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Never Met The Author

by Little Marais

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1.
Well, I move to pack 'Cause there's a little light that shines on all the things I can't take back I shake 'cause this museum is cold I move to curate my own past There's a polaroid I can't unfold Everything's at longest last You slap my face 'Cause I lied and said I died at the bottom of some wet and lonesome place Where there's copper candles burning clean Is that a hipbone or a heart? If you never said my name to me again, that wouldn't be the hardest part My whole memory is coming apart Paradise looks so afraid of all the stone I turn to face But even at a distance, I still can't no space I hug the walls Because to hear the way you talk of ghosts It's like I never lived at all I shake because the feeling's cold I see fire, I see pink There's a bedroom set I can't unfold It's what I steal, it's what I think And I'm halfway down the parish steps And everything about it's a false start If you never said my name to me again, that wouldn't be the hardest part Any fool can kill a dream, any dream can break a heart If you never said my name to me again, that wouldn't be the hardest part I see a home; it's coming apart
2.
If time doesn't change us, what's a childhood friend? If there's yard signs for greener pastures we should've moved again But there's softball in your driveway and cotton in my mouth I'd take you on, my darling But you only take me on the couch You'd have us pick horizons, but what you mean is a way out And I can't, or won't, understand you so I choose a round-a-bout And we'd ask around for last rites when it's time to ride the bus I'd write you up, my darling But all I feel is buzzed And the growing pains are empty, because bodies need to vent I'd lie down like your sister: The twist you saw before the end And when we say, "You could've learned more," maybe we just like to teach You coulda just got tired of saying deserts are the beach
3.
Nestled in the lakeside sand, he's homeless through addiction of the heart He never got to know the land, hitching up clydesdales behind the cart He found the great wide open, and he's sad to say it looks like Bryant Park The book that keeps him cold at night, the one about the recluse in the rye, you kill 'em, kid, you hold the line somewhere between sorrow and delight Well, he never met the author but he knows somehow the end is plagiarized He hopes the point of no return is somewhere on the route he's taking back And he hopes that all the laudanum burns are just to slap the face of all the facts He found the great oasis but she takes such pride in showing what he lacks I never had the heart it took to sound the soaring song of all the choirs And I never had the energy to sweep up after all my funeral pyres I miss you, Carrie Fisher and the way you always looked so goddam tired I totaled Jake LaMotta's car thinking about the fixes and the dives I regret regrets just as they are fighting toward the edge of being edgewise I never miss the violence but knowing I could take a punch was nice They like to say with open arms that free air takes the measure of a man smeared upon an old frontier free soil on the back of someone's hand I found the great wide open and the fences stretch on farther than the land
4.
I caught all the parachutes as they fell back down from home then, we painted in the sky with a candle here from Rome I put sulfur in my love for you you put fire in my eyes you live inside the residue, a trick of fading light I don't need your cigarettes I only need your fire And you'd fine me in a factory war if assembly lines would hire But you know I don't remember the scarlet or the scare And you know I don't remember a woman in Time Square You took me on a freight train ride, white cities that you chase I have been your alibi You could be my early grave Pouring from the Saltless Sea, the headdress that you wore billowing in charcoal tea, the credits and the score Please don't introduce me as the plane to end our wars Please don't introduce me, American, anymore Please don't make me answer how I feel upon your door how I'm like the ocean how I'm endless on your shore
5.
Happy New Year's Day you're sitting in the dark sucking candy canes wishing that the aspirin was Novocain and dishing on, about last year's days while the dishes aren't doing themselves Now, you're seeing things floating in a bottle of green champagne, the touchdown you scored in 11th grade the claps on your back, and the bouncing braids I guess you were always seeing things When the ball came down joy to the city you can't live in right now You're not even sure you'd ever quite know how the music box lights up midtown but do they ever put those cameras away? Now, you can't see why you shouldn't start a bar fight on this quiet night winking at the people through your bruised black eye and start the whole hospital screaming, "You shouda seen the other guy." January 1, 'cause I lost another year when you were under my thumb I'm just a recollection of the man I've become I'm just a reflection of some coach and his son January won It's a given thing that floating in a bottle of green champagne the rim's ten feet high in the 11th grade and it's hard to resent what choose not to stay, so Happy New Year's Day
