1. |
Hobbies
03:45
|
|||
|
Join the local gym with the obnoxious name
Blasting shit pop hits, no pain no gain
Become strong like an ox and burn off the excess calories
And all the terrible toxins presumably killing me
Join a nearby choir, get to know the community
It lifts your mood a little higher, to share an out of tune harmony
Don't worry that they think you'll probably burn in hell
Sure it doesn't really matter if you sing 'Amazing Grace' this well
Join the meditation class, run by your cousin's hippy friend
Dropped out of business at last, and "now he's totally zen"
Just put your trust in his pan-pipe authority
For 20 euros a week he'll teach you how to breathe properly
Try new hobbies, try be happy
Maybe able to feel more stable
Go the Italo disco, pretend you're in to the deep cuts
Find some brief sense of flow, when you've stopped caring how you look
Talk to people to you used to know, ignore initial dread
Cause they're not all out to judge you or assume you're a dickhead
Do the soup run on Tuesday, put your worries in context
Progress beyond the cliché nest of Netflix and no sex
Cook a fucking avocado and laugh at your neuroses
No more hiding in the shadow of misanthropic tendencies
Try new hobbies
Try be happy
Not so nervous
Not so worthless
With some purpose
Start to surface
|
||||
2. |
Strangers
03:48
|
|||
|
Confidence evaporates, hot air to begin with
Once again bear the weight of being non-existent
Skulking 'round the smokers, itching for a drink
Struggling to remember you can't know or care what anyone thinks
Gotta start talking to the strangers
Gotta stop feeling so strange
Self-defence dominates, every move and opinion
Safety in the silences, safety staying still
But you know it's no improvement
'Cause it never lets you change
And it only makes things harder
When you finally have to play their game
Gotta start talking to the strangers
Gotta stop feeling so strange
Gotta start testing the danger
Gotta stop believing no one else can think this way
Ripping up beer mats and gripping your phone
Watching the soundcheck, imbibing alone
Sipping the cheap shit, thinking of home
Missing the moments, it's harder to know
Gotta start talking to the strangers
Gotta stop feeling so strange
Gotta start testing the dangers
Gotta stop believing no one else can think this way
Until the act becomes second nature
Until the act is actually sincere
And all the fight goes from your forehead
Another brief bright summer appears
|
||||
3. |
Sour Opinions
03:50
|
|||
|
Sharing some sour opinions around
It props her up to be putting people down
With second hand stories she takes her aim
An effortless way to stay entertained
Slurring some sleazy details from his past
An ugly attempt to make the lads laugh
With pissed poetic license, ruins a name
At least they can say you've been entertained
Small talk and idle gossip
when you're wrecked in the pub or bored round the office
Bland brutalities and petty impressions
It's really a skill, when there's time to
kill they know what to do
if nothing else
it really helps
to protect themselves by
tearing someone apart
Monday morning's always the same
A fresh set of fools to defame
A story to tell, well haven't you heard
It lightens the mood when there's someone to curse
Saturday night never seem to change
Inebriated tales and enemies to shame
"You wouldn't believe, well guess what she did..."
The party peaks when you finally spit on a reputation
Small talk, glorious gossip
Wrecked in the pub, or bored 'round the office
Bland brutalities and petty impressions
It must be a thrill, when there's time to
kill they know what to do
if nothing else
it really helps
to protect themselves by
tearing someone apart
if nothing else
feel pretty great
more sure of themselves when they're
telling us who to hate.
|
||||
4. |
2009
03:28
|
|||
|
Eighteen going on nineteen
lost my mind for a bit
Deemed unfit for school and work and society
The culmination of a weak disposition
too much weed and paranoid visions
of death, disease and The Beatles,
the ghost of John Lennon was evil
and out to get me, naturally
In 2009
You could say it was a tricky time for me.
Eighteen going on nineteen
lost my mind for a spell
It's strange on reflection how cracked you'll get before
people can start to tell.
Days previous I felt like a genius
Sleepless, but safe in my cure for cancer
Awake for six nights working on the answer
Talking to God at Tara Street station of course
In 2009,
No it wasn't an especially excellent time for me
In lecture halls and supermarkets
Panic attacks emerged
and shook me to surrender
The summer that followed was quiet at home
repeat exams and consultations
Swiftly chucked away my phone
No energy left for explanations
In one sense still feeling permanently stoned
numbed out on a substitute, six months medication....
