1. |
Help Wanted Full Album
54:48
|
|||
2. |
Superorganism
01:34
|
|||
|
Death is no matter; life is a superorganism.
We’re just mistakes in the copy.
Little mistakes in the copy.
|
||||
3. |
Bag of Goods
06:06
|
|||
|
Chorus: What is this bag of goods you sold me? I opened it up, it aint what you told me.
I tried to take it off, it just rolled me. What is this bag of goods you sold me?
I don’t know why I start every day in a panic, frustrated and manic, the buzzers, the bells, the buttons, the screens.
I don’t know why I can’t seem to feel satisfaction, or even reaction, just constant distraction, you know what I mean?
Meanwhile, they’ve got it all figured out at the staff meeting.
I don’t know why I’ve not found that place by the water, that curious daughter with tangled hair and scrapes on her knees.
I don’t know why I’ve not found that disheveled lover, his heart all a flutter, his body all covered in sawdust and poetry.
Meanwhile, they’ve got it all figured out on my T.V.
Take this burden off my back. I’m too afraid to cut the straps, they’re part of me, and if I try, I know I’ll bleed.
I don’t know why I can’t seem to get away from the traffic, these things automatic, the anger, the fear.
I watch the seagull that flies in the sky and I clamor: “Give me an answer!”, but she just advances and then disappears.
Meanwhile, she’s got it all figured out, it’s clear.
|
||||
4. |
Make Way for Life!
03:56
|
|||
|
Make way for life, here it comes, right out of sticks that hung like bones. Straight out of dirt, between the stones. Make way for life!
Make way for life, though the weather keeps you holed up with your guilty pleasures. Take a walk! You’ll see it better.
Free your fingers from the cup. Peel off compression and wake up!
Make way for life, it shoves and brawls and winds around the rusty stalls. It brags and buzzes, crows, and calls. Make way for life!
Make way for life, it’s in the mood to twist and strut and bite and brood. You can’t deny it’s awfully rude!
Beat your bare feet to the door. Find what nature has in store!
Meteors planting seeds across the universe. Evolution, radiating birth.
Make way for life, it’s everywhere, in salty flats and dingy lairs and ocean cracks and desert sands. Make way for life!
Make way for life, you’ll never trap it. It throws itself upon the planets: paints them like a thirsty canvas.
No matter how we treat it. It will never be defeated!
|
||||
5. |
Six Degrees/Toxic Gas
04:58
|
|||
|
Six Degrees
The roads in town are solid ice. His tires are old he’s skidded twice. The drinks were watered down, weren’t worth the price.
He was there when they closed. The first to come, the last to go. The colored lights blurred by the falling snow.
He once complained, now he concedes. It’s 25, it feels like 6 degrees.
On the radio it’s the same old case. Another mind just gone to waste. He looks on-line to see the face.
Like the other day at the general store, that kid that didn’t hold the door, that clerk that didn’t call him sir.
In the forecast, no reprieve It’s 25 it feels like six degrees.
He pours soup from a can into a pot. Makes a list of everything he’s not: A hero or a knave. A fighter or a saint.
She’s the one who packed the wares and tucked them underneath the stairs. He tried but no one’s buying out there.
He made the fire; she made the wreaths. They were 25 and it was Christmas eve.
He drops some leaf inside a roll, those stupid clowns what do they know? How could she be the first to go?
He turns off his TV. They’re sayin’ it’s 25 but it feels like 6 degrees. Stay inside it feels like six degrees.
Toxic Gas:
Then came the toxic gas. A few weeks after the Arby’s manager got locked in the walk in and froze to death.
Long after the scaffolding of the scared, zig zag mind had been erected and way before the lonely languor of the last butterfly.
The gas came defecating through the border stalls: a waste product of human stagnation.
|
||||
6. |
Uncle John
03:55
|
|||
|
Uncle John did her wrong. She’s face down in the swimming pool, bobbing like a sewing spool.
She’s sprawled out like Jesus Christ and puffed out like a grain of rice.
Uncle John did her wrong. Drunk, he pulled her by the hair, down three flights of concrete stairs.
Had he known she’d end up dead, he may’ve stopped a poundin’ on her head.
Uncle John did her wrong. While she was crying chlorine tears, he was shoutin’, “Do Ya Hear!”
Now he’s leaning on the edge, he’s bawling on his fists of lead.
Uncle John did her wrong. Mother said, “Don’t impose. Remember that’s the life she chose.”
But now where will those mad fists go?
|
||||
7. |
Boxer's Waltz
05:49
|
|||
|
When I was young, I lay in my meadow. I watched through the fence when the fair came to town.
