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1.
Varuna 03:39
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. 
2.
I had alot 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. 
3.
Sea Smoke 03:46
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. 
4.
Oarsman 05:15
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. 
5.
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. 
6.
Monologues 07:12
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. 
7.
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. 
8.
Greek Fire 05:41
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. 
9.
The Attic 03:57
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. 
10.
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. 
11.
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. 
12.
Tanzih 04:33
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. 
13.
Tashbih 04:40
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.

about

This Digital LP includes a digital only Bonus Track (Stable) as well as a digital lyric booklet in .PDF form.

credits

released November 30, 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

The Republic Of Wolves are: Gregg Andrew Dellarocca, Mason Maggio, Christian Van Deurs, Billy Duprey and Chris Wall

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