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Hello Sadness

by Los Campesinos!

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1.
By Your Hand 04:08
I was sitting on my hands at the top-deck of the 178, spitting cusses at my face reflected in the windscreen pane. Throwing insults and calling names. Filthy SMSs that you sent through the day, by sundown become tame, so I set it in motion again. But fate’s a cruel mistress, girl, the prettiest in the world. She dresses loosely in a bathrobe with her hair up in curls, 'cause we were kissing for hours with her hands in my trousers, she could not contain herself, suggests we go back to her house. But here it comes, this is the crux, she vomits down my rental tux. I'm not sure if it's love anymore, but I've been thinking of you fondly for sure. Remember what your heart is for. By your hand is the only end I foresee, I have been dreaming you've been dreaming about me And it's a good night For a fist fight Because the dew will temper your fall You'll sing me lullabies in form of your cat-calls And I've been dangling in limbo, barely keeping my cool. It's like I'm snookered 'tween the back cushion and touching the 8 ball. I keep replaying my turn, until your patience is shot, you peel your white gloves off seductively before you respot. Your fingertips leave marks and graze, I lay you down atop the baize: I'm not sure if it's love anymore, but I've been thinking of you fondly for sure. Remember what your heart is for. Graceful, gracious companion with your eyes of doe and thighs of stallion
2.
You did not like us 'cause your girlfriend likely does And all your friends agree on her soft spot for me I'll have my hard hands over her soft spots soon you will see And if you want a list of all her favourite bits Then next time I am free, quite comprehensively I will scrawl them all down for you as an apology Tell her the times we shared that broke have been repaired Cinders of our old jokes have once again been stoked But with a different girl, funnier now they've been rehearsed All night hung on your every word ’Til we were interrupted by the birds Singing 'Oh your mask is slipping, Oh your mask is slipping' Songs I've written about your girlfriend Are just songs of spite since it came to an end 'Cause I never made her smile like that And she never made me smile right back Although I always made her purr like a cat She said I never made her smile like that She stubbed her home club's crest on me with cigarettes A swift that matched the bird upon her football shirt She would lift the hem, she would wear that thing like a skirt The last time I was there she let me wear her clothes She painted my lips red so that we both ensured I kissed her every inch, my god the girl looked like she'd burned
3.
A wishbone hangs between your breasts I hope you haven't pulled it yet And if this little finger doesn't have the strength Then I'm scared that this bird's back bone breaks It's only hope that springs eternal And that's the reason why This dripping from my broken heart Is never running dry I wear a ring of your lipstick Round the knuckle of my 4th digit, it Reminds me what our bodies sowed It will do until we are betrothed The space between your naval And your waistband was the ice Where two fingers pirouette, but Now these hang nails they just slice Your tongue the tide Your lips the shore I am the jetsam overboard Goodbye courage I christen all the ships that sail On your little kisses' saliva trails Goodbye courage Hello sadness again Little kisses come to pass Then goodbye courage, hello sadness Now that those 4 fingers gone You leave me only with my thumb That constantly is pointing down The emperor bears teeth not frown
4.
My brown eyes, two pools of mud Resting in two dark moons, they turn the tide into a flood And the bloodshot lines in the whites, map every A road in this town, All the glare of the city lights, every cul de sac we've talked down Over time they build up the city, and our arguments show it all Every ring road, every motorway, displayed in crease and wrinkle Until my face is a map you have folded up one hundred, one thousand times. You know it starts pretty rough and ends up even worse, And what goes on in between, I try to keep it out of my thoughts Your blue eyes are like the deepest and the warmest seas As the salt elevates my body, they float my heart up past my teeth And with the water and the Cypriot sun, would your psoriasis bleach and be gone? Would it fix the pallor of my skin? Would my freckles all meld into one? Your body above me, sobbing down, my cheeks wet from your tears They extinguish each of the burning thread veins, flow down to my ears Now they rest in two tiny reservoirs that overfed the wedded canals And life, life is a long time, too long to my mind, too long by far Between my waterfalls and your landslides, there's cartography in every scar Life, life is a long time, too long to my mind, too long by far
5.
I am not a crutch Although my knees are rife with woodworm And the mealworms I misheard for lunch Are rotting in my guts With a childhood of fingernails That ripped my throat to shreds A walk that chimes like church bells From all these loose joints in my legs These three lions that were sitting on my chest Are clawing hard into my skin As I am gasping for my breath And as they each play noughts and crosses On the scratches they have left I have to screw up both my eyes As it goes into sudden death. They whisper "Really all these noughts are circles holed, bereft And all these crosses crucifixes, Spreading guilt and sense of dread." And as we stumbled homeward up the hill To where you used to live The cold makes ice upon our cheeks From all the tears that we have shed These things rattle round my head If he hasn't blown the whistle Then it isn't quite the end. Every defeat a divorce Although I look surprised It's par for the course I guess And I don't really know now What I thought I knew then You can lead a horse to water But it won't drown itself This one family photograph Always floats to the top Like a beaming, bloated corpse Though having been made up My memories are sepia But the photograph is not An historian is fucking with them As deadly as garrotte Where they're standing in the kitchen With his arms around her waist With no idea of what's to come And with a smile across your face And all the fittings are the same But every other thing has changed Must forget everything you know As though your mouth and tongue estranged Small comforts found in ABBA Gold And electronic chess When West Clewes was my Waterloo My most dramatic test Now I've been walking down the shortcuts And the alleys in the dark Because I'm not scared of the shadows They're no blacker than my heart But how could I ever refuse I feel like I lose when I lose