2009
Helped me redefine what I might be
2009
Operating from zero up became a gift to me
|
||||
5. |
Captain Scarlet
03:25
|
|||
|
In the middle of everything that's missing,
the tongue begins to slip
The voice of doubt and anger
finds an outlet far too quick
As strangers smiles are seen as smirks
Back to a Holden Caulfield sense of berserk
Increasingly cursing the phonies and jerks
For a joke you musn't be getting
A joke you musn't be getting
In the middle of everything that's missing
The mask begins to split
The pull of the past is enough to keep you
sleepless with a twitch
internally screaming what if
perpetually ready to be sick, now there's a
Pain in your face from frowning
No taste for the drinks you've been downing
Itching for the punchline
Maybe you're the punchline
In the middle of everything that's missing
You're left with lies you can't forget
So now you're doubting every answer
quick to assume you're under threat
Wasted in the Workman's
cultivate fresh regrets
Barking accusations
at people you've just met
Congratulations
No one's laughing anymore
King of the cowardly gesture
Make them feel as sore as you do.
|
||||
6. |
Daylight Savings
03:41
|
|||
|
When the clocks go back and the cold sets in
and the gloom consumes where the week begins
your laugh is a spark to live for
a stay on darker days
the warmth in conversation
cuts across the tired haze
Enough sometimes to recognise
the better man you see in me
Enough sometimes to realise
the change can happen gradually
Through the hours of work with the same fatigue
jumping hoops for fools we can never please
there's still these notes between us
simple and sincere
to fight the spent resentment
the sense we're still stuck here
Enough sometimes to recognise
the better friend you've been to me
Enough sometimes to realise
It's not as bad as it used to be
As the night draw nears
And the crowds push by
And the panic of the city
settles into a sigh
I start to consider
the bigger picture
the people who keep me
through the bleak midwinter
enough sometimes to recognise
enough sometimes to realise
|
||||
7. |
Decisions
02:58
|
|||
|
I hope you get to be what you wanted
In Berlin or whatever else suits your ambition
The films and books and bands
weren't just a teenage badge of honour
The restless schemes and plans
Don't get abandoned for something smaller
I hope you get to be what you wanted
And you're able to move past life's many bastards
The everyday snakes and unmatched misogynists
Nice guys playing mind games and politics
Same as in school, as in work as in government
And nobody makes those decisions for you
And nobody makes you pretend it's okay
And time doesn't take that ambition from you
And time doesn't leave you nothing to say
I hope you get to be what you wanted
Only slightly compromised or corrupted
Enough armour around the essential self
Enough guards in place for your mental health
The neck to protect your imagination
The nerve to preserve your grace and patience, I know
Nobody makes those decisions for you
Nobody makes you pretend it's okay
Time doesn't force their tradition on you
Time doesn't leave you afraid to say
There's no signs that it gets easier
When you're crumbling today,
But all those brains have got to go somewhere
And nothing will change if you stay in this place
|
||||
8. |
November
03:53
|
|||
|
Swimming in lemsip
What's another year?
Nothing grows in November
besides the fear
Am I earning enough to remain in the city?
Rent's going up next month, no surprise
So I keep the timetable
packed Tetris tight
No room to manoeuvre
no space for off nights
Too worked up to wind down I run without rest
As custard coloured slugs come up off my chest
Weighing in
At an incredible
One hundred and forty seven pounds
A colossus in Age Action jumpers
A poster for modern fatigue
A hero in dead-men's trousers
Face for millennial unease
These briefcases beneath my eyes mean business
Arabica beans beat my brain until Christmas
Hoovering strepsils
hoping for change
Y'just smother the sickness
If it means getting paid
Am I working enough to contain the old worry?
