1. |
God Is Dead
03:28
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God is Dead
God is dead
A failed dialectic
An obsolete fairy-tale
For violent, vainglorious, dogmatic men
Who worship the tenets
Of pederast warlords
And celibate carpenters
Who Glorify Death
Yet at their behest
We’ll still issue apologies
Bargain our sisters’ and daughters’
Bodily autonomies
God is Dead
God is Dead
Now there’s an arms race to claim
The last unbroken vein
Before the opiate drains
From a knackered old works
And every infant messiah
Every dark skinned pariah
Is out in the desert
Playing at being colonel Kurtz
It’s a junket for jerks
So let’s wheel out the moderates
Pretend that our brand of insanity
Is somehow more tolerant
God is dead
So let us rejoice
Under the all seeing eye
Just click on the link
It costs nothing to apply
Kingdom or caliphate
It does not discriminate
It uses a part of the brain we evolved to survive
In the wilderness
Long before all of this
Fallacy got out of hand
Somewhere in the frontal lobe
It seems we can’t bear the thought
That we’re here all alone
God is dead
Dwelling in caves
The relics displayed
But the memory fades
Someone new’s on the scene
Building our image
With each new transaction
Guiding our actions
Through seven inch screens
We’re living the dream
From Silicon Valley
To Skibereen
Run a new flag up the masthead
God is Dead
God is Dead
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2. |
The Post-Truth Blues
04:33
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The Post Truth Blues
Oh I like drinking beer
Smoking cigarettes
I like eating animals
And I don’t have any regrets
About how they die
No I’d do it myself
Look that chicken in the eye
Oh I know just how my coffee’s grown
That Chinese children made my phone
With cobalt exacerbating conflict situations
In the poorest regions of the Congo basin
I’s a shame
But what can you do?
If you need someone to blame
You can always pin it on the ….
Maybe the line in the sand is drawn by the hand
Of some avaricious puppeteer
Like a karaoke singer at a Steinway grand
What you see don’t match what you hear
But if you’re feeling confused
About which side to choose
Just get a second opinion that supports your views
‘Cause facts are just an anachronism
Dressed up as the truth
Oh I see women’s bodies
Before I see their minds
Just because I’m a liberal, sweetheart
Doesn’t mean that I’m blind
I’m a product of conditioning
Amirite??
Or maybe I’m an overgrown ape
Who only wants to fuck and fight
Oh and I don’t know but I’ve heard it said
That the Russians and the Saudis
Are both in bed
With the Brits and the Yanks
And the Germans too!
Trynna control decent people like me and you
They put something in the water man
They’ve got teams working shifts
To watch you jerking off through your webcam
Maybe we’re living in a simulation
Maybe your lover is a line of code
Maybe your family’s been lying to you since day one
So your circuits don’t overload
But when anxiety strikes
Keeps you up at night
And a chemical imbalance is destroying your life
Take a leaf from my book
Let yourself off the hook
And pretend it’s gonna be alright
Because you know you’ll never make a meaningful difference
Although your virtue is a point of pride
Maybe you’re only so fucking sanctimonious
Cause you’ve got something that you wanna hide
So if you’re feeling confused
About which side to choose
Just get a second opinion that supports your views
‘Cause facts are just an anachronism
Dressed up as the truth
Oh I like drinking beer
Smoking cigarettes
I like eating animals
And I don’t have any regrets
About how they die
No I’d do it myself
Look that chicken in the eye
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3. |
Cruel Britannia
03:39
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Cruel Britannia
Oh Cruel Britannia
The sow that eats it’s own
Draining every reservoir
For a sword caught in a stone
Oh cruel Britannia
I thought this was my home
When you cut me, did I not bleed?
Was it not enough blood to satisfy your need?
But the people have spoken
The country is broken
The politicians have lost all respect
And you can’t wave the flag
‘cause some liberal rag
Says you’ve got to be politically correct
And the factories shut
Now my hours have been cut
At the warehouse outside of town
And I can’t put a roof over my children’s’ heads
Unless my skin is brown
Oh Cruel Britannia
A mirror turned opaque
A cataracted vision
Of some past you can’t escape
Oh cruel Britannia
Listen, we all make mistakes
Was it pride or vanity?
Made you drop your anchor
In the open sea
But it’s not you Paddy
It’s that other lot
They’ll work for next to nothing
‘til they take all our jobs
They don’t speak the language
Like me and you
They’re living like animals
Five to a room
Scrounging every penny
Just to send it back home
Then you wonder why the shops
On the high street close
But nobody cares
Nobody wants to know
When you take a man’s dignity
What happens to his soul?
Oh cruel Britannia
Exception to the rule
Peasants toil in the shallow soil
For lukewarm beer and gruel
Oh cruel Britannia
Sure didn’t you learn it all at school?