It was then that I saw her. Her eyes were like diamonds. Her hair was all flowing and her body so round.
When the farmer came calling, I asked him about her. He said he could help me, but I had to work.
So I worked in his farm, and I worked in his factory. And I worked, and I worked, and I worked and I worked.
And I heard him tell me that this was the path to my dream. I heard him tell me that this was the way it should be.
The days went by, I worked harder and harder. This vision of beauty kept spurring me on.
But I started to wonder about my sweet meadow, were the flowers still blooming past these dark, dreary walls?
And I heard him tell me, as he flicked me a penny from the stack of his money, I heard him tell me that this was just temporary.
One day I stopped working for enough time to notice that my face had grown weary, and my soul had grown numb.
By the time I realized the farmer’s deception, by then my poor legs had grown too weak to run.
And don’t you tell me that this is the path to my dreams. And don’t you tell me that this is the way it should be.
And one day the farmer came out to find me. He saw that I still had some breath to extract.
So, he called up a car, shipped me off to the packer, and made a nice lamp from the bones in my back.
But a piece of my soul wriggled out of my body. I went off to see my lady, out on the fairgrounds, but,
When I found her, her eyes were frozen like marbles. She could only move in a circle or move up and down.
And don’t you tell me that this is the American dream! And don’t you tell me that this is the way it should be.
Get off now! Get from the merry-go-round! Go back to your meadow! Find your place in the sun! Turn away from illusion!
When the farmer comes calling, get up and run!
|
||||
8. |
Help Wanted (the song)
05:24
|
|||
|
Konrad worked long hours at the factory…they told him, “If we don’t. they will”.
He couldn’t stand to see them used as artist colonies. “If we don’t, they will.”
Where will I go, boss, now that I’ve done your dirty work? And you can’t tell me it’s my fault. You’re in charge of the system I serve.
Help Wanted.
Sandy worked for years as a grocery clerk...” If we don’t, they will.”
Now automated cashiers do that kind of work. “If we don’t, they will.”
But who will buy your groceries? Who will rent your land? Who will get a pitchfork and survive any way that we can? Help Wanted
Taylor worked two jobs and went to nursing school. “If we don’t, they will.”
Scarcely a year later she was automated, too. “If we don’t, they will.”
Robots will clean your houses and your self-driving cars. Drones will fight your battles, while we starve. Help Wanted.
|
||||
9. |
What Can You Do?
04:41
|
|||
|
I was sitting on a park bench feedin’ my flock, a woman drove by shouted, “Get a job!”
My anger boiled up like a great big pot of stew!
Until the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees
Brought my temperature down by 100 degrees.
I shrugged my shoulders, “What can you do?”
What can you do? You can let it eat you up like that jug of mountain dew. You’ve been taken for a ride, you’re the butt of the joke, you’re the welcome mat, you’re on the whipping post but I’m asking you, sugar, what can you do?
My husband took me for everything that I had, he took the house, the car and even the cat,
And he ran off with my neighbor, to Viti Levu!
I sunk to the bottom like a block of lead until music and my friends got me out of my head.
They said, “Come on, Sally, what you gonna do?”
What can you do? You look like Gomorrah after god was through. If you burn like the end of a cigarette, you’ll get more holes than Carmine Galante. I’m asking you, baby, what can you do?
I was thrown to the ground by a mugger’s hand, he took my wallet, my keys, and my faith in man!
I locked myself up and wouldn’t come out of my pad.
Until I took a walk to the prison yard, he said, “So sorry, Sally, but my life got hard.”
And when he gets out, we’re gonna have ourselves a couple of brews.
What can you do? You can grow old faster than a teenager’s tattoo.
Lock your heart in a can, marinate it in tears, or cook it until the smoke is coming out of your ears.
You can throw it at the wall but it’s gonna splash back on you.
Life’s a drag, that’s the point, but you only got a couple of years in this joint. So, I’m asking you, sugar, what can you do?
Take it easy, baby, what else can you do?
|
||||
10. |
The Hedonists
03:02
|
|||
|
I know that the times are changing, and my thoughts are obsolete and obscure.
I don’t think it’s because I am aging. I see sterility, they think that it’s pure.
No art, no edge, no depth, no sense of humanity, creativity.
Automatic people, planet-product people, monochromatic people, self-emphatic people.
We’re ALL sinners! It’s the arrival of the new revival! Life, love, nature.
Poem
Where are all the hedonists? Are they crouching in the urban weeds? Are they stuck in the suburbs, properly engaged, sterilizing themselves with lawnmower blades? Are they holed up in the mountains? Weathered faces, whittled like stakes.
