Get all 12 Balto releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Wrong End, Spanish Wine, No Hard Feeling (4-Track), From Them to Us, From Us To You (A Cover Tape), Magnet / Mind, Black Snake, Mojave Blues/Still Don't Know, Bullshit Dream, Songs for Viktor, and 4 more.
1. |
Smokestacks
04:29
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Smokestacks breathe fire on the skyline tonight
And down by the docks I’m standing on the starboard side
Anne, she is crying
Anne, she is right
“You don’t have to run anymore”
Concrete and Squalor, mud and tire tracks
Drunks in the fog tipping empty bottles back
Anne at the bus stop
Anne’s looking for change
Threadbare and cold in the rain
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Greyhound you starcrossed diesel limousine
For five quiet nights she turns her child’s eyes on me
Anne you’re a dreamer
But Anne you’ve got to know
Please don’t look back when I go
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Did she make love a jailer
Did she lock up the hope inside her chest
Call it a burden she'd bear all alone
And wait for the world to go cold
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“Wake up,” she smiles we’re getting near the coast
Anne’s making plans, the future offers so much more
Eyes on the twilight she’ll ask me where I’m bound
For years now I’m on my way home
Highways go tumble to drown in choppy seas
And where I went sailing, Anne could never follow me
Down by the lighthouse it’s shining down her cheeks
Silhouette that sticks in my dreams
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2. |
Gravestones
03:40
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I keep a letter in my drawer
Postmark from several years before
A headstone etched there on the page – a name a place a dying day
But god, I’m never sure
I guess three years ago last week
A ghost-girl drifted down to me
And left the outline of a timid face then slipped away without a trace
Through space between the graves
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And then I fell down on my knees
I placed a kiss on stony cheeks
I feel that grit between my teeth
Why won’t she stay, love never stayed with me
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Something like eighteen months ago
I chased a rumor chased a hope
That at St. Peter’s church the clock strikes twelve and ghost girls tend to show themselves but this one would not come
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And then I fell down on my knees
I placed a kiss on stony cheeks
I feel that grit between my teeth
Why won’t she stay, love never stayed with me
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The years get longer counting days
I’ve got some private holidays
But when I burned my words by candle-light I saw her standing there behind
“Go on,” she said, “I’ll wait.”
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And then I fell down at her feet
I laid a kiss on bloodless cheeks
Escaping steam between my teeth
Why won’t she stay, love never stayed with me
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3. |
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As a child I looked at airplanes
Learned all their technical names
I never could guess what they’d do
And I spent my youth waiting in airports
Convinced of a purpose
I’m lit up, I’m love, I’m a man
And I’ve rented rooms that change with the seasons
I forget the reasons
The bottom falls out, I’m alone
I hid in the corner, the tanks on parade down below
Looking back homewards, shedding old tears for you
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But can I stay with you just for a little while
Been trouble all behind
And lying here beside you
Hell I want to get it right this time
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When I make it home I’ll hand out key-chains
And souvenir ashtrays
But I’ll save the full story for you
When I make it home, get a house like my brothers’
And be a good husband
All simple and static and whole
I’ll probably be older, when the fever burns out of my mind
But I gotta tell you, I’m lit-up, I’m filled up and trying
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4. |
Cavalry
03:36
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I stalled in recalling
The way I lived before
I went away and sparked the Winter War
Some brightness, once lightness
Now sits heavy beneath my ribs
Collects the weight of everything I did
Oh but I had me a cause
A good cause I thought
The Bleeding drum beating
Its time under my skin
The cavalry goes riding out again
Then lost and exhausted
In that desert in my head
I put my lips to water, tasted sand
Oh but I had me a cause
A good cause I thought
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So if you see me start retreating
See the shadow cross my eyes
I’m gonna place a bet on wine, I'm gonna take my own advice
And if I’m lucky I can see your lantern shine
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I came back to find that
The truth I knew as sure
Doesn't seem so certain anymore
The past lies in fragments
that slip out of my dreams
And follow me down all these crooked streets
I Guess I’m haunted and lost
chalk up a loss
Now I’m Given, a vision
That I’m not sure I can trust
Of a woman throwing her dice down in the dust
And a house made of mortar
And I wish this house my home
To hang it up and burn my uniform
But what is the cost
when I give up the cause
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5. |
Doves
04:30
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The white dove at morning called out to warn me - don’t Breath in
The wind carries fire you knew as a child it'll lure you in
And all the vultures sit on wires waiting for lightning to strike where you stand
With your arms upon your chest and rapture heaving in your breath at the end
In spite of the threat I decided to let my guard down
I stood there for hours with three frozen flowers and watched the crowd
I saw blind children throwing darts sticking into all four walls and themselves
I saw their mothers watching sadly, scatter ashes like red petals on the ground
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Tell me what’s the harm
In looking back, in holding on
Endless hope sure takes long
To quiet down, to let you out
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The white dove of longing calls from the falling snow tonight
I'll cover your footsteps, I’ve turned out the street lamps just come on outside
So I went down to the river broke the ice and sang the saddest song I know
And with the water to my waist I came to know I was afraid to turn and go
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6. |
Monuments
05:48
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My friends and I were sailing down
To find out what the world’s about
Driftwood, ships, and monuments
To how the young man beat his breast
And how his love is tied to death
See lily fronds like lace upon
The silver girl, her distant arms
The words that issued from her lips
A turn of phrase a parting gift
Like “You’ve done wrong in abandoning
Everyone and everything.”
We’ll meet again someday is the longest of the lines
That slip the hands of drowning men and go slowly with the tide
Somewhere there’s a border town
I hardly ever mention now
Where young girls lock themselves inside
And claim they’re never worth our time
Because the flesh is not divine
Because we’re never satisfied
See empty chairs in Heaven high
A disembodied voice decries
Says “Of all the seething mess I’ve made
nothing here is fit to save”
So I’ll call for endless rain again
Could we have sailed
Off into
A better land
Two by two?
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Balto Los Angeles, California
Card Carrying Cultists of the Great American Song, The Great American Groove, and the Great American Highway
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Popular music bent into something you've never heard by the producer of "October's Road". Keyser Soze will knock your socks off.
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I did a cover of Business Lunch! @overdriveisclassy on youtube
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