Built the railways
Freed the slaves
An island nation
Who ruled the waves
But those people had nothing
Before we came
We gave them education
Planted sugarcane
Now they’re all messed up
But that’s just tough
They shouldn’t come over here
Looking for somebody to blame
Oh it was better back then
We were the salt of the earth
No unelected bureaucrats
Determining our worth
A man worked hard to provide for his own
Now they ripped out the heart
Of the place I call home
Oh cruel Britannia
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4. |
The Nobel Prize
04:08
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The Nobel Prize
I am a hateful and negative man
Bitter and riven with envy
Even when my cup is overflowing
I only see it as empty
I can’t enjoy in my friends’ success
Jealousy wraps her tendrils round my chest
I get drunk and behind your back
I’m telling everybody your material’s hack
So why can’t the world just recognise my genius?
Surely the highest honours await
Beckett and Yeats, turn in their graves
At their countryman’s fall from grace
Has the academy made a mistake?
When I win the Nobel Prize
Then I won’t have to apologise anymore
To all my pathetic friends
As I take my place
In the pantheon of great men
When I win the Nobel Prize
And the public finally recognise me
They will show their gratitude
Offering their firstborn daughters
As virginal brides
When I win the Nobel Prize
I am a selfish and petulant man
Given to bouts of irrational rage
Crocodile tears in the aftermath
Regretting my actions for days
I never worked for a thing in my life
But I had my hand on the till alright
The roof over my head and my loving wife
Somebody else always paid
So why is the world so slow to praise
The last true artistic Caucasian male alive
Heaney and Shaw return their awards
In a posthumous show of support
The salons of London and Berlin and Paris are distraught
When I win the Nobel prize
Maps will be redrawn, history revised
They will build statues in my likeness
Titanium steel and rippling biceps
When I win the Nobel prize
I’ll be on the television every single night
Singing my uplifting hits
To the newly liberated proletariat
When I win the Nobel Prize
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5. |
Love Island
04:59
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Love Island
Well you spent last night on the fold out bed
With thoughts of leaving in your head
You need some more protection
From these outbursts of aggression
And I wake up to an empty room
And the weight of a morning come too soon
Spend Tuesday afternoon
Staring at the television
And nothing ever happens here
The valleys in between the tears
Are flooded with inertia
‘til the next time that I hurt you
‘So what’s the point?’ you say
If I’m not trying anymore
You say something’s got to give
No, this shit can’t last
Surely the future should be better than the past
Notwithstanding what evidence suggests
For love in the time of datasets
But life is rich with contradictions
And here I am of my own volition
Watching the tears stream down your face
Was it something lost
That you can’t replace?
But innocence cannot endure
The body will eventually reject the cure
As long as we’re complacent
They’ll be lining up replacements
So what’s the point
If we’re not trying anymore
There is no cash prize
No way for the public to decide
On love island
We’ll be consumed by the rising tide
I said wait a minute baby
Now hold your horses
Good people like us don’t get divorces
Just keep your feelings to yourself and your actions discreet
Don’t let the public be complicit in this act of deceit
Because the paperwork’s piling up
There’s numbers to crunch
They say we ought to start meeting other couples for brunch
And I can spend a year in another man’s skin
Living on diazepam and television
But repetition breeds contempt
When your lover is just somebody who helps with the rent
And nothing is for certain
But the fact that we’re both hurting
So what’s the point?
If we’re not trying anymore
There is no cash prize
No way for the public to decide
On love island
We’ll be consumed by the rising tide
There is no hotline
No recorded message on the end of the phone
On love island
It’s just you and I alone
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6. |
A Zero-Sum Game
03:06
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A Zero-Sum Game
Out of the chaos
An order will come
Clear green water
Will separate from the scum
Now the virtues of the weak are obsolete
And cast away
Don’t be naïve now baby
It’s a zero-sum game you’d better learn to play
‘Cause everybody wants a slice of the cake
Oh, but I own the oven in which it was baked
I own all the bakers and all the flour
I’ve got my finger on the trip switch to all of the power
So, when you get up to the front of the line
Just take your goddamn crumbs and remember to smile
Just take your goddamn crumbs and remember to smile
Out of the vacuum
No sound will emerge
We’ll do away with polemics
And all their fatuous words
For the virtues of debate have been outweighed
It’s a thing of the past
So, give us all a break now baby
If I wanted your opinion, I’d have thought to ask
‘Because everybody thinks that their shit don’t smell
That all their friends go to heaven and their foes to hell
And everybody thinks they’re gonna change the world
With a reusable cup and a teenage girl
So good luck with your pyramid scheme
Just keep your eyes on the prize don’t look away from the screen
Just keep your eyes on the prize don’t look away from the screen
Oh ‘cause everybody thinks they’re gonna bake the cake
But I’ve got the recipe the rest are fake
I’ve got all the bakers working round the clock
And I pay ‘em by the hour so they’re too scared to stop
So, when you get up to the front of the line
Just take your goddamn crumbs and remember to smile
Just take your goddamn crumbs and remember to smile
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7. |
The Big Tomorrow
04:36
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The Big Tomorrow
I spend fourteen hours on my feet
I come home and feel the springs
In the mattress
Through the dirty sheets
But I don’t have the money
Or maybe it’s the inclination
Maybe I lack the self-respect
To affect the situation
And though everything we think we own here is only borrowed
Still we waste our time standing in line
Waiting for the big tomorrow
To come
Now I’ve got no one but myself to blame
For this hubris of identity
All this bitterness and shame
So I’ll be waiting tables
While your friends all reproduce
I’ll play the part of the nihilist
To another empty room
Just to feed the pyrrhic flames of constant sorrow
Looking for a brand-new way with the old cliché
While I’m waiting for the big tomorrow
To come
Seventeen
Try not to blow your load
Before that thing’s out of your jeans
You lied about your age to make the transaction less obscene
A lonely, older lover’s fantasy
It’s a hard act to follow
You’ll be cashing in those chips come the big tomorrow
I spend fourteen hours on my feet
I spent the best part of a decade
Learning how to smile convincingly
But to these economic migrants
I’m just a profligate display
A decadent reminder
Of how the west has lost it’s way
‘Cause every penny must be counted
And remitted
Building brick by brick for the big tomorrow
It’s only for the really committed
And that’s not me
Thirty-two
Who do you string the line for now?