6.
Recall the time we straddled your window pane And smoked the last of the weed that sent you insane In a public loo in a borough of London that I won't mention You phoned me in Minnesota, said you had a vital question And as we smoked you feared your neighbours might see We watched a fox rip out the contents of each Bin-bag that lined the road and then you turned to see me mouth, "Those entrails are how I'll feel when you decide to leave me" Now I've a whole lot of hate for the island Since your friends buried you down there 6 feet deep beneath the sand But at least I know we'll never be that far now from each other Just a couple hundred feet either side of sea level It's no lie if the waters rose and drowned that place from coast to coast You wouldn't see this smile leave my face for all eternity
7.
The black bird sits atop my guts and spreads its wings for flight My shoulders back, my jaw pushed out, my stomach sucked in Its wingtips push across my lungs and fill them full of feathers But the brushstrokes feel like hearth pokes into my skin The black bird feasts upon my guts and bears its beak to fight My shoulders back, my jaw pushed out, my stomach sucked in Its wingtips push across my lungs and fill them full of feathers Now they poke between my teeth and that's why I thirst When he flies me to the top there's nothing but the fog A heart of stone, egg shell for bones, they lead you to be lost The dark slope drags you down The black bird is a part of me, so sad to see So sad to be me I ask before I go for you to drop a lit match down my throat And smoke the bastard out or burn him to a crisp Cause I'm already carrion, been eaten from the inside too long This black bird wants to rip me limb from limb The black bird dips its beak in blood and writes its thoughts in cursive 'cross The bones that are its jailer and my ribcage And when you turn me inside out, believe in me without a doubt The words were all of his and none of mine
8.
To Tundra 04:11
Meet me at St. Nicholas Among the oaks Behind the church That sway like pig-tailed girls As summer wind whistles Around your bare-skin knees And the forsythia leaves In the shade Lay with me Tickled by The feather reed That's where the trees grow old Under the ivy's hold As you in my two arms Equally safe from harm And in a hazy day dream Our bodies married the stream And we broke down into pebbles and silt The water ran from the fields Until the oceans we filled And found the sea-bed the comfiest quilt There was more life in the weeds than in the few hundred seats In rows from transept to chancel to nave And when their anger had paused, I turned and answered their calls With “you’re just audience, I'm the applause” We take on the burden of all these sad-eyed children With lilies bunched in our hands We fake our concern and speak softly as the children Tells wife to cancel her plans Take a body to water, take a body to tundra Just take me with you as well
9.
We burnt all the skin From the palm of my hands With an old zippo lighter And deodorant can I went to the palmist And asked her to read No heart line, No sun line No life line, No need. Said all that I wanted was a quiet life Not one predetermined by minuscule slices Into my flesh and the broad she agreed One look in my sad eyes She had to concede "Baby... the girdle of venus got me Got me down on my knees. And baby... baby I got the death rattle and You're six months old sh-shakin' me." Traced my right index finger 'long the roof of every car On the walk back to your house In the cold from City Arms In the frost I drew a dick For every girl that wouldn't fuck me Woke early the next morning to see The frost had bitten me My blisters black and touch cold Like a cute stuffed toy bear's nose The kind of gift I'd give you Like a less committed Van Gogh And you, you are an angel That's why you pray And I am an ass And that's why I bray Your halo slipped to frame you Like a photo, a porthole window I see blood spill in the pure snow You see sweet sauce on ice-cream cones And you, you are an angel That's why you pray And I am an ass And that's why I bray If you were tomorrow I'd be today And this is the end (I'm serious, so listen up) Baby I got the death rattle And baby I got it bad I've been digging my grave For quite some time When I'm not digging up the past And I chewed my only necktie From the metal frame of my bed Where I tied your wrists together Spent all night givin' Not headstone But headboard Is where I want to be mourned
10.
I part the curtains of your hair And all the light of the sun floods the room, poured from your sleepy stare 2 seconds each morning without fail Before I enter the abattoir to see my insides hanging there But they request that I leave 'cause my sad eyes are too much to bear When the light leaves, then the dark sees Your hands to your hips now: 2 swan necks Curl between pelvis with stretch-marks and shoulders with those freckle flecks The pain of the silence before bed Oh for the sound of your pissing through the thin walls, or stroking your head But for the shadows and doom and the sorrow we seem to have bred When the light leaves, then the dark sees

credits

released November 14, 2011

Music by Tom
Words by Gareth (with guidance from Robert on tracks 1 and 5)
Arranged and performed by Los Campesinos!

Produced, recorded and mixed by John Goodmanson. Recorded at MusicLan Studios, Girona, Spain (assistant engineering by Jose Luis Molero). Mixed at Electro Kitty, Seattle, USA & at John's House, Seattle, USA (additional engineering by Eric Corson).

String arrangements by Harriet (Recorded by Andrew Lewis at Cardiff Music Studio, Cardiff, Wales; Brass arrangements by Tom and Jherek Bischoff (Recorded at Eric's House, Seattle, USA).

Also featuring:
Benjamin Kaminski - Viola
Jimmy Otlley - Cello
Samantha Boshnack - Trumpet, Flugelhorn
Nelson Bell - Trombone, Tuba
Jherek Bischoff - Double Bass and Good Vibes

Mastered at Electric Mastering by Guy Davie

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Los Campesinos! Cardiff, UK

Jism & Blues.

The UK's first and only emo band.

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