6.
I wish I went to pieces like a puzzle, not a jar And I wish you'd cut me off like a machete, not a bar If you'd just let me lie, like a lawyer, not my wife I only wanna sign in some language, not on some line Pour one out for Tom and me, and how we're never ever gonna live that dream of putting back bubbly on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial under a blue moon on the Washington Mall and for no reason at all, there's no security Come on, Tom, at least skip a meal with me Pour one out for Tom and me, we saw a balloon in the desert on a taxi TV when the gangsters died in the Mojave We get yelled at by Sperry-wearing guys in the street because the shirts we're wearing were made for ladies which we realize but not immediately Come on, Tom, at least skip a meal with me Pour one out for Tom and me, and how we always get hustled at Venice Beach by the blind guy with the burned CDs We went looking for a club that was 18-plus but all the guys there were better versions of us, and it's the worst of ourselves is the part we can trust Come on, Tom, at least skip a meal with me Just when we're sure we can take it no more we're 20 miles north of the cherry fields and still 20 south, of Baltimore Tom says one last thing before we turn and run: "I think it's fucking funny how every song about two people is just about one." Come on, brother, no. Don't say that, please. I wish I went to pieces like a puzzle, not a jar And I wish you'd cut me off like a machete, not a bar If you'd just let me lie, like a lawyer, not my wife I only wanna sign in some language, not on some line
7.
A five-year plan? Like I run some kind of country Like my name is on the factory my kids run into the ground Then, the town they decapitate my statue but I'm still looking right at you as they kick my head around Don't stall but I keep begging you to listen something about how traditions are just pathologies You had a thought that there's the road and then there's prison But that's the thing about fan fiction all the characters have peaked You can tell everyone that it's your song or you can pick most things only happen once But then more things aren't a bachelorette party district We're almost home, babe but this is just a car commercial there's the sun and there's the dapple and the course is always closed Through it all, I think I'm right back in the saddle A new lease is half the battle Then take an airbag to the nose You can tell everyone that it's your song or you can pick most things only happen once But then more things aren't a bachelorette party district
8.
9.
It's the scar on your leg that betrays to us, that you're just a child walking just knee-high in the weeds of your hundred-acre sky If it's the err of your ways you exchange in good faith for the love of your life you could say it's going right If you're the trembling cup I can't help you, shut up And to the city, I beg no more cabarets in my ear canals you took all my dearest pals in the third act of the play but at least they left it all on the stage And when push comes to shove there's nothing you love about the great beyond or an icy tarn or an old family name or just what your children all became Through the walls, baby, I don't know what you heard but it probably wasn't me, I just learned all the words What's the last thing I can say? "There's so much about you I don't hate."
10.
You laugh and pretend to like soccer with your friends And swap oxymorons, maybe one last time again Like: personal philosophies and "College World Series" And I fast-forward "True Love Will Find You In The End" Conversation's a kitchen sink It's a sign of times you think everybody wants to write every job is some kind of publishing Then, the doorbell starts to ring Your favorite birthday's when they sing: "We know you're not a prodigy at anything." So we just hang out in these alleys to stay off the streets when fighting in a proxy war is the nearest thing to peace I've got love for other cities Can't you read our jerseys? We'd trade in all the banners for mystique So we get drinks, and that's it It's the last thing on the list when the only code I share with you is morse, not zip For the umpteenth time you try you wanna know what it's just like It's like you missed the red eye flight And lied down alone at night You know that feeling when your phone's about to die?

about

"Never Met The Author" is Little Marais' debut album, released on Sower Records in Aug. 2015.

Little Marais is Chance Solem-Pfeifer.

credits

released August 6, 2015

all songs by Chance Solem-Pfeifer
produced by Jeremy Wurst
album art by Michael Todd
violin by Emma Nelson ("The Saltless Sea")
drums/bass by Jeremy Wurst

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Little Marais Lincoln, Nebraska

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