Andrew Bird Album

two stars are missing me
jet waves are driving me
thing in nicer motions
we are hauling to space

this force is twisting the faith with superstition
a fatal premonition
you know you've got to envision
the fiery crash

ooh, close your eyes and you wake up
face stuck up to a vinyl still tied
ohh, a lot is starting to break off
just as you were starting to say
someday ill propose i don't know

bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom

these childs in magazines

blue doves in the sea on and tevo every monitor screen
you were caught in the cross fire
where every human face is reaching for your knees or ears

delivering position
a fatal premonition
save our lives, you've got to envision
to save all our lives, you've got to envision

and to save all our lives, you've got to envision
the fiery crash, it's just a formality
or must I explain, just a nod to mortality

before you get ooon, before you get on a plane
oooh, close your eyes and you wake up
face stuck to a vinyl still tied
ohh, a lot is starting to break off
what was that you were going to say?

His keeping busier as bitter storms
his imaginations and his palindromes
It was anything but hear the voice
Anything but hear the voice
It was anything but hear the voice
That says that we’re all basically alone

Poor Professor Pension had only good intentions
When he put his Bunsen burners all away and turned
Into a playground a petri dish of single cells that would swing
Their fists at anything that looks like easy prey
Nature show that rages every day it was bound, a part his intuition
Say we were all basically alone

And despite what all his studies had shown
What was mistaken for closeness was just a case for mitosis
Weighed deception or mercy
Where others train for the show
and tell me doctor can you pull my file

‘Cause he just wants to know the reason, the reason whyyyy

Why do they congregate in groups of four
Scatter like a billion spores
And let the wind just carry them away?
How can gametes be so mean
Our famous doctor tried to gleam
As he went home at the end of the day
In this Nature show that rages every day
it was bound apart his intuition, Say

we were all basically all alone
Despite what all his studies had shown
What was mistaken for closeness was just a case for mitosis
She fatal doses, malcontent to osmosis
Weighed deception or mercy
Where others are paying for the shot
Well tell me doctor can you pull my file
reason why

this isn’t your song
this isn’t your music
how can they be wrong
when by committee they choose it all?
they choose it all

chin chin
chin chin

you’re gonna grow old
you’re gonna grow cold
bearing signs on the avenue
for your own personal Waterloo
you’re bearing signs on the avenue
for your own personal waterloo now

we’ll fight we’ll
we’ll fight for your music halls
and dying cities

they’ll fight they’ll fight
for your neural walls
and plasticities
and precious territory

this isn’t our song
this isn’t even a musical
I think life is too long
to be the whale in a cubicle
nails under your cuticle

chin chin

you’re gonna grow old
you’re gonna grow so cold
before this song can deliver you
you’re bearing signs on the avenue
you’re bearing signs
for your own personal Waterloo now

we’ll fight we’ll fight
we’ll fight for your music halls
and dying cities

they’ll fight they’ll fight
for your neural walls
and plasticites
and precious territory

bored holes through our tongues
to sing a song about it
held our breath for too long
‘til we’re half sick about it

tell us what we did wrong
and you can blame us for it
turn a clamp on our thumbs
we’ll sew a doll about it
and tell us all about it

how ‘bout some credit now
where credit is due
for the damage that we’ve done
wrought upon ourselves and others
with a slow and vicious gun
and although pratfalls can be fun
encores can be fatal
and there i hear you say

thank god it’s fatal
not shy
not shy of fatal
thank god

wait just a second now
it’s not all that bad
are we not having fun?

you’re making mountains of handkerchiefs
where the mascara always runs

so be careful when you’re done you’re bound to get post-natal

what did i just hear you say?

thank god it’s fatal
we don’t want to hear the sound of a door
and we don’t want to read the signs that you bore

you know the kind of sign you hang on the door
saying we’ll be back what a crack
don’t you think we might have heard that before?

