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  • Digital Album

    Immediate download of 13-track album in your choice of high-quality MP3, FLAC, or just about any other format you could possibly desire.

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1.
03:39
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2.
05:02
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3.
03:46
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4.
05:15
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5.
04:12
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6.
07:12
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7.
02:52
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8.
05:41
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9.
03:57
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10.
03:30
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11.
05:39
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12.
04:33
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13.
04:42
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credits

released 30 November 2010
All Songs Written by The Republic Of Wolves
Produced By The Republic Of Wolves
Mixed and Mastered by Gregg Andrew
Cover Art By Ben Kehoe
Layout By Nick Cuomo

tags

tags: alt rock alternative indie pop rock New York

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all rights reserved

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Track Name: Varuna
Our home is a jagged mouth,
streaming out pleas to the dead
We are misshapen teeth
uprooting ourselves

But we could have spent our time
burying strangers instead
We would've settled in
and found out our names

But calm your heart
The dark is still the dark

We'd told our sons to wait their turns,
like eager months lined up in herds
to age our skin and stretch us out.
They never get tired of stretching us out.

We read the braille with our bare feet
It would not teach us how to see,
But we finally realized ourselves.

Varuna is counting the notches and nicks in our planks.
Do we deserve the grave,
or the table you set for the liars
and unloving husbands and wives?
They hadn't seen themselves
They couldn't have known.

But face that fact,
Every branch you cut grows back.

And we're growing into the thought
that we're cast like iron,
forced into these shapes.
Track Name: Woolen Blankets
I had a lot to say
before they sewed my mouth shut
Out on a rosy field,
between a cross and crescent

I had a love so pure
I had to leave her behind.
I never told her why
Did I ever tell myself why?

I kept a steady hand
as we untied the bowline,
Off of a ragged pier
during a grey-haired sunset.

Past the old tree and the coal mine,
We deserted all the burdens of the land
Traded all that aging clay
For the urgency and anger of the sea

A hundred fading prayers
sewn into woolen blankets
And my father's rosary
twisted around my frail uncertain wrist

I'd heard a soul could float
But could it swim to safety?
Well I'm scared that when this ends
I may not even have one
at all.

And you said,
"I do believe that hope
is just a grand distraction
from the walls you will have to climb."
So pick up your weeping feet
and just start moving forward
And don't look back to see if she's there.
Track Name: Sea Smoke
I drove an ancient copper thorn
into your Red Indian heart
Pulled the cross down and myself
into a hundred weaker parts
Pointed up into the cliffs,
I saw the villains they became
Just an angel and a lion,
spitting fire in my name

Won't be long

We threw the Stygian hypocrites
into the warmest pit of Hell
Down to the violent jet-black delta
where the redwoods rose and fell
I painted all of man's mistakes
inside a giant golden frame
I was a tax collector up until
the spirit spoke my name

In the fog of the graying woods we'd grown
We heard the cedar bulkheads moan
So we replaced it with a field
And now it's scraping up our heels.

And I can hardly move my mouth
To get these hallowed insults out
Past my bear trap jaws into my wandering father's ears
So I'm packing up my tattered thoughts
and swallowing my prayers.

And I'd been too long
in a polished wooden tomb
Should've left some space for you
But I never got my fill of tempting fate

So I sold my spine to the devil-handed dusk
Finally a captain I can trust
He formed a brand new trinity
With the hypocrites and me.
Track Name: Oarsman
I woke up sweating on the moaning mount of olives
My black dove penance weighing down my feather feet
Woven into my skin, the covenants I'd broken
My granite heart will not forget what it once was.

A coffer full of your love
I couldn't bear it.

I don't believe I ever had a choice
When the sun came up and my eyes were struck
I don't believe I could've changed my mind
In the dead end heat of that withered beach
With my grave stone teeth and your seven shades of grief

We were unleavened earth before the first unsettled word fell
They drew the devil's iris in between your brows
Accursed breath that left our bodies when the day broke
Who built that weary wooden cabinet for your faith?

All these doors I see
mean nothing to me.

I don't believe I ever had a choice
When we lost our sight to the teething night
I don't believe I could've changed my mind
When the seeds were sown and then left alone
How could I have known I was never on my own?

Oh God, I feel like every saintly fire was my fault.