And who do you tell the truth?
When the artifice overtakes
The Venn diagram breaks
All the pieces of your mistakes
Leave you hollow
And I’m still waiting here
I’m still waiting here
For the big tomorrow
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8. |
Leftover Meat
03:12
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Leftover Meat
There’s no dignity
Eating off a stranger’s plate
Leftover meat
Cold and congealed
Servile and sycophantic
You can tell that I really care
You can be my locus of evaluation
A fleshy meniscus
In a bentwood chair
Is this it?
Living for a lukewarm beer
At the end of a twelve-hour shift
Has someone seen my self-esteem?
I don’t know what I’ve done with it
So is this really happening?
Or is it just part of my act
A simple economic imperative
To pay for the paper I put over the cracks
Making a living as an act of contrition
It’s a race to the bottom
And it feels like I’m winning
Screaming internally through the clinking glasses
Leftover meat for the unwashed masses
But I’m starving here
Man cannot live on lukewarm bottles
Of lager beer
Has someone seen my self-respect?
I don’t think I can find it here
Has someone seen my self-respect?
I don’t think I can find it here
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9. |
My Favourite Disguise
05:21
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My Favourite Disguise
Is this the real thing?
Is any of this real?
Does anyone know what they’re talking about?
Can you trust the way you feel?
Critical analysis
Emotional paralysis
It’s a joke
With no punchline at the end
Is this the real thing?
The digital abyss
If a tree falls in the forest now
Does anybody give a shit?
Insidious technology
Consumer ideology
Wags the dog around here these days
But it’s not your future
And I don’t have plans
It’s really no skin off my back
Who’s out there
Kissing babies
Greasing palms
Inflatable rafts
In the straits of Gibraltar
It’s someone else’s problem
It’s someone else’s daughter
I act like I care
‘cause I know that I ought to
But really I’m empty inside
The first in the latest series of lies
Brought to you by my favourite disguise
Is this the real thing?
Or somewhere in between?
Am I sat getting drunk on a park bench?
Or in some recurring dream?
Self-destructive tendencies
Slip into dependencies
Depression and anxiety
Make your friends into enemies
Is this the real thing?
Or is it all for show?
Some local lads in loincloths
Who didn’t want to draw the dole
Performative morality
Ethical brutality
We’re sorry we missed your call
But it’s not your problem
And I’ve got my own
You can lead a horse to water man
But you’ll still die alone
Questions of decency
Political expediency
National identity
Auto-idolatry
The songs on the radio all sound the same to me
Maybe I’m empty inside?
A hollow construction of ego and pride
When I’m wearing my favourite disguise
Can you see through my saccharine smile?
When I’m wearing my favourite disguise
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10. |
Naked And Afraid
04:52
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Naked and Afraid
We searched for words amidst the rubble
With which we could describe our new landscape
All barren and saline
Trying to reconnect lapsed synapses
In a universal monoglot
We sought a brand new patronymic
With which we could define
Those courageous pioneers
On the shifting frontier
Where the vision and the market coalesces
Oh the old tongue was dead
An anachronism in the heads
Of it’s last native speakers
As they approached obsolescence
I lay down where once I had stood
I bit down on my lip
Just so I could taste the blood
Of arteries connected to the heart
A cipher in the flesh
A flashlight in the dark
Hold on to something
All my friends were there
All carefully arranged
Through cellular connections
The value of our intersections
Rank and file to top brass
The snipers in the long grass
The ballast of tradition
The bias of our ammunition
Naked and Afraid
We called out to be saved
As a subset of a subset
With overlapping special interests
Oh the old god was gone
But the liturgy it lingered on
The host and holy water
The pulpit and the altar
I abstained where once I partook
I closed my eyes
I could not bear to look
Still every leaf connected to the root
The surety of nature
The frailty of truth
Hold on to something
Hold on to something
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Louis Brennan London, UK
London-based Dubliner Louis Brennan is a singer-songwriter in the folk tradition. His folk however aren’t the field hands and travelling minstrels of yore but the repressed middle managers and ennui-ridden urbanites of late-stage capitalism. They populate tales of bad sex, drunk commutes and interpersonal claustrophobia delivered in Brennan’s cracked baritone, at times embarrassingly intimate ... more
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