1. |
Out Like a Light
04:31
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I'm on a green boat to the dawn on a delivering stream. (up away and all away and up away and all away home.) Childhood colours cast a cloak around me. To a field soaked in light sweeps a murder of crows; to the liquorice limbs of a tree bathed in gold.
To a lighthouse full of books on a Biblical sea; I've an impulse to vanish in a cyclone at the bay. A piano beats its hammers to call me to the deep; I'm returning to the red earth, I'm returning to the clay of sleep.
CHORUS: So when I go, when I go, when I go I will go out like a light.
The furnace that crippled them, its pistons removed to fashion a galleon from cathedral pews. To carve up the headland and smash through the foam, the wind knows where home is so up comes the cyclone.
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2. |
Impossible Day
03:32
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CHORUS: Here I am, Impossible day. You can tell that man about impossible days.
This is for you when the light is low and all those cynics creep like creatures in a winter without snow. This is for you when the light is low and you feel like evil has been winning or it has already won.
CHORUS: Here I am, Impossible day. You can tell that man about impossible days. It's an impossible day.
This is for you when your memories play all those bad mechanical melodies that you heard on wasted days. This is for you, let the cynics come. We will make light work of the dancing once the music has begun.
You can't have a shadow without light, something else is waiting behind- another meaning of Northern soul come back here to the city of gold.
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3. |
Close to the Clouds
03:54
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Come now, I need you to see the green world's better than whatever they are selling you. Look to the window not your TV; Earth is awake and so we should be...
CHORUS: ... climbing close to the clouds, up through the vapour away from the houses; climbing close to the clouds, up through the mist and away from the madness; reaching into the light, out of yourself and away from all of them.
Come now, I need you to see the horizon is wide like the floor you've been pacing. Look through your soul not another screen. It's never too late and so we should be...
And if I should die think only this of me; and if I should die think only this of me: that I tried...
Now we're going up.
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4. |
Numbers
03:57
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It's the age of targets, numbers rule our world; targets equal money, the ,more you hit the more you earn. Everyone is running, ticking boxes, running scared; it comes down from above us: the cascading fountain of fear.
In the offices and bureaus those in the middle are caught between doing the work of the devil above or drowning in a deep green sea of money, power isn't cheap. You do the work of the devil above or drown in a deep green sea.
CHORUS: We are not your numbers, we are not your drones.
Everyone must pay, it's the spirit of the age. And drop!
'We've got you where we want you,' said the iron men in grey, like Kafka's phantom we're transformed to those who lie awake in the dead hours of the morning waiting for the trial by figures and statistics that haunt us all the while.
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5. |
How Martyrs are Made
04:23
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As proud as a hill stands the blackish cathedral in a spectre of vapour that looks like it's not of this earth. For a thousand years the sunbeam's many colours have bolted like crusaders' lances straight to the heart. They looked up and they looked inward; they stared into the face of forever and they were afraid.
CHORUS: Look what fear can do. Look what what fear can do. I fear what fear will do when we're afraid.
I was a simple man, I counted the grains in my hands. I slept on the driest of lands where things will catch fire. And when it spoke to me I embraced my new destiny. Now everything said to me diluted and strange. So I looked up and I looked inward and in those stories from language to language such legends are made.
Sometimes I feel the guilt rise and burn under the weight of those words lost in translation and sometimes I feel the guilt rise and burn and all this is hard to unlearn so we try to harm no one.
This is how martyrs are made.
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6. |
English Soul
03:27
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There is an English soul, you can feel it in the whipping wind, the very same that blew the boats to the bays to make this cauldron what it is. You can feel it in the iron gates between the bars and the factory hands. We are the distant sons of the warrior clans who scarred and named the land.
CHORUS: There is an English soul.
There is an English soul, you can see it in your misted breath; when it's minus two on the terraces you are in a battle of life and death. You can feel it on the quiet streets after your team's gang clash, you step over the blood of an Englishman 'cause there ain't no soul in that.
There is an English soul, you can read it in the lines of peace between the men and women of word and song and when the melody's unique. And you feel it in the swell of the school yard where she cannot understand why her father the fusilier was flown into the sands of a foreign land.
From the beaches, over the grains, they lit the beacons when the war boats came. From flint to firearm why don't you know? We are the blood collective, we are the English soul.
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7. |
Don't Give A...