That I got crossed off of the wall
and my fingers all bloodied and torn
and it's just a lie,
a poor excuse for all the fumes
that I spit out back when I was young,
and god damn the truth,
I was unused,
an empty glass,
an oarsman and no one knew my name.

I am not welcome in this house I built.
Track Name: Pitch And Resin
Back when we wore the dirt
and you didn't hurt
and they named constellations after us
I'd heard you almost died
and the fault was mine,
So that day my heart became untied.
But you said, "Sometimes love is all you get,
So you'd better make it stretch."
I believe that, I just haven't seen it yet.
And I never got my way
because I never saw your face
Just a blue charade
the shadow of a season we'd betrayed.

So I'll be stored up
Like a relic, healing illness from a money box.
And you'll be blooming right outside
and finally living all those verdant dreams
that I couldn't see.

We shot off all our flares
as though we didn't care
And watched them fade into the air.

You must have known by then
that all we had was spent
On running from our bitter end.

So we'll be sprawled out
Like mosaics, filling wall space in a crumbling house
Until we smoke out all the stray light
And finally teach it to stay
Because God knows that we need some steadying.

Some day we'll be setting suns
Watching everything we've done
From a bed we'd shared
but never had the chance to get up from.

Still I never left your side
because it never did feel right.
I just hope you don't feel sorry for a damn thing
when you die.
Track Name: Monologues
When day dawned, the tempest passed away
and the warm sun shone out.
I was caught in a sunbeam that dried my eyes closed

I'll show you what it means to come home alive
'Cause I've seen the curtain fall one too many times
And it's my fault.

Don't let the weight shatter your shoulders
Just lay it down before you forget how.

When God spoke, the field was dry as day
And she felt her cold hands meet
I was lost in the wood grain,
'till I heard her call my name

We held a funeral for the moths we'd killed,
then set to work again on the ones that lived.
At least we knew.

Have you been kneeling here long?
Shedding your youth
teaching yourself not to argue
You're caught in a shroud
you shouldn't have found
Those monologues spoiled your innocence.

I swept up all your tiny fragments
And spun you into thread,
and dyed you gold
But you never kept me warm enough
to make it through a single night.
So I cut you to parts,
and sold you as scarves
so you could go on after I was gone.

When we meet again we'll be asleep
underneath the flower bed.
You'll tell me everything that you wished you'd done
I'll wrap you in my arms and then I'll wake up
But you will not.

Can I finally say that I found some truth?
That everything dies before I do
'Cause I've driven these stakes
for all of my days
Just to try and escape my uncertainty.

There's nothing here to keep us from setting
We're layers of paint eventually washed out.
Track Name: Tuez Le Tous, Dieu Reconnaitra Les Siens
So we played our games
in the dug-out graves
Shouting curses at the dirt
'til the Messiah showed his face,
With his soap-stone eyes
and his seaweed beard
and he scolded us so sharply
with his winding river tongue.
It was not my place
to be calling names
'Cause I was the oil-spitting acid-tripping dog

"I would like to see you at your worst"
What's your worst?

So you'll sleepwalk home
in a sick moon's glow
Just a lonely set of bones
beside a lonely service road
You will crack your skull
like a rotting hull
just to picture all the good you could've done yourself
by picking from the tree.

So I read the psalms
off your painted palms
and they drew a darker picture
than our father would've liked.
It is not your place
to be digging graves
Should have learned from my mistakes
and left it up to fate.
Track Name: Greek Fire
Where have you been lying
ever since the fortunes changed their minds?
You're nothing but a sleeping quarry,
caught up in the snares that you yourself had lain.
But I am not your keeper
Don't call for me when you finally realize
No one's coming, so you'd better find some peace.

When you wash up
I will fold my hands
and contemplate the ways
to keep you in your place

Please tell me,
Why have you been mourning
since the day you really met yourself?
Well you and all your seething lowlife best friends
were lining up like sparrows on a wire,
Talking like the twelve Apostles
dressed in leather,
wandering the alleys,
clenching your fists
"Relax, it's just a business."

Your Maker was a servant
who plowed 'til he was swollen
and fell into the ground.

His phantom took the shape of
your seven years of labor
but you would not stay down.