Can't let the cracks show on the job
Wrestling with,
My monthly list of
mounting bills, old debts and dumb decisions
A goliath in pressure zone housing
Titan of the middle-class squeeze
Scraping by on false notions
Of freelance purity
Where you'll never afford to ignore a hint of business
Arabica beans beat my brain until Christmas
So get to work
In wrinkled shirt, with
Button loose and
Sweaty collar
Sprits frayed
but getting through
Nothing new, it's only you
It's only winter
|
||||
9. |
Ghosting
02:50
|
|||
|
Ghosting, it's been three weeks now
Friendships don't end they just fade somehow
So busy, so busy, so I suppose we're allowed
To hide inside excuses
Move between crowds
Ghosting, it's a novel solution
No time to talk when we're this disillusioned
and too busy, too busy to be, meeting face to face
Avoid any definite statements
Skip the confrontation now you're
Ghosting - Out of sight
Every coward gets a brand new start tonight
Let's assume better left unsaid
Let's assume we'd rather disappear instead
Isn't it romantic
Mysterious, spontaneous game we play
Isn't it enchanting
Knowing we can quietly slip away
Put a block on the past
Delete the photographs
It's not worth the fight
For fleeting attachments to little lives
Outta sight
No one needs another insincere goodbye
Let's pretend we don't exist
Let's pretend we're so evolved beyond all of this
|
||||
10. |
Last Gasp Of Summer
03:11
|
|||
|
All the scaldy young ones, are
Marching in the mud.
Drinking two litre cider
As only they should.
They're having a good time
Despite the lashing rain
Enough medicine sneaked in to
numb the aches and pains
A field in the midlands
For the last gasp of summer
Enough distance and difference
to embrace one another
Strangers say; "Make some noise!"
So the kids make some.
Every mouldy man child is pissing in the shrubs
Chewing on their chins, as only they should
They're having a mad one, they're able to say
Saw seven different bands while facing the wrong way
It's a beautiful communion for 300 euro
You can eat an ostrich and burn a gazebo
Strangers say "Festival Name"
To hear the crowds programmed refrain
Until the scene has some meaning it was missing before
The song really starts to mean more
than the sum of its second-hand parts
Recycled gestures
Can't get much better
Loud, proud and brainless
But so contagious
It does not matter
If you are shattered
They don't want answers
Just need escape.
|
||||
11. |
Art For Sale
02:40
|
|||
|
Barking out our bastardised reading of the blues
For the pub-crawl tourists and the chosen few
The white man's struggle never sounded so true
On a grubby little stage beside the exit and the loo
What value do we have to you? What value do we have to you?
Name your price, don't make us beg
We've got art for sale you want 'Wonderwall' instead,
well maybe, it's gonna be the gig that ends me.
Give us a lukewarm bottle of Brahma
And the attention of your innocent ears
We'll never soundtrack a hospital drama
But we can help you drink your tears
The soundman clearly hates his joyless job
Forced to listen to these whining frauds
Promoter thought we'd bring more through the door
A band you can't rely on, that's for sure.
What value do we have to you? What value do we have to you?
Merchandise of the heart and soul
Might be nice to pay for bus fare home,
well maybe, it's gonna be the gig that ends me.
Thank you Stephen, thank you...
|
||||
Shrug Life
Shrug Life is the questionable, protective moniker of Danny, Keith, Josh and Laura. Together they make music and fight first world problems. This is their story...
Shrug Life recommends:
why don't you // why don't you, go off
by Cat Palace
Oddball pop, with dry wit and excellent drumming.
go to album
Falmouth's finest. That's in Boston. He also writes insightful songs about Dublin and L.A.
go to album
The ennui.
go to albumIf you like Shrug Life, you may also like:
Ready For The House
by Junk Drawer
supported by 10 fans who also own “Maybe You're The Punchline”
Here coz of my mate duph. Thanks for one last top music tip, man. Love ye, miss ye xx
go to album
A Litany of Failures: Volume III
by Litany Of Failures
supported by 10 fans who also own “Maybe You're The Punchline”
Junk Drawer lead the pack, swerving into unsettling territory - I love this band's sheer unpredictability. I remember their gig at Output where they followed an excellent set by The Bonk. These guys are the cat's pyjamas!
go to album
Under The Surface
by Nameless Ghost
The wrenching songs on the latest from Nameless Ghost tackle loss and grief amidst toothy indie rock.
go to album
