1. |
||||
|
I’ve learned to survive, I can make my stand against the crowd, but all my toughness wasn’t what I wanted when wanted to make you proud. I know we’ve got a good thing going in between these four walls, but I know it makes you sad to look outside and see our love doesn’t conquer all.
I want the world to be just what you want it to be because you’ve got truth, justice and beauty. That’s what it’s all about, and you can’t be a lover and see someone do without.
We’ve all got to call on each other not to let our dreams become too small, not to live as if it’s all for one, when it’s got to be one for all. It’s no land of the free where we’re only free to be each other’s slaves. It’s no land of the free where we are only free to dig each other’s graves.
I want the world to be just what you want it to be if you’ve got truth, justice and beauty because your dreams should be as impossible as the one that you love is impossibly lovable.
Don’t want no new frontier. We’ve got to want to make it here.
I’d really rather not be a martyr for a cause, but I know I’m called to love you flawlessly in this world with all its flaws. I’m no saint, I know I fall and fail every day, but I’m going to break myself down for this love I can’t betray.
And that’s a love I’ve got to love for all that it’s worth because that’s the love that moves heaven and earth.
|
||||
2. |
||||
|
There’s a city inside of you. That’s where I want you to take me. That’s where I want you to make me. A northern town with a riot of spring flowers. A southern town with scorching summer hours. An eastern town with its salty sea air. A western town where the sun’s gold and fair. I’m a city kid through and through. The only fairy tale I ever knew was the fairy tale of downtown cool. We never stop dreaming. We never stop beaming. All through the dreadful night, you dazzling urbanite with your cosmic-politan grace, a radio wave reaching deep into space, is the key to the city inside of you. Gimme the key to the city inside of you.
|
||||
3. |
||||
|
Be whoever you are, it’s gotten us this far. Change however you will, I’m going to love you still.
In the silence of my heart, I only ever ask for three things. First, that we never be apart. Second, that every day brings all the peace and love you need to live happy and feel free. But the third thing I ask is to be equal to the task whenever I’m called on to prove that I spoke to true when I promised to be glad to help whenever times get bad.
Blues aren’t only sad, they’re every feeling that can be had. I share your life’s poetry. All I see are gifts you’re giving to me.
|
||||
4. |
Shaking and Stomping
02:26
|
|||
|
You dig a dancing crowd, but tonight you’re staying in with your music up loud, stepping lively in your own space, feeling working muscles smiling beneath your face. If you’re shaking then you might be one of the ones I mean when I sing about we. If you’re stomping than maybe you share the love that seeks out everyone and everywhere whether dirty or clean, whether public or unseen.
The greatest privilege you can own is to know who you are when you’re dancing alone. To have occupied a space where your movement shows you’re something real, and you can’t be the only one who knows.
Sometimes movement stops, we get atomized, but the beat comes back and gets us organized, everyone’s who ever been in favor of simple pleasures, all those dead against silences and half measures. Across our archipelago of basement rooms, in our constellation of undersea tombs, none of us are shaking alone tonight. We go on stomping, trying to do right with our might.
|
||||
5. |
For Someone Else
02:29
|
|||
|
I’ve been wondering, as sometimes we all do, what I’ve been in this life and what more should I do. The world is happy to whisper in my ear that I’ve been less than a success, then show me all kinds of desperate ways I can still get mine before the days run out, and it’s too late for me to shine.
But I look up into the coldest might, and that’s when the stars are bright.
I know it’s no shame to give up myself, as long as I’m giving up myself for somebody else.
Give up yourself but give it up for someone else.
|
||||
6. |
||||
|
Our future’s not yet written. It is a song that we have yet to hear. But it is on our lips like the city that we want to live in.
I never wanted to be anything in particular. I would simply start anew each day with you. And that is all I want, and it’s not too little. And I don’t fear we are too weak or too brittle.
When I woke up, I had no idea this tune would come to me. So maybe it’s just a variation on a theme I keep coming back to. Maybe it’s all I got to say, no chance of competing with the weight of yesterday. But it always seems to bear repeating.
No, I am never lonely after closing time, the puddles reflecting the neon signs. I might kick around looking for a better rhyme. I get sleepy but I feel fine. Not everything goes my way. I only ask not to be led astray. Whatever will be, will be, here and now, but there’ll be a brighter tomorrow somehow.
|
||||
7. |
||||
|
Hey, Sunshine, when you call my name, and I feel like I’m running in the sun once again.
You calling to me always gets me to feeling free.
No, I’m not laying it on you to pull me through. I’m just letting you know I love to hear from you.
|
||||
The New Birds of America Toronto, Ontario
The New Birds of America is Blaise Moritz and sometimes others.
The New Birds of America recommends:
Lives up to its billing as the greatest record! As always, The Sadies make songs and sounds that seem both comfortingly familiar and bracingly fresh. A true album with unity and variety end to end.
go to album
Beautiful and charming songs, beautifully and charmingly done. There's a feeling that everything was made with a joyful collective spirit. "Neath the Streetlights" is an all-time great closing track.
go to album
As someone with "endless spiral notebooks", the first track grabbed me immediately. These are demos in the best sense: sketches that retain their immediacy, wit and energy.
go to albumIf you like The New Birds of America, you may also like:
This debut from the Canadian indie artist features pop, folk, and country influences.
go to album
Strange Adrenaline (LP | 2023)
by Nat Vazer
Woozy and melodic alternative rock from Melbourne-artist Nat Vazer sounds like a grungier Alvvays.
go to album
1990s-era indie-folk sounds back songs about love and identity on this project from the Florida-based artist.
go to album