They pound the frozen land until it breaks.
|
||||
11. |
Melancholy Disposition
03:44
|
|||
|
I’ve got a melancholy disposition. Sometimes, it’s like society is on a mission to excise sorrow like it’s an affliction.
But I have a melancholy disposition.
We are tossed into the world like jewels in the earth, beautiful and imperfect.
I apologize for my melancholy disposition. I’ve tried your recommended prescription.
But I lie, to avoid your conviction. I can’t deny my melancholy disposition.
Oh, what troubles your soul? I’d rather know. Let me be whole.
It’s a glorious gift to be born with a mind that wants to plot course in an un-navigatable world.
I have a melancholy disposition. Sometimes, I find it hard to explain my position. That it’s part of the human condition. I don’t mind my melancholy disposition. I don’t fight my melancholy disposition. I just think of it as a family tradition. I really don’t mind my melancholy disposition.
And we aren’t destined to be divinity. Don’t sanctify me.
|
||||
12. |
Pay and Slave
02:49
|
|||
|
I’ve been working all the time for minimum wage. What is life for but to pay and slave!
I eat, sleep and work, to pay and slave, but what is life for but to pay and slave. And what is life for?
Hey, manager mister puttin’ round in your cart: how many games cost how many hearts. Hey, Mr. CEO swimming pool jack, do you walk through the door or crawl through the cracks? I can’t even get my wheels on the tracks. And what is life for?
Hey Mrs. Laissez-faire shopping for shoes, telling me I aint got no right to the blues, “The opportunity is there. You make your own bed!” It just helps if you’re in the top 20%. And what is life for?
What am I asking you for? I don’t want to be rich. I don’t want what you’ve got, just my basic needs met and some time to do art and some time to reflect on the questions that trouble my soul…like what is life for? But payin’ and slavin’, it’s takin’ its toll.
I’m working all the time for minimum wage. What is life for but to pay and slave or to get so rich you write the rules and I play.
|
||||
13. |
Don't Think, Just Do.
05:09
|
|||
|
I went to the doctor, and what did she say? “Take one of these 5 times a day.”
But I couldn’t keep ‘em straight and I was gaining weight, so I asked her for something new.
She said, “Don’t think, just do!” That’s the key to happiness, you oughta know. Don’t think, just do. That’s the key to joy.”
So I went to my guru and they said, “Pray! Then meditate 10 times a day.”
I bought a yoga mat, but I threw out my back, so I asked them for another way.
They said, “Don’t think, just do!” That’s the key to happiness, you oughta know. Don’t think, just do. That’s the key to joy.”
So, I went to my bartender, and he said, “Hey, just take one of these 20 times a day.”
I was feeling great until I became irate, lying on the floor of the loo.
Don’t think, just do, that’s the key to happiness, you know it’s true. Don’t think, just do. That’s the key to joy.
|
||||
14. |
Tangle Unwind
04:29
|
|||
|
I notice your skin when you’re speaking. I notice your voice when you’re breathing. Followed those lines…but It’s all in my mind.
And I said, “Hey! Whatcha doin’ today?”
I notice the crowd when you’re missing. I don’t notice they’re loud, when we’re kissin’, but It stops in my mind.
You know the one that I’m losing! I said, “Hey! Whatcha doin’ today? Won’t you come out and play?”
You’ve got all these tight regulations. You say you’re free, right! You’re taken by the head that you say aint together.
But I’m telling you, babe, that you aint gonna get it together, ever!
You know it’s time to get you out of my mind, to let this tangle unwind, can I see you tonight?
|
||||
If you like Lara Samuels, you may also like:
Sorry I'm So Sensitive
by Bea Stewart
The second EP from Northern Irish singer-songwriter Bea Stewart runs from gentle folk to pillowy pop ballads, all perfectly executed.
go to album
featured on Bandcamp Radio Mar 26, 2024
go to album
featured on Bandcamp Radio Mar 19, 2024
go to album
Six and Forty-Six
by Riccardo La Foresta & James Ginzburg
Percussionist and sound artist Riccardo La Foresta joins musician and producer James Ginzburg for a fluid collaborative experiment.
go to album
The Room
by Fabiano do Nascimento & Sam Gendel
featured on Bandcamp Radio Jan 9, 2024
go to album
Stirring Americana set to acoustic arrangements and topped by the legendary Alice Gerrard’s lovely, world-wise voice.
go to album
Michelle Stodart’s folk music captures hope in melancholy, addressing the transformational aspects of the most challenging times.
go to album
