1. |
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Recorded at Postal Recording Studios with the help of Alex Kercheval and Tyler Watkins, thanks to a generous grant from brother Craig Helmreich and Fourth Sunday Music Co., all of whom make us proud to be Hoosier musicians.
lyrics
As stealthy as a stag,
as careful as my dad in his garage
I got you into bed--
you smelled like cigarettes and rosewater
and in that post-connection climate,
you go asking what my sign is
and when I tell you that's not science,
you get out of bed
At a temple in the badlands,
outside a city in the slabs,
I felt every prayer that was ever prayed on my behalf
and said my own:
Don't give up on me!
When I was out on tour,
for forty years or more (is how it felt)
my friends were better sports
as I tried to cram the LORD into their throats
Doing right by my employer?
Or becoming the Destroyer?
My mother sits embroidering her scriptures
While at a temple in the badlands,
outside a city in the slabs,
I felt every prayer that was ever prayed on my behalf
and said my own:
Don't give up on me
At a temple in the badlands, I prayed
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2. |
Aurora by the Fire
03:51
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When Samuel's ghost sprung from the table,
could have sworn it was a lucid dream
She kept her fangs retracted,
bartered with me for copper coin
With all my thoughts dissolving,
I found my ghost in portals
Well I'd driven out all the mediums but her,
in black habit
in the spirit room
He gave his admonition
the gauntlet wouldn't be unthrown
and oh my lord,
my lord's kaleidoscopic phases
and I split like wood from a hatchet
in the hostile hands of my reckoning
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3. |
Furiosa
03:31
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What's with the whitewashed witchcraft
these constellations seem to cite?
I'm sure you have more clarity than me:
I'm a hawk caught in a drone strike
I'm a vagrant by the preacher on his corner
ceremonially stripped of all my guns
with my hands out for the medicine I need
to sleep everywhere at once
I'm a hunter, baby
I thought you'd better know
I am camouflaged completely in the Indiana snow
and I experiment with metamorphosis,
babbling a pentecostal prayer,
remembering the sandalwood and cardamom
and the oils in your hair
You noticed in my beard the first greying there
as I noticed I was older in a flash
and you're a voyeur, but I'm very accommodating
when you look at me like that
I'm a hunter, baby
I thought you'd better know:
there's a grizzly in my heart and an arrow in my bow
There is no unknowing what I know
the season's in so zero in and pull
I'm a hunter, baby
I thought you'd better know
I am desecrating Muir and discrediting Thoreau
I'm a hunter, baby
I thought you'd better know
I can see you in the dark
Your eyes glow
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4. |
Wolves in Heat
04:33
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Sounds of the 1980s come back around
to play off of the nostalgia in rotation for twenty-somethings
It goes down
It goes down easy
It goes down
It goes down
We paw at each other like wolves in heat,
but dressed and discrete in our pilgrimages
to parents' dreams
The smug self-satisfaction of film photography
The soul's need for validation,
commoditized and hosted in the cloud
To me, it doesn't go down
Go down easily
Go down
go down
The jackpot of humiliation I scored:
I don't need to be right about things anymore
(or so I say)
but I as a small bird
in distant thicket
forgot to let
the moon come up
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5. |
Sylvia Plath
02:41
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You were thin/white
hanging at the Pale Horse
trying hard to catch Thomas by his sleeve
Whenever you encounter ghosts,
you're honor bound to say,
"I cannot tell you what your work means to me"
No, I cannot tell you what your work means to me
To watch a peacock sputter out
hatching a menace in the intake
of an Underwood, awash in anhedonia
Improper opprobrium
of your self-immolation--
It kind of makes you lose your train of thought
Swallowing swords,
holed up in the old bar,
pulling your psyche back into a bun
or follow furies into series of back rooms
to debate the history of punk
No, I do not feel like getting
I trace the ramifications
of the prevailing social tone of the age
regarding chastity
and thank God, in her infinite wisdom
that the faint green of underwater
complements my skin tone
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6. |
Sleeping Bag
03:33
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When I hold your hand,
magic slips from your eyes into my eyes
and I feel again
the sentiment I felt
on hesitant tiptoe
--the innocence--
I left through your bedroom window
It wouldn't mean as much to me
if we were to share a sleeping bag
When I hold your hand,
two awkward spiders embracing,
I understand vulnerability
and the anxiety of inevitable loss
but I am still intent on letting these lines cross
It wouldn't mean as much to me
if we were to share a wedding bed
It wouldn't mean as much to me
if were were to share a sleeping bag
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Joshua Powell Indianapolis, Indiana
Joshua Powell is the exhausted wizard at the helm of IN's most haunted rock band. From his hardcore roots in the Floridian swamps and beyond the fever dream of his folk era, his literary lyrics dig for enlightenment in a surrealist muck. “Four LP's and over 900 shows later, the midwestern road dog's ever- evolving, transcendent style embraces hallucinatory metal and grimy psychedelia.” -Audiotree ... more
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