1. EVERYTHING CHANGES/NOTHING IS EVER TRULY LOST

Home: Embrace the concept, can't afford the place.
As the long knives of the night were keeping you awake, I called you up just to learn the rain stretched across the states, drowning the soft features of your face.
For heaven's sake, it just goes to show: you can't hang out and just go to shows from your studio apartment hiding from the student loan department all alone.
It just goes to show when we're on the road just going to shows I feel the long chains of space around our throats. But I miss you. And I'm coming home.


2. BICYCLES FOR AFGHANISTAN

So I wanted goals.
I saw all I needed was a home with a view of something beautiful,
A woman that I trusted, the friends that I grew up with.
But it was asking too much for just us to pray things stay in exactly the same way.

And so we drift together saying "Every mirror shows the same ugly shell I've shared forever".
We drift together, yet apart and alone.
The only role for these lonely souls.

And you can see by the lonely numbers on my bank receipts,
And you can see the lonely space between these sheets,
And you can see by the ravenous company I keep,
Cmforts are few and far between.
So pray things stay in exactly the same way.

And so we drift together saying "Every mirror shows the same ugly shell
I've shared forever".
We drift together, yet apart and alone.
The only role for these lonely souls.

But just this once I'll have you know, this is not a lonely soul.

(This world has other sorrows than love.)
And so we drift together saying "Every mirror shows the same ugly shell
(This world has other sorrows than love.)
I've shared forever". We drift together, yet apart and alone.
The only role for these lonely souls.

(This world has other sorrows than love.)
And so we drift together saying "Every mirror shows the same ugly shell
(This world has other sorrows than love.)
I've shared forever".
We drift together, yet apart and alone.


3. IMPENDING GLORY OF AMERICAN ADULTHOOD

If it seems as of late, I've stopped sitting around talking about the bands I hate, maybe i'm starting to relate.
How could anyone, have anything to say? And if your inspiration's vacant, it's cause you're sitting in a basement, wasting away day after day.
I feel the same way. How can anyone have anything to say ? When was the last time, anything happened to me ?
Of limited income, and even less experience... when was the first time you thought "this is where we should always be?"
So vacant day after day.
This is the last time; you'll see the likes of me.
I could stay; play the part of the youngest has-been.
In the dark at card tables, rehashing old visions.
Put the impending glory aside and make the same decisions in life as my parents.
Take their rightful place as the patron saint of "remember the time ?"

I'm worth my weight in the glory of yesterday, worth my weight in vacancy.


4. I'M ON THE GUESTLIST MOTHERFUCKER

Incapable of holding down real jobs and can't make rent,
so for a life in the arts we deem ourselves destined.
Skip across my record collection until a song strikes my soul.
Until it distances the earth between me and my home.
With the lazy shame of my parents money and the senseless sweat of my own.
Kids! We're in this together.
You're my new consumer and I don't want to move back home.

So put a big black sticker on the front that says "For Fans Of."
And you can donate a penny to my future pension.
We've got big retail chain front-of-store displays,
But just remember :
It's three grand for a half-page ad, so you better be paying attention.

Yeah you're a beautiful consumer, and I don't want to move back home.
So download all the songs we wrote and hype it up with some bullshit quotes.
Yeah, we're on a roll.


5. SUDAN

... Vanished in fury of smoke. Before she left she spoke about a problem and a plan.
She said "I plan to make my escape, gonna check out the United States.
Can't take this island wasteland.
How can I be who I want when they know me as who I am ? Besides, people work their whole lives hoping to get here. I figure they could use the room.
A great place to get rich, have kids and die.
I probably won't be coming back so soon.
How can I be who I want if I stay here with you ?
So goodnight, Dark Island.
It's the weight of life spent peeking out from beneath the trees... the way the front lawns wander on endlessly.
And it's not a bad life.
Working 9-5, weekend gardening and cheating on your wife. But if you find yourself broken in the slow mercury of days, and have the courage for the traffic, I know a secret to escape: just be who it is they want.
It's easy to find your way.
I can't help feeling like there's never enough friends or any friendly faces, just a bunch of clever ways to say "Jesus Saves'"


6. ABRE LOS OJOS

It's safe to say there are darker things in the streets these days than kids with guns and moms on drugs, things that we don't let on.
And if you're "free", then take to the city streets with your God-given speech, screaming, "Fuck the police."
You can see the state getting armed for the new class war. Perpetuate divide and say that it's the law.
There are blacker things living deep in all our hearts, darker things in our hearts than we let on.
And it's safe to say there are darker things in the street these days than darker skies and getting high.
Things that control our lives.
The priests were all demoted and released.
Check the property value.
The neighbors didn't even mind.
Doesn't anyone want to start again ?
Create a new aesthetic for the new American.
Not state traitors taking, day trading and date raping to their hearts' content.
As the work day ends, I laid down so tired...

I woke up awakening.


