1. |
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Don’t follow me home
Had quite enough of you here
Don’t stick to my clothes
I’d rather just smell the fear
You know I made it past the millrace
And thought I was in the clear
Oh you perverted old ghost
Stop chewing my ear
Oh yeah
The specter in the woods behind my house has no concept of boundaries
Does a lot of grabbing at the milkmaids who rebuke him soundly
Ever since last summer, Guess’s dam has been off limits thanks to his predations
But I guess we’ll keep on living
Evil draws close all around
Both here and there
And you can spit on the ground
Tuck posies in your hair
You can spin in circles
Make the old signs with your hands
You can take precautions
But honey try to understand
Oh that
The specter in the woods behind my house has no concept of boundaries
But the worst wrongdoings are all forged in ordinary foundries
Like the last dinosaur, whose longstanding fate the open sky refuses,
This sorry species has no excuses
Oh yeah
The specter in the woods behind my house, him and his werewolf friend,
Smoke dope and heckle passers-by and probably will until the end
We mend the evil in our hearts, down to the chaff the harvest wends,
And we’ve got to pick it right back up again
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2. |
My Sweetie Pie
04:28
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What a marvel when they laid the electric wire
That brought your voice to the speakers on the production line
I heard you over the click-clacking of the movable type
It’s of you that I think when I’m covered in ink and dead tired
My father’s been a cannonball ever since that mean old war
My mother took to raising dogs, she don’t speak much anymore
Your faithful listener in my room, by myself, no-one understands
That if you talk like that, honey you must be a real man
You know they tease me hard out here all the time
Make cracks at my weight and speculate about the girls that I like
Those poor, poor boys:
I just find them so darn devoid
I am twenty-one, gainfully employed,
And saving all my love for my sweetheart with the golden voice
Oh my sweetie pie, my sweetie pie
Is it the colonel’s daughter’s number flashing on the radio line?
Long time caller, but you hang up on me every time
Put me up on the airwaves, I’ll convince you of my fervor tonight
Tonight
I’m driven to distraction hearing you call weather and date
And the station ID gets me so hot, well daddy, dinner can wait
It’s just about the hour for you to open up to listener requests
Let’s hear the terrible symphony that’s beating here in my chest
Those poor, poor boys:
Those cretins do naught but annoy me
Their palms all stained in key
Each with a father who’d bequeath a U.P. fief to me
But I’m calling up my sweetie
Oh my sweetie pie, my sweetie pie
Is it the colonel’s daughter’s number flashing on the radio line?
Long time caller, but you hang up on me every time
Put me up on the airwaves, I’ll convince you of my fervor tonight
Tonight
Oh I’ve been doing unspeakable things to myself in the darkness,
Dreaming about the face behind the voice behind that microphone
Do you see that red light flashing? It’s me,
Pick up the line don’t leave me be
Reach for that phone and answer me
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3. |
Thylacine
02:37
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I could have wasted my life in an office
I could have spent it out on the road
They kicked me right out of the volunteer service
I never fell in love, I’ll never own a home
But I pursued a discipline you cannot understand
Searching for that striped dog across this feral land
I tracked the fossil footprints in North Queensland,
Found petrified droppings down in New South Wales
I cataloged the geologic record
And even glimpsed the awkward stiff brush tail
Pursuing the discipline you cannot understand
Searching for the last existing members of their clan
Thylacine, o thylacine
I spied your fearsome jaws upon the movie screen
Black and white, it haunts me to this day
Now I lay dying in some Outback billabong
Wondering where I went wrong
And why I’ve thrown my life away
Thylacine, o thylacine
I spied your fearsome jaws upon the movie screen
Open wide, they snatched my life away
Now I lay dying in some Outback swamp
The sun beats down, the gators start to chomp,
I chased a dream, this is the price I pay
A petty failure full of doubt
I took the golden hook among the school of trout:
My calling and my hangman and my curse
I took for granted that the past and all our wrongs lived on and on and on and on
And now I wonder which is worse
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4. |
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Act sweet and get your cap
Chief says the deceased is reposing in the shed out back
I know you’ve seen worse in books and on the internet
But you’re turning green as hell, yeah buddy, you’re a rookie yet
We talk about it like it’s so sad
It was the longest confession Father Dempsey has ever had
Nevertheless, the morgue is gonna get her in a couple different bags
And I still think doing yourself in is the last true hopeful act
Well, kid, I’ve been on the force a real long time
I’ve seen em hanging from rafters, seen their brains out, seen em fried
I’ve split two lovers from a once-unending hug
As far as I’m concerned, son, our graves are already dug
On the heights of despair
And I haven’t got a care
Each special someone fading into the dirt
All the troubles in my head
Will be erased in the halls of the dead
Where at last I will accept my minimal worth
We talk about it with unbelievable fright
Reading portents in the wind of every lonely night
Nevertheless, the trouble with being born ain’t saying goodbye
It’s the terror of carrying on, each dreadful weary mile
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5. |
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The first heartache was when you spat me out of the cold, hard earth
The second was the curse of my hardy people’s improbable girth
Third on the list, yeah, I was truly miffed by my incredible failure of height
But even a dwarf with the poorest recourses can swing with formidable might
I ain’t talking bout hammers, I’m talking bout Amazons, tall elven ladies, fair maids
Stalking the beaches, doing off with their breeches, yeah I’m breaking em out of their caves
Davegard the Green came late to the scene and found I’d already swept em away
I ain’t taking down dragons but no matter how ill-made, you know I still slay
And all my fathers know is the ringing of their axes and the rubies that they’re passing
from hand to hand
Lineages writ in runes on the long walls underneath the mountain
And tired commercial notions I cannot stand
Well it’s true, from time to time I’ve undertaken some bestial things
A couple affairs in the cloisters, I was only spared by the pardon of kings
I can’t help that a hug and a kiss and some more makes me feel like a man
A dwarf who’s short cast out from his clan lives as dangerously as he can
And oh, I know, I will answer for my doings
But the problem is just that the doing is so damn good
Across this blighted world, I’m hiding from my shortcomings
By stripping em down in their castles or out in the woods
Enshroud me, please, in the garters of my lovers when
That merciful reaper comes to set me free
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6. |
VHE
02:42
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When may I see the tape of your vasectomy again?
