1. |
Celebrate!
03:14
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I heard that Steely Dan song at the dollar store and it just lit me up
I said to myself “I ain’t even got any kids, so what the fuck?”
Is it time to buy a party boat and move to Connecticut
Or maybe pump the breaks a bit
Save your sighs
Drown your hows and whys
Circumvent the rational
Stack the deck until your glass is full
I pressed pause on my fashion sense when I was 26
Maybe if I walk around looking like it’s 2012 I can fool the kids
Maybe this is much sadder than accepting I’m fatter and just leaning into quiet night and buying things
Save your grief
Drown your core beliefs
Circumvent the rational
Hog the well until your glass is full
(Celebrate resignation...)
Stage one: shock and denial
Stage two: conquer the troll lifestyle
Stage three: anger and bargain
Stage four: watching a Golden Girls rerun
Stage five: holding a vigil
Stage six: a Dorian Grey-like sigil
Stage seven: acceptance and hope
Stage eight: chasing the dopamine to cope
Save your strain
Drown your guilt and shame
Void the unavoidable
Have a ball until your heart is full
Save your sorrow
Do the thing tomorrow
Circumvent the albatross
Just act like you meant to get lost
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2. |
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Could you put another movie on the tube
I’m awake and I’m racing
Thoughts are stuck pacing
I could turn the volume all the way down
And you can sleep when you wanna
Not sure I’m gonna
Just remembered all the problems in the world
How the hell do I fix ‘em?
Can’t we just nix them?
Just recalled that I promised my mom
I’d be famous by now
And I’d buy her a house
Take this how you want to
But I’m a lost boy
Sing like you’re losing your lungs
It’s a song that once mattered
The clue we last heard
Unlock a little secret in a heart
That was fading deep down
Before we reach town
I’ve got little to lose
Let’s be happy
Cut me
A piece of that pie
I feel like I might scream
And I’m not sure why
Excuse you
This is what I’m used to
Distract me good
And let’s pretend I’ve pulled through
And if the part of you that still pines
Feels like a worn out Tilt-A-Whirl
Maybe we grease the gears and redefine
Look for an oyster, not a pearl
Breath in
While we still can
Let’s go somewhere out state this weekend
Use this
Before it’s useless
A swell in our idle adventurousness
Breath out
Let’s take this back route
I ain’t gone this way since I was a Cub Scout
Let’s try to let go
Of what we can’t know
I think if we turn left here there a new road
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3. |
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Please atone for your party foul
Leave alone while you can shimmy out
Part the seas of your own ennui
And walk down the street with Disney Channel Dignity and be
Like the kids on TV
Disconnect all the simple lines
Lace your wounds with a length of twine and believe
That people wanna be like you
When it’s not your call what they should or shouldn’t do
It’s true
Be cool
Just put that speech in your pocket and listen
You’re only one in a billion
So try to be human
Just kick that soap box out from under
Kid, don’t it make you wonder
If the lightning is worth all the thunder
“Years ago” is a mantra now
Say it more and say it kinda loud
Tell the mirror you can see things clearer
And do a double-take as your doppelganger sneers
You’re a grown up adult with a level head
You clean your towels and you make your bed, sure
But why do you act like your youth is dead
The day will come when you wish you were this age instead
Just put that tongue in your fingers and hold it
Let’s act out the story like you told it
No one is old yet
Just kiss your stars like you’ve always been lucky
Your name won’t be on the marquee
But you get a front row seat
Hey, you came!
You showed up, now go away
This is a sacred place
Only beamers have the green light to stay
Oh no, you don’t have to go!
I was only trying to balance a ratio
You can’t be cocky, but you can’t be low
Wipe that frown off your face
But don’t look too glad though
Please atone for your over-thought
Jeez, you sure do say those words a lot
Don’t you think they would’ve all forgot
It’s a the past and it’s not an 80s movie plot
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4. |
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Driving up to my hometown
To help my mom tear a treehouse down
No everyone expects me to write a song about it
Who wants to hear another dude sing
About dirt roads and rusted up things
As if I grew up in a folktale and I need to shout it
Trees and trucks
Shut the fuck up
These mountains ain’t that tall
And that has to be ok
Someday
Walking slowly down main street
I kiss a lamplight and drag my feet
Curate an image of a place
And pretend it’s around me
Ghosts and grit
Who gives a shit
My story only shines for me
And that has to be ok
Someday
On the way back down 30 South
I call your name out
‘Cause I need to believe
You can hear me from the back roads
And if I go real slow
I might grab a look-see
As you turn your Chevy
On to 28 and I’ll speed up
As my heart sinks down
‘Cause I think if I catch you
I can keep you
But I can’t
It all makes sense now
I don’t miss this town a bit
I just let a part of me think you still live in it
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5. |
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Faced to the corner in the back of the place
I saw the Omega
He wore a common uniform of the trade
Mouth poised like a beggar
She’ll leave if you let her
Set like a soda on the arm of a couch
I saw something tipping
My shadow said that he was phasing me out
Or I’d better get gripping
Things squeak when they’re slipping
Drive me to my car
So I don’t have to walk so far
Drive me to your parents’ place
So I don’t have to sleep in such an empty space
Drive me to the show
So I don’t have to go alone
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6. |
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Hung a page from an old magazine in my bedroom
Hit record on a tape deck and sealed my doom
When to sleep with a draft of a Grammy speech in mind
Opened eyes with a car and a job and a loss of time
So here we stand dumb grown-ups and
Our collective disdain for the questions at hand
How can it be so hard to keep this burning
