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. |
Lost on the Young
03:14
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Come with me in the southern heat
Where the mind recalls the fever of a gypsy queen
Spilling rum from plastic cups
Getting lit beneath the balconies in the delta sun
I’ve known love as a fleeting beauty lost upon the young
If you saw my mind, hit the high just like i planned it
driven low and lost and stranded
with the fear of another year
You're driving down to my house ‘cross town
Where the floorboards creak, the heatpipes speak, and the walls could shout
You’re looking thin and you look tired
Wanna do it like we used to but there's no second try
I’ve known love as a fleeting beauty lost upon the young
If you saw my mind, hit the high just like i planned it
driven low and lost and stranded
with the fear of another year
of feeling less each day
Have we fallen asleep?
Slipping in the fog of the american dream
For a love so true
It don't kick it don't scream like the television said it would do
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2. |
Restless Generation
03:28
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Those were the days she was a christian
Godless, honest, and polite
I fell into her crimson arms
her sheets were sails in every dawn
I Was a tourist in her house, for a short time in the south
I gathered flowers from the neighbors’ yards
Scattered petals for my love to find
I staggered up and down the block
I felt an outlaw on the run
We were but tourists in that spring - there was a light on everything
I’m spending most days in my memories
A scene in shadow on every corner, every street
But how I lingered far too long
where the lotus eaters’ go
I was a child, last I knew, then I fell in love with you
Oh what a restless generation
walks the wire across an endless sea
You and I becoming strangers
And every moment passing by
is just a lifetime left behind
I was awakened from an anxious dream
But the visions just won’t shake from me
The face of everyone I love
As faint as fire in the sun
the trace of everything we did
a thinning haze upon the wind
I was a tourist in your life, for a little, little while
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3. |
CA LUV
02:51
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First Encounters of a simpler kind
Damn it was easy, I was so surprised
One nostalgic melancholy moment
Felt it even as it passed me by
The tinny music from the radio,
The first snow in a while
The cup of coffee as the dawn was breaking
The cigarettes inside
I like the way you’re slow to smile
I like your eyes, I like you stoned and wild
And if the night-time makes you lightning
Well then I’m thunder in the distant sky
But every morning is a different story
Let me see you in the light
Is this a dream, some other dark confusion
Or someone else’s life?
Oh it’s alright
Oh it’s alright
Load us up on wells and cheap champagne
We’re gonna shake this thing awake somehow
We’ll make a scene, be seasick strangers
Turning in the low-light of¬¬ a lonesome crowd
I’ve been brooding for a long time baby
But I want to to shut it out
I want to hide behind the big delusion
Don’t let me down!
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4. |
Midnight
03:21
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Midnight, when their headlights fade
You slipped back to your father’s house
Burning underneath your clothes
As if no hands could hold
Your pale body down
Against the cold, hard ground
Oh, We don’t get it back
I’m afraid that death’s like that
Morning was a long way off
You were tired but you couldn’t sleep
Keep seeing as if from miles away
How your body lay
Among discarded things
Your childhood memories
Oh, We don’t get it back
I’m pretty sure death’s like that
Time has left some burdens
Left some secret shames
But oh, can it lift the weight
I think it can(‘t)
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5. |
Born Astray
04:48
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A dream a dying flame
My brain is tinder to the spark
Just waiting for the day to start
It’s somewhere in your dress
Your breath, and words down in the dark
I loved you but I’m long gone
It sure was getting
To see you in the dawn
Glowing with your love song
And staying up afraid
I’d go away some day
And knowing it ‘aint far off
I was born a Gambler
I was born astray
And I been playing hands lord
That I can’t sustain
Another morning breaks
My train’s the six, I go uptown
Thought I saw you there in the crowd
My friends all sitting round
In town for tall tails and a drink
I keep slipping off to lean on the sink
Cuz I can feel you in my blood
In the tatters of my lungs
Are you somewhere underneath the sun?
did you catch another’s eye
Are you slipping past the line
You know I was a waste of time
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6. |
Shots in the Dark
03:38
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Take me home from the Junkyard where your other lovers rust
I was guessing on the words that wait for the silence to finally stop
Suddenly aware of every memory we made when we were young
Where you’re naked in the living room, and it aint fate but it’s enough
But how the vision changes and beauty wilts with age
I can sense it in your posture, in your smile, it feels the same
Oh Lord, it aint easy to let it go, but baby, that’s the way we knew it’d be
Oh Lord, it aint easy to let you go, so we’ll go on and on and on and on and on
As if she’s calling from a dream I can see the scene dissolve into the room
Oh the rain upon the windows, oh the deep November gloom
“I’ve been praying I’ve been hoping on a man,” she says to the boy she met too soon
all the children that we might have made now vanishing from view
But I, for one, seems everyone’s still shooting in the dark
Or maybe still in awe of all the fires we could start
Oh Lord, it aint easy to let it go, but baby, that’s the way we knew it’d be
Oh Lord, it aint easy to let you go, so we’ll go on and on and on and on and on
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7. |
Star of Bethlehem
03:32
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The Star of Bethlehem shines on the hot velvet night
I was walking home, sunburnt and stoned
I had clumsily tried to pass some weight off my mind
And you know what my words are worth now
She’d be gone in the morning, she was just packing her things
Her back was turned, saying, “you’ll