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LYRICS > Extralife (2018)

  • 1. Extralife

    It's over now
    The flag is sunk
    The world has flattened out

    Under the underground
    I've always found
    A level further down

    As I begin to lose hold of
    The fiery flower beds above
    Mushroom clouds reset the sky

    Extralife

    In the only game
    I ever play
    I am the ageless one

    Another hunted bird
    An arcade word
    A living machine love

    There must be something I’ve lost sight of
    Starfree extradimensional
    Superconductor up in the sky

    Extralife

  • 2. Singularity

    Some day a shooting star is gonna shoot me down
    Burn these high-rises back into a ghost town
    Of iridium-white clouds
    Matted close against the ground
    While the sky hangs empty as a frame

    See the reddening horizon line
    Feel the planets pulling on the spacetime
    All the way down Somerset
    I take pictures of cement
    For the history books on Mother Earth

    To the west now it begins
    In the sound waves in the wind
    There is an echo going by me
    Of the mountains caving in

    And the potted roads and I
    Knew that one day we would die
    And become smooth and whole again
    Like the ash that sweeps the sky

    There's holy water lying in the crater well
    Heavy metals, high-test gasoline
    Blessed singularity
    A telescoping memory
    Where the sky still flickers through the leaves

  • 3. Futures

    A futuremoment disappears
    A futureringing in my ear
    I hear her calling, calling
    Calling me I hear

    Radio futurewaves transmit
    My futureMrs President and she
    Tries to tell me

    It’s not ever too late

    Through futureforests in the sea
    My futuredog is walking me
    I hear him calling, calling

    From deep within the Thermocene
    Bikini snow burns like acetylene
    Under our feet

    It’s not ever too late

    The futuredawning of the day
    It’s never here and never goes away

    It’s not ever too late

  • 4. Hold Your Head Up High

    How it rambles round the moon
    A let-go-of balloon
    Nothing is forever, everything is soon

    And my father as he stands
    A perfect cartoon man
    Heavy-sighed and open-eyed, I heard him speak

    Hold your head up high

    Rise it up, it’s fine to rain
    A time will come again
    And misery’s no rest for weary gentlemen

    See the humankind is you
    Like all the rest down to
    The scratches on the album that you’re singing to

    Hold your head up high

    Through the light and through the shadow
    I won’t wait it out

    Hold your head up high

    Biting clovers in the lawn
    A solitary fawn
    Underground the new life thunders up and on

  • 5. Eschaton

    You, me, the Young Turks by the BU Bridge
    All of the lines are fixed

    We need to remember what happens, if
    We don't write it who will?

    Time, look at the time
    And what we used to be
    Signs, what are the signs?
    Nobody here still reads

    I hear the eschaton
    I see our stripes on floating ground
    No matter what we’ve been, we are the upshot now

    They’re making martyrs out of tennis stars
    Did you think they were ours?

    There’s something in the water, byzantine
    And everyone’s downstream

    Time, they own all the time
    And what we used to be
    Signs, look at the signs
    Tell me what you believe

    I hear the eschaton
    I see our stripes on floating ground
    No matter what we’ve been, we are the upshot now

  • 6. Old Friend

    Old friend I
    Think of you still sometimes
    Sure as the oak is bending into the light

    You and I
    Looked for a compromise
    When you said did I not believe in your heaven?

    Old friend I
    Think of you still sometimes
    Sure as the river bends
    Sure as the river bending into the light

  • 7. Lindisfarne

    Back on the growing line you were fine
    Living a lone life on the vine

    Enter the stranger’s arm, Lindisfarne
    Who has the keys, why don’t we fight in the car?

    Always see you through me I thought I knew

    I guess a handle on anything isn’t a thing
    At least not for long

    Try it again again like old men
    Manet, Degas, let’s keep the pin in the pen

    Always see you through me I thought I knew
    Always see me through you I thought I knew

    The mountain-seeming way waiting lay opposite me
    You look it right in the face

    Always see you through me I thought I knew
    Always see me through you I thought I knew

  • 8. The Rabbit and the Pointed Gun

    Hide away, the storm’s about to break
    All of the branches shake
    And the trail of Colorado comes awake

    Fair enough, it took me by surprise
    Just like the sun in my eyes
    And I falter on the step before the lake

    The thunder and the swallows dive
    Right then I almost cried out

    And the brush grows over, and the boot sinks in
    Ground is underwater, water’s under wind

    The rabbit and the pointed gun
    I held them both in the sun
    And I walked back home after the storm was done

  • 9. Indian Orchard Road

    Something is waking on Indian Orchard
    Blaze after blaze through the woods along the road

    Dragonfly dawn
    Day gaining on

    Shadows that lift off the bloom and the velvet
    White gravel, crabapples black under the buzz
    Shallow tracks switchback up to the spillway
    Steady the silver line up into the sun

    Shapes on the lawn
    What’s waking on

    Indian Orchard Road?

    Something has changed since the very beginning
    Bird in the bath making ghosts out of the blue
    Melting field of angels in cool water
    Cannonball through it all, I’m missing you

    Hang glider dawn
    I’m hanging on to

    Indian Orchard Road

    Something is setting on Indian Orchard
    Making its way through the timber woods alone

    Indian Orchard Road

  • 10. Rita Hayworth

    Crash course
    American dark horse
    Starfire Red® in a colorless sea

    Checkmate
    Incontestable mandate
    Oh I want to know what it’s like to be loved

    Like a heartbeat
    Coco Chanel, Rita Hayworth
    Mae West, Elizabeth Taylor

  • 11. Orion

    Santa Fe awake in the dark
    Look at how uneasy you are
    Curtains to the edges at night
    The street is full of thunder and light

    Sink into the infinite time
    Trace it to the belt of Orion
    And elbow out into the unknown
    Everything in motion’s a domino

    Go, are we gonna go?

    The paint is peeling off of a dream
    The pool is draining into the sea
    Tomorrow is beginning to take
    An equal and an opposite shape

    The beach is just a line in the sand
    The tide is in the palm of your hand
    It's looking like the start or the end
    Either way ahead is around the bend

    Go, are we gonna go?

  • 12. Best of the Best of Times

    When the world speaks
    It rattles to me like an antique
    Or maybe it rings

    Like an old bell
    Wishing us some kind of farewell
    A wave in the window

    A beacon
    The battened-down end of a season
    Lullaby blue

    It is two doves
    Shot in the heat of the summer
    And truer than words

    We’re a long way from the best of the best of times

    There’s a broken
    Clock tower out in the ocean
    Holding me under

    The table
    Tipping me down like a cradle
    Drowning me out

    With an amen
    Heralding heaven and Auld Lang Syne
    And “everything’s fine”

    We’re a long way from the best of the best of times

    And I wonder
    Whether our days are unnumbered
    If one is the same

    As another
    Whether we mistook the colors
    For the real thing

    If we’ll ring out
    Brimming and broken and somehow
    Truer than blue

    And then come to
    Pulled from the wreck in the daybreak
    All equal and safe

    We’re a long way from the best of the best of times