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Degenerate Music

by Novus spero

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1.
Nutmeg Tree 05:00
The first time I kissed you It was evening in June Under the nutmeg tree in your backyard We were splayed on the grass Drunk on its fumes It just happened, so we let down our guards No one was home when the street lights came on And you led me into your room The heat of the day was still trapped in the dark And the air was still as a tomb Life is too short to truly know another So it’s better off if we don’t talk But I’ll be your friend if you’ll be my lover And when you wake up I’ll be gone But I stayed for the night And when the dawn’s yellow light hit our eyes You started and said This can’t happen again or we’ll die Because love’s a rushing tide And once you fall inside It pulls you down, my friend The last time I kissed you, it was three years ago You were scared that we’d gotten too close That summer you moved to the Atlantic coast While I sulked around the house like a ghost Waiting for those phone calls You drunk with your friends When you’d remember to miss me again We used to write letters, clandestine displays Of desire burned by pen to a page Each week then each month They would grace the wall Till “love” became “sincerely yours” I know life is short and you’ve found another It’s like you said in that bittersweet prose Love can’t go the distance It only runs sprints then it dies We take what we can get Because it helps us forget what we can’t But your friends have been saying You’re coming to town And I know we’ll kiss again The next time I kiss you Will you stay a stranger? Or will you stay for real?
2.
Anna Karina 03:53
Anna Karina My love for you is like the sea It swells and it recedes But never truly leaves No, let me start again My love for you is red Like the people’s government Like revolution, permanent I declare it every week When the Central Committee meets They seem nonplussed But still record the minutes I’ve seen the way you look at me When you saunter down the street Beneath the flags of the Paris working class With your jacket to your knees Your eyes reflect the fires Of our victory in Versailles Pardonne mes adjectifs possessifs Mais, voudrais-tu êtes la mienne? Anna Karina Did you get my letter, dear? We collectivized the Post So it might be a little slow I recount our latest course Land reform by force The rural bourgeoisie Cold hands still clutching their keys Every town we liberate I proclaim it in your name But all the people lock their doors Like I’m Robespierre reborn But if the masses fail to rise against The ancien régime We’ll push the Party doctrine To its logical extreme Lead platoons of sans-culottes Down the Parisian boulevards A vanguard of an actress And a boy who can’t tell love and war apart
3.
We would be married with kids A 2-bedroom apartment in downtown We’d lie awake, fixated on the negatives The malaise that paints our permanent scowls I’d genuflect and beg you not to leave And then only see the children once a week They’d curse their father’s sins For all their burdens Grow cynical and wander With no hearth to warm their skins I’d spend a lifetime trying to forget And slowly drink myself to death So let’s stop Stop before we start Thank you for a lovely night Let’s never speak again Just stop before we start In August ’86, my parents’ first home If they’d fell asleep I never would have known Without a body or a soul, I’d never see The unforgiving sun Its progeny red in claws and teeth And they might sometimes dream Of a face that looks like me But let my sister weave the tapestry It could stop Stop before I start No son that did too many drugs And let the torch die in the rain Stop before I start The daily toil that only ends When you’re too weak to pull the plough The worn out heart you cannot mend With the lifeless winter’s hard and brittle boughs You gotta stop Stop before you start Leave before the storm rolls in And buries you inside Just stop before you start
4.
Drives to work Uses tools Eats alone In a studio Dreams of forests Primal darkness Love and death Without pretense Hits reset
5.
When you could barely see the waves The tide was to your knees Dragging you away From the womb that was your cage Succorant and safe Now you can’t escape From the prison of the self Claw marks line the lonely walls But you scale it in vain Condemned before you learned to crawl When the doctors wrote your name Sentenced to yourself When the skin you wore was new You never wondered what you were But nature stretched your frame And now the knowledge is a cage You medicate your thoughts But the chemicals wear off Then you’re alone inside yourself Your body weaves a tapestry Of sorrow and regret A history left incomplete When it goes the way of all flesh The void awaits the self You drink but always thirst And you wonder why you hurt Do you do it to yourself? You carry up your cross each day But salvation flees your reach Your dried-out tongue can’t make the shapes To elaborate its needs And the universe just shrugs You do it to yourself
6.
Little Lives 04:56
Son, you weave such a tangled web Can’t you ever give it a rest? What you started with is all you get When you sink into the ivy bed Honey, you weave such a tangled web Can’t you just lie down to rest? What you started with is all you get When you sink into the ivy bed When the things we’ve built have turned to dust When the struggles and sex have run their course We eulogize the joy and pain, the failed plans And wish we could begin again

about

Recorded between 2013 and 2014 in Flagstaff, AZ, Hemet, CA, and San Diego, CA.

credits

released July 1, 2014

Jesse McMahon – Arrangements, vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards, percussion, samples, lyrics
Julia Bietz – Vocals on “Little Lives”
Sara McMahon – Voices on “Little Lives”

Thanks to Alaythia Music in Hemet, CA and Adry Walsh for letting me yell into a microphone at their respective places.

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Novus spero San Diego, California

Gospel of the final human century.
San Diego, CA / Hemet, CA / Flagstaff, AZ

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