You know it turns me on to see a doctor do the twist
You have always been such a very special friend
Thank god I’ll never be emburdened by your kids
Love me once on accident, don’t you think about or plan it
Then you’ll love me twice, my antique parents will demand it
If you love me three times, can it be just you and me, damn it,
Voluntarily depopulating the planet
No need to stop this godless rutting even if
The moon is looking less than favorable
I can see extinction has gotten you pretty stiff
The future’s always impenetrable
Millennial anxiety has never made the curtain look so good
As when I saw you facedown on the couch wrapped in your hood
Tie me to the headboard and I’ll make your dead eyes see
How quickly we can fade into the dream
Love me once on accident, we’ll say we never meant it
Then you’ll love me twice, no arcane science can prevent it
If you love me three times, can you whisper in my ear
What I want to hear?
“Let’s go extinct”
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7. |
The Widow's Lament
02:37
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We never had the type of sex promised us by erotic films
No puffed-up lips, no too-big dills
No indiscretions behind fuzzy steering wheels
No incest, bondage, torture, shame
My therapist had warned me not to scream his name
And a pretty spotty record kept him from choking me the way I wanted
But I loved every piece of that man
His big round nose just like a cabbage
So I’ve dragged his body to you now
It’s right here in my baggage
Listen to me, listen, Herr Doctor, please
Can you do an autopsy?
Saw through my pelvis or break my knees
Can you find my lover inside me?
No, I didn’t eat him though I really wished I could
I never had the knack for making zuppa out of wood
I tried to get him off the floor
But a casual glance confirmed he wasn’t moving anymore
He’s clearly left his mortal form:
All that’s left is a sad puppet growing more and more deformed
Anyway,
The grave is cold and he hates cold so I know he must be somewhere in me
Where my heart is warm and beating
Listen to me, listen, Herr Doctor, please
Can you do an autopsy?
Saw through my pelvis or break my knees
Can you find my lover inside me,
Where he’s hiding out from the reaper?
In my organs and skin
The tyranny of death is so beneath us
I know he’ll carry on within
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8. |
Ice Climbers
06:09
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Don’t think too much about it, baby,
The north sun does a rotten number on my skin
Can you call it hiding
When I’m just covering my seasonal blemishes?
That’s the mark of an explorer,
Someone who’ll grab the reins and grit their teeth
And no, I haven’t been cutting…
Okay, I have, but just the limbs that you can’t see
Strapped in my snowshoes
The tears freeze to my cheeks
Been thinking lots about it, baby,
Had a whole lot of thinking time
Following in your deep snow prints
Across the shrinking glaciers and the icy mountains that we climb
Absolutely did I lose them,
I left those tablets at the base camp several thousand kilos back
This trip was already something
Now it’s only getting more and more taxing
Struggling to keep
A modest grip on reality
Oh, there goes that famous ice-climbing pair
Trekking across the continent
Two masterful alpinists seizing their fate
Their lives spent on high, spitting in danger’s face
Can’t stop thinking bout it, baby,
If we do make it to the end, these journalists with their ticker tape
Will have me half-mad on the newsreel with this mess of scars upon my face:
“We got attacked by some pygmies, they’re down there at the South Pole living well,
Oh, yes, it’s been an accomplishment!”
…Perhaps the greatest of my life but I’m in hell
Oh you should have made, should have made this trip alone
And left my sorry ass on the couch at home
Yeah we should have known, history ought to have shown,
That I’d go off the rails and fuck it up
Oh what a serious overestimation
Of the kind of faith you should have in someone
Someone like me
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