Give me that last red can of gasoline
I am a dying flame
Tell me you don’t feel the same
How can it be so hard to spark like
I’m still seventeen
Watch the years disappear in my c-c-c-coffee cup
Mourn the death of a deadline that I made up
This is not
A logical thought
It’s an itch on a scar from a wound that I got
How can it be so hard to keep this burning
Give me that last red can of gasoline
I am a dying flame
Tell me you don’t feel the same
How can it be so hard to spark like
I’m still seventeen
Did you just say
“Let it die away
You will finally learn to forget someday”
Here’s hoping
You’re joking
I’ll never learn to let it go
I’ll never learn to let this go
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7. |
Powerpop Record
03:55
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I’ll take it too hard
And you won’t even notice
From afar
The snapshot you keep in your head
It’s a caricature of me at an apex
And the court objects
They all come for you
And they tell themselves someone shows up for me too
But I’m making powerpop records for an empty room
And all of these threads start to fray
I can feel them wilt and wither
Why the hell do I need so many anyway
Let’s just let go like we’re losing a bet
‘Cause this is hardly the time or the place
To fume like a cigarette
And you can sing my acclaim when they mention my name
I’ll be here twitching just a little but
I’m itching just a little bit for fabled days:
To just feel same
It took a few decades
But I finally get it
I’m a mess
Collect enough surrogates
And I won’t even notice that they left
What if I stopped showing up
What if I ceased reaching out
I’m scared everyone would just carry on and go about
Comfy with the thought of me kicking ass
Somewhere out there in a universe
They never come in contact with
No doubt
So let’s just let go like we’re losing the race
‘Cause these are hardly the ways or the words
to make you wanna see my face
And we’ll squeeze real tight when we cross in the night
I’ll explain to furrowed brows
And you’ll explain to puzzled ears that we had fabled days
I’m pretty sure we had fabled days
I swear we had fabled days
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8. |
W.O.O.
03:41
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I am basically a conduit
For the word of a snake charmer
And I cut a crooked blue silhouette
On the seams of your diamond armor
This could go a couple different ways
Here, would you try this mouth guard on?
Or if you strike I’ll flex my phantom brawn
Winning others over since The Challenger took flight
Winning others over but it doesn’t make me the good guy
Winning others over shouldn’t be so prime
Someone showed someone a spreadsheet
And reduced us to fractions
And now we’re supposed to turn and treat them like our power to bask in
Hey, I don’t know about you
But I’m having the damndest time getting this chainsaw started
So thank goodness that the trees have parted
Winning others over like a salesman with a craze
Winning others over but it doesn’t last the moon phase
Winning others over is a gauzy praise
Go ahead
Take that sticker
And stick it on your forehead
For human kind to see
Why is it just so hard
To be the you you are
And not some version you wish you could be
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9. |
Cake Heart
04:33
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Nights seem dull
When you grew up watching Lloyd Dobbler
Lift that stereo over his head
‘Til I snap out of the daydream
And remind myself he was kind of a creep
And so-called good guys don’t stand beneath windows and weep
Take a time machine to me
At age 13 and I’ll tell him melancholy chic
Ain’t really that charming but
he’ll grow out of it someday
When he hates humans as a whole anyway
Yet some withered ghost of Frank Capra still wails deep in my veins
I got a heart like a cake: kinda stale, but ok
I’ll save a slice for you all the same
You’d never wolf it all down,
But you’ll keep some around
A joie de vivre for the battleground
Life sifts by
and I can’t remember the last time
I shed a tear for Maude and her final line
We both might look forward to sleeping
And covet an hour to stare through the tv’s blue light
But it’s the moments you reach for my side of the bed at night
If we had gone to the same school
In junior high
Then I’d like to think I would have found you
Two weirdos with a war cry
With that amusement park head
Wide awake in the bed
A roller coaster of things you said
I strapped in tight long ago
Fuck if it don’t feel like home
No need to ride this thing all alone
I spent years and years destroying the Kevin Arnold in me
But I’m still that guy who means what he says even if it’s clumsy
Jaded and sour within
But I’m looking for sparks again
God damn it I’m gonna be exuberant
My movie magic still gleams
Somewhere back in the beams
It burns brighter on the proper screen
What if it’s fine to be still?
Not every moment’s a thrill
Who said I have to be Pecos Bill?
We got a dream like a jigsaw
Still finding pieces that fit wrong
Every so often we start over from corner one
I’m just so glad it’s still your face
Walking up to the doorway
Chiming your keys at the end of every day
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10. |
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We drew blood in the backyard
With my teeth in your forehead
We came down from the treetops
In a vessel built by he dead
You are
I am
So what
You built that wall with a window
Let me peer inside from time to time
You are
I am
So what
(beware of the dragon in the cave)
The covenant is thicker than the womb
So who broke our covenant?
If I had a dime
For every countless time
You called upon my duty like it’s your to mine
I’d buy myself a genie’s lamp and liquidate all three
On wishing that you’d hugged me when he died
You threw a cloak over my back
Fitted me with horns and an evil laugh
I think you’d strike all kind words from my epitaph
What happened to the boy who dropped his baseball in the creek
And jumped right in
Like nothing mattered more than that
You are
I am
So what
Just so you know
I’d take the blow
I’d save your soul
From a black hole
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Frankie and His Fingers Kingston, New York
Fuzzy Powerpop by Frank, Sammi, Adam, and Ryan.
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