Compost / Sand Dollar

All songs written by Stephin Merritt except where noted.
Lyrics are based on hearing and are not definitive.

Leeches (Compost Version)

We are ridiculous mice giving birth to a mountain. We are unharvested crops on earth, wild and wanton. But the wind calls us to war (boys like letches), and we go to the ferry. Disoriented by the whirling whirl, we ride on the Jeeps and on beaches, like animated suits of armor filled with leeches. Yeah! We know we're not long for this world. We don't know how to be strong. We row our bottomless boat to the edge of the maelstrom. And we wait under the sea (poor sweet William), who brings us to the pyramid...

Leeches (Sand Dollar Version)

We are ridiculous mice giving birth to a mountain. We are unharvested crops on earth, wild and wanton. But the wind calls us to war (boys like letches), and we swim to the ferry. Disoriented by the whirling whirl, we ride on the Jeeps and on beaches, like animated suits of armor filled with leeches. Yeah! We know we're not long for this world. We don't know how to be strong. We row our bottomless boat to the edge of the maelstrom. And we wait under the sea (poor sweet William), who brings us to, to the pyramid...

Bed

Forget about power. Forget about sex. Forget about logic. Let's go to bed. Noisy trams. Noisy bikes. Put out the lights. Let's go to bed.

Country

My little train takes me down the tracks, past the fields and haystacks. Orange trees and snow drifts and a perfect town where no one lives, and a perfect town where nothing lives. My little train takes me down the rails, past the mountains and empty jails, no glass in the windows, and nothing moves when the wind blows...

Otters

We drove, canopy down, in the scalding rain on the one day we were young. The house we bought was put on whales. Otters scampered down the halls. There were whirlpools in the floor and sailboats...

Helium

They filled balloons with helium. They drift away. We find some balloon that grew on their bed.

Barley

To a place where everyone is Charlie. I can't wait to see you there in the barley. Making our way though a labyrinth of squalid bamboo huts. I don't want to live in a synagogue covered with sores and cuts. Don't want love to carry me to in corn. Nothing existed until the day the flies were blown. Technology is a magic force, has come to save the earth. Religion must now be sent away before anyone else gets hurt. Like grains of black sand falling through my hand, worked out of days we found lying on the ground beneath the willow. We do own the pillowed walk. The years and ears, an infective drug with crippling side effects. I don't want to live in a world of rape. I don't want to have sex. The babbling brook running through my blood left a black stain on my heart. Can't tell us apart, and I'm a picture of you with nowhere to hang myself. Girl next door with a memory of things to come says I'm fading through the toilet where the sign comes from.

Kings

All day, snow covered us. Night-time: it was always night. The people on the street were made of meat. Black girl. Trucks ran us down. Blue boy. The people on the sidewalk were traced in chalk. Was embryo in your enormous room having flashback to your enormous room? We were kings, kings!

Screech

For the love of the girl upstate, for the love that dare not rage. The love that dare not rear its ugly head. It's encroaching, and it's fattening, and it's floating... like a red Pygmalion balloon pushing aside the ribcage. For the love that dares to be, for the love that dares to screech, the love that dares to lift its lovely cherry red head is here!

Paul Bunyan

The love we find in sailor's eyes ruins gray anatomy, taking away the handrail, finding fault with physical laws. In a little while, the rules will all be mine. I make an incision the rats have long since left alone. The bearded lady is in your mouth, aluminum for your lip, knowledge of good and evil in your tongue. Paul Bunyan's in your kiss. Rain boiling on the sidewalk, snow burning on the roof, the roofs of all the trees. I begin to climb the damage. What is the meaning of Easter Island? What is the function of this obsolete ritual?... Infected with passion for G.I. Joe, she lets her loneliness strip her of her youth. Infecting with passion, she forgets the litany. Sub-human puppet, she withers away... Something stirring in the swamp of the side-a-way home, heady and vegan and its eyes are deep red. I give it a name you can't pronounce...

Midnight Slows
cover song

Fabergé

They say everyone you touch turns to gold. They say we're too young; I think we're too old, ugly as sin, pale and thin. They've been wrong before. Never born, we were made by Fabergé, never young... They say you're a frog prince swollen with pride, always a bridesmaid, never a bride, getting confused by drug abuse, living in a dream... I'm not afraid to walk hand in hand. I think we were made to lie in the sand, ambitiously, by the sea, under the sun...