7. GRAVITY/GRACE

You should have left, well enough alone.
Think of all the sleeping out here, dreaming of a home.
A 30 year mortgage of their own.
You should have let us stay healthy and work our fingers to the bone.
So what if it hurts ?
We all deserve the right to die for something.
But if they let you waste away on the waiting room floor, just say, "There is no fear in this heart".
You should have said, "You'll have t take what you can get," instead of letting us stay desperate and just work ourselves to death.
So what if it hurts ? So what if the stasis with a gracious smile is all you deserve? What if the basis for care is what you can afford ?
You'll get a permanent place in a public ward.
So what if it hurts ?
So what if I place in my broken faith is all you deserve ?

"There is no fear in this heart."


8. SLOW MATH

Unhinge all hearts with speed.
If you need something to believe, we can bury them deep.
We'll put our faith in new machines.
Once we've exhausted all the oil and pornography there will be so much to teach of the slow math of debt and dreams.

Yeah we deserve that much at least :
For every land a new war, for every man a new disease.
Queue the years!
Hold our breaths to shallow beats.
We should storm the beach and unhinge our lungs at least.

Unhinge all hearts asleep.
If you need something to believe, new science always feeds us new bombs and new TV's.
And who here will say the rate of pay for their working day
is not outweighed by their fatigue ?
The new math of debt and dreams.

Yeah we deserve that much at least :
For every land a new war, for every man a new disease.
Queue the years !
Hold our breaths to shallow beats.
We should storm the beach and unhinge our lungs at least.

Yeah for every land a new war, for every man a new disease.


9. I STOLE THIS FOR YOU

Dusk hits and the whole world gets to be, "knock three times, tell them who sent you and who you came to see".
I could find you in any dive in any one of these Dark streets.
In a vinyl booth with a stranger, dripping insincerities. And all those promises to me you mumbled.
I guess you'll keep them eventually...(to someone else)

Now we're all former friends treated like guests in our very own home, as we stare and wonder how someone young could get dumber than you.

But hey that's what they say about the divorce rate: the kids grow up not trusting anything.
(Hey that's what they say about you and me)
But I won't forget the day when you came to me backstage just to see what I would say about your newest mistake. Duck hits and the whole world gets to see you hide out in some Green Point diner with all the indie rockers and the graphic designers, diving through the alleys of these Dark streets, with a vinyl smile dripping with insincerity.

Hell you sure fooled me.

But hey that's they say about two products of the divorce rate.
And if this fate is ours to embrace, you can come find me backstage. But I won't be anyone's mistake.


10. DARK ISLAND CITY

I only have a single photograph of me and you.
It's from last New Years at my place.
I look half drunk and half obscured by some crusty punk. You're all done up and already walking away.


11. FOR EXES

Hey I know it's getting pretty late, but I was wondering, how are things around the office these days ?
Did your boss ever give you that raise ?
Does that guy still work next door, the one with two bands that are great ?
Anyway, I guess I'm just calling to say I was thinking back to when we went to school upstate.
With a full week before classes in September, you got the best seat in the house, sprawled out on the couch "for the night" and stayed there for a whole semester.
Hey, I know it's getting pretty late, but I was thinking I could swing by your office tomorrow on your break.
You could tell your roommate to cover us while we're away. Do you think that it would be a shame if I wished that we were back in school again, if only so I could walk you home ?
Before you got your own place, with your own bills to pay...but I know it's getting pretty late and tomorrow morning you've got work.
I know you don't like calling, putting yourself out there to get hurt. But just say the word and I'll be outside in the parking lot with the engine running by the curb.
Hey. I'll even let you pick the records we play.
All I want to do is waste some time with you and drive the night away.
So if you get this message, call me back whenever.
I'll be around all day.


12. I, STATESIDE

If I apologize for the swift and sudden rise in the recurring themes of love and God and war, will you make amends for the way we all pretend these aren't the thing we think about when we can't think about our jobs anymore ?

I'm so sick of this fate, I felt compelled to create.
I left it for you, waiting in the nylon space of record crates, to ease the pain from the soft features of your face.
So you can put your windows down and impose your musical tastes upon this immense landscape.
I think I'm starting to relate to these troubled states. And I can't set aside all the condescending lies they're making us believe about state and faith and law.
Paint every dark-skinned man a criminal, and every White Christian forgivable.
We're choosing sides, a soldier's life, in the new culture war.
I'm, so sick of this fate I felt compelled to create.
I left it for you, draped in a jewel case outside your place.
For heaven's sake, if the long knives of the night are keeping you awake...
I think we share the collective fate of these troubled states.

So we're all going to hell, but with one hell of a plan. Presented in folded flags, embedded in foreign sand, written upon the dead skin of a dried-up land it began : "We'll fix the fat and the ugly with incisions. We'll stash the gay and liberal up in New England.
We'll keep the black and poor in (or under the constant threat of) prison.
And they'll all feel blessed just for being a part of the vision..."

God please save these troubled states.