’s plotted out in tiny steps
I sat and watched the stars align
Did nothing while you agonised
Until the bitter end
No sparks, no naked flames and no getting free
From the cage that you were in and where you’ll always be
We all go to that place but it’s somewhere that you stayed
In the belly of the whale, of the monster you can’t slay
It ate you up. It swallowed you whole
I write dialogue for a one-man show, and talk of war with nothing but regret
And tell age-old jokes with a punchline that I just don’t get
And watch as all of this unwinds
I’d give up all this for more time
At the bitter end
Of all the things that I regret
The thing that turns the screw inside me
Is that thought that this could be so different.
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7. |
Dead End
04:30
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We’re never going to turn it round
We got stranded in a dead-end town
The skies are packed with cloud
But they still won’t end the drought
And we’re never going to turn it round
I’ve made a list of all I lack
I stretched it out until I snapped
An awful cracking sound
Arrow always pointing down
And we’re never going to turn it round
The noises off and background chat
Just fill me up with fresh self doubt
The good days came and went
And we’re back down here again
And we’re never going to turn it round
And you say this time
I’ll chase those tears away
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8. |
Coalesce
05:05
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We’re just a shell. the remnants of the guilt and the shame
The objects on the shelf, the yellow part of the flame
We’re a statement of the obvious, we’re the thoughts that drag you down every day
An outpost in the desert, in the tundra, the plain
The contours on the map eroded down to the same point of elevation
A convergent, amorphous terrain
Our view up the pedestal dims again
Our bags of hollow bones and our marks out of ten
Flow like magma and sink like a stone
At the speed that a glacier creeps to the sea
And we coalesce but we’re desperate to be on our own again
And we’re all joined up, but we’d do anything to be alone
You could have it all, but you don’t take it away
Enthusiasm dwindles and our interest decays
And you never saw it coming
You were lying to yourself every day
We match you and your pointlessness in every way
You’re standing under shelter and we’re praying for rain
And we’re saving our excuses and we’re giving each other more of the same
It don’t add up, it don’t make sense
Can’t tell deliberate mistakes from the accidents
Nothing stacks up, and it’s happening again
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9. |
The Hypnotist's Fingers
04:53
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Imaginary tracks snake and vein
Take characters that I’ve portrayed out and free from the photo frames
Unshackled, they drift in and out of these stories I fake
I’ve turned to a ghost, but somewhere I’m breathing
I’ve become the impossible dream that they’re chasing
Their last bit of interest will fade, so I’ll have to elaborate
The paths turn to motorway lanes
I weave and I accelerate when I’m running away
Rusty cage in splinters,
I’ve hit reset, put a Vulcan grip round my neck
And I shed my skin
At the moment of fleeing,
A point in the distance forever receding
The radio echoes my name
A pointless and endless sustain
Until I go right back to where I began again
The vapour trails drift into space
The last bloodstain evaporates or gets washed away
By the tide encroaching
Relentlessly changing these landscapes I’ve known
But the click of the hypnotist’s fingers will free me
I’ll slip through the bars and I’ll turn back to nobody
As permanent as rocks and sky
As transparent as passers-by
Until I go right back to where I began again.
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10. |
The Exorcist
04:57
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I’ve been speaking in tongues, hearing voices, blacking out
All these black thoughts are circling round
As I spider, backwards, down the stairs and vomit out
All these new words that I have found
I’ve been hearing meaning in these songs, where there is none
And in the blackbird’s call I hear them all ring on
My family expands and forms a phalanx round my bed
I twist and I contort, play games with their heads
I twist and I contort around their heads
It’s too late to send a priest for me
I’ve slipped too far behind
Abandon all your hope for me
And this sickness in my mind
Bible verses, proverbs, folded hands and lifted hearts
I will push them back down where they’ll stay
Medieval process, exorcist can’t chase Satan away
So he’s taking us back to the flames
Levitation? Tie me down, secure me to my bed
I’ll slip out from the chains and float around instead
The holy water splashes round, can’t cast the demon out
It battens down the hatches, burrows itself down
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Andy Zuk England, UK
Andy is a multi instrumentalist singer/songwriter and producer living in the south of England.
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