02:56
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Well we know who made these shiny stars: a world full of money and the wizards of spin. All the pretty little puppets they've been stalking the bars into Italian cars the camera catches them in.
CHORUS: But we don't care who you are; we don't care how you rock that look; we don't care for the butterfly of colours in your hair; we don't give a...
We now how you got there: Daddy made it so, but I'll never understand why we're hearing you say, 'I'm very important, don't you know who I am?' The tide is turning and we're turning away.
We see your faces everyday but we don't give a...
And all the creeps that keep crawling over the pages, we don't give a...
We'll be looking through you at cathedrals in the rain. We don't give a...
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8. |
City Alone
03:16
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We talked as we walked through the forest through the ranks of the vanishing trees. We chose a quiet place for our final fight; green turned to yellow on the breeze.
CHORUS: We left our old selves by the old stones and down and new road you drove home. We went to the forest together but returned to the city alone.
Where did your vanishing power go when you laid a cold hand on the stone? The forest grew small in your rear view; you kept some of my power for your own.
The engine turned round as a planet spins, the universe altered its course. A car full of cases and shadows took you away to the North.
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9. |
Bullet Rain
03:42
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Rain please come over me through all our long history. From storm to iris to optic nerve to memory. I watch through the wash a city screened by beautiful clouds. Bring this rain right down.
CHORUS: I feel better in bullet rain. I feel much better when it rains. I feel better in bullet rain when it rains, when it rains, when it rains.
This soul-affirming memory was brought to by the rain you've seen. It's dagger-like and slanting through old trees. I watch through the wash a city screened by beautiful clouds. Bring this rain right down.
Illumination in the shade. God-green translucency in the rain.
People sometimes ask of me, 'What is it in the rain you see?' It's not about what can be seen but more about a perfect screen. I watch through the wash a city screened by beautiful clouds. Bring this rain right down.
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10. |
I Hate This Place
03:09
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In the cheap club with the music hard beating like a tell-tale heart on the dance floor that sticks like tar. I don't want to be here. So I look for but I just can't see a down turned face that thinks like me; no one gives themselves away. Here you have to be cool.
CHORUS: I hate, I hate this place.
Well, I'm shaking and it's no surprise; your fuse has blown so I shield my eyes with an innocent hand as your eyes grow wide and cannot see the TV. It just stands there as the news unfolds, a fraction of a population gone - an act of war or a hand of God standing in the middle.
I know why the caged bird sings.
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11. |
Leviathan
03:45
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Well, this all happened as we turned aside, we let Leviathan inside and now the tyranny sweeps in like slabs of ice. From left to right over this land we're counting all the coins the colour of brass. The fat and freeborn overrun the hive.
CHORUS: We never asked you inside, go be gone. We'll have another evil. We never asked you inside, go be gone. We'll have another evil now!
And Leviathan, yes we need it there but the beast knows not what's fair is fair; it keeps the orb and sceptre for its young. With land and title handed down, through ceiling glass a tattered crown. We ask the house of fools, 'What have you done?'
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12. |
Me and Machine
02:45
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I turn this silver key through required degrees. I'm up through the gears, I'm a ghost on the edge of my seat.
CHORUS: But I won't die, I'll ascend on adrenalin, and besides what kind of heaven would let me in and let me ride right past hell by my reckoning? I'll arrive at two miles per minute, me and machine.
If Death waits round the bend try a different road. Too fast, shoot past, hold on, lean lower than low.
It's a primal ride till the rider disappears. The visor hides the lines behind the years.
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13. |
Festival of Light
05:21
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The poet's soul beyond scripture's control weaves magic and peace through a hard Winter's cold. The candle mass glows then the long walk home to fireside radio blessings alone.
CHORUS: Beams and rays, new light it plays through stained glass windows, leaden panes. Let it fall here, let it in; the festival of light begins.
Borrowed green, let the outside in. We borrowed a lantern to glide through the fields. We sat and we drank in the dimly lit bar by the light of a star that was only a star.
In the black wood or the tangled maze of city streets we will make light where we meet. As thin as crescent moon, light falls on the tomb.
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Under A Banner Wolverhampton, UK
Under A Banner are a hard rock band writing powerful and poetic music about the world and the people and spirits which
inhabit it.
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Under A Banner are Adam Broadhurst -guitars, lead vocals, Jake Brooks - guitars and vocals; Richard Corry-bass guitar; Tim Wilson -drums and vocals
... more
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