i dreamed you were a cosmonaut
of the space between our chairs
and i was a cartographer
of the tangles in y our hair

i sighed a song that silence brings
it’s the one that everybody knows
oh everybody knows
the dong that silence sings
and this was how it goes

these looms that weave apocryphal
they’re hanging from a strand
these dark and empty rooms were full
of incandescent hands

and awkward pause
a fatal flaw
time it’s a crooked bow
oh time’s a crooked bow

in time you need to learn to love
the ebb just like the flow

grab hold of your bootstraps
and pull like hell
‘till gravity feels sorry for you
and lets you go
as if you lack the proper chemicals to know
the way it felt the last time you let yourself
fall this low
time
oh time
it’s a crooked bow
time’s a crooked bow

fifty-five and three–eighths years later
at the bottom of this gigantic crater
and armchair calls to you
yeah this armchair calls to you
and it says that
some day
we’ll get back at them all
with epoxy and a pair of pliers
as ancient sea slugs begin to crawl
through the ragweed and barbed wire
you didn’t write you didn’t call
it didn’t cross your mind at all
and through the waves
the waves of a.m. squall
you couldn’t feel a thing at all
you’re fifty-five and three-eighths tall

time

When I was just a little boy
I threw away all of my action toys
While a I became obsessed with Operation

With hearts and minds and certain glands
You gotta learn to keep a steady hand
And thus began my morbid fascination

Tore the spines from out of all of these self-help books
Made myself a gun that not only shoots but looks
So real
It shoots through steel
With rays of dark matter

Do you wonder where the self resides
Is it in your head or between your sides
And who will be the one who will decide
Its true location
And does the thought of bile that’s red and black
The thought of tongues that taste you back
Fill you with a nauseouseous sort of elation

A noose is loosed around our necks made of DNA
And every day it’s growing tighter no matter what they do or say
And you can shoot right through it with rays of dark matter
Just before they kick out the ladder
With rays of dark matter
Like something catching fire

Do you wonder where the self resides
Is it in your head or between your sides
And who will be the one who will decide
Its true location

some people wake up on Monday mornings
barring maelstroms and red flare warnings
with no explosions and no surprises
perform a series of exercises

hold your fire
take your place around an open fire

before your neurons declare a crisis
before your trace Serotonin rises
before you’re reading your coffee grounds
and before a pundit can make a sound
and before you’re reading your list of vices
perform the simplest exercises

so here at the end
the war is over
there’s nothing left to defend
no cliffs of Dover
so let us put down our pens
and this concludes our test
our minds are scattered about
from hell to breakfast

hold your fire
take your place around an open fire
don’t open fire

[No lyrics]

when our mouths are filled with uninvited tongues of others
and the strays are pining for their unrequited mothers
milk that sours is promptly spat
light will fill our eyes like cats

and they shall enter from the back
with spears and scepters and squirming sacks
scribes and tangles between their ears
faceless scrumbled charcoal smears

through the coppice and the chaparral
the thickets thick with mold
the bracken and the brier
catchweed into the fold

when our mouths are filled with uninvited tongues of others
and the strays are pining for their unrequited mothers
milk that sours is promptly spat
the light will fill our eyes like cats
cataracts

five day forecast bring black tar rains and hellfire
while handpicked handler's kid gloves tear at the inseams

their Halliburton attaché cases are useless

while Scotch-Guard Macintoshes shall be carbonized

now they're offering views of exiting empires
such breathtaking views of Scythian empires

Scythian empire
horsemen of the Russian steppe
Scythian empire
archers of an afterthought

routed by Sarmatians
thwarted by the Thracians
Scythian empire

kings of Macedonia
and the Scythian empire

The finches and sparrows build nests in my chimney
what remains of the small flightless birds that you failed to protect

but their yolk isn't easy in fact it's a drag
as they're blowing through cornfields and mountains of rags

all over the suburbs
across the great lawns
crop-dusting gardens all over this town

but nobody cares when it gets in their hair
it gets in their lungs as it floats through the air
it gets in the food that they buy and prepare
but nobody cares when it gets in their hair

across the great chasms and schisms
and the sudden aneurisms
where the black ink will drip
across the crespice of your
eyes and your teeth
are worth more than you can spare
oh don't tell me that it just isn't fair
don't speak about the cycles of life
'cause your thoughts are so soft
I could cut 'em with a spork or a bride's knife

and the wine made our mouths too loose
such a reckless choice of words
when you tell me that I'm too obstruce
I just thought it was a kind of bird
I just stood there not saying a word

[No lyrics]