I couldn't get you because you got me first.
You were a fixture
I must have been a fool.
I couldn't face you, because your face was mine.
But I will be long gone
before I take your side.

We're nothing but receding figures
robbing each other of our final thoughts.
Track Name: The Attic
Give weight and give woe
The working man's slow
for dinner we ate by the fire
Some life is just so hard to let go
I followed you with every movement.

So what if the walls in the canyon were to crumble
what if the ice froze your feet where you stand
what if the stars started fleeting into darkness
How would you ever find your way back?

In the attic we kept your coffin very warm
In the attic we kept your coffin safe and warm
but we buried it before you got home.

Keep all that you need
just out of your reach
to make sure you're still here tomorrow
Those last words I spoke
I knew how they'd go
It was only a question of timing.

Mother cried in her room,
there was nothing I could do
except to go and look for you
But it made it so much harder
because deep inside I knew that

The only time we spent
was in the galley, just talking about family
and somehow I was meant
to care for everyone and everything in the world you left.

But I made it now so you won't be alone.
Track Name: You Missed The Point
Forget the pain you once held dear,
It cannot help you here.
Did it ever help you anywhere?

You're kneeling on a memory,
some Pyrrhic victory
But could you ever be that young again?

My dice are cast, I can't turn it around
I've set these frames but there's no doors to fit them.

Recall the way she tied that rope
Was it just as you had hoped?
Even though you never had a say

But you missed the point 'cause you were caught
in the rains that you had brought,
And you could never get your color back.

Our posts are placed,
we can't turn that around.
But I still won't breathe until I see it set in stone.

And now you're filling up with shade again, and I am too
After all the years of fighting it.

But now I'm pretty sure
that our books are bound, and we can't turn that around
I built this bed but there are no sheets that fit it.
And our bricks are laid, can we turn that around?
I still won't breathe until you get your color back.
Track Name: Grounded, I Am Traveling Light
So we were living out our days
in an old abandoned palisade
Sweeping chimneys 'til our backs hurt
and singing 'til our throats were dry.

Scraping the red from every rusty nail
Stitching the carpet tears
We kept our salty voices hushed
You looked loveliest all dressed in dust

And I cleared the cobwebs while you slept,
set a fire that we'd both regret.
You woke up coughing out a storm
and we never made it out the door

'Cause I for one was taking my time.

I think it's time you and I should come home
It's been three years and I can feel it in my bones.
If turning back means I'm turning back alone
then I guess I'm on my own.

It was six hundred degrees
We had nothing to protect our feet
from the glowing embers hardening our soles
Our burning bed of coal

But that fever that we shared
wasn't nothing that we couldn't bear
We just wrapped around each other
and we sweated out our worst nightmares.

And I think that's when I was born,
in your arms during a firestorm.
We were perfectly in place
We were filling up the empty space.

But you were tired of wasting your time.

Your spirits fled from all those bad ideas we bled
I twisted up all of your words
And I turned to brass while you were tearing down the past
Now I'm trailing
I'm traveling light
and losing my memory.
Track Name: Tanzih
My left handed heart is still painting your face
over the walls of my dim mind
These contrary winds hiding under my eyelids
I hope I can stomach the weight.

But each bristling wave is an unfinished thought,
swept out of view by the next one.
I've tried and I'm trying to string them together,
but oh what a waste of my rope.

Like a disappearing act

On a lofty brown bed, treading masses of blue
I started coughing up questions.
There's a giant asleep under all of this water,
I'm searching in vain for his name.

Written on my tongue,
There is none merciful but God.

Iron pinned you down
You were coming unstitched
You were flickering and you didn't have time to ask why

Something was circling our heads
Was it the patron saint of death?
I heard you spoke from your new grave,
"There is no truth that will not fade."
Well I guess you'd know better than me.
Track Name: Tashbih
When I was six months old
there was a price upon my soul.
They placed me in a basket
and sent me down the rapids
So all I ever knew was a wicker tomb.

Please lock the door behind me
Just lock the door after I go.
I'm sorry for my tied tongue
I'm sorry that you left alone.

When I replaced the cross
with monuments to what I'd lost
I grew apart from myself
and shook until the night fell
But all I ever was
was merciful.

Well I never got out of those rapids
We never get out of the rapids.

You're still here in some way.
But I couldn't have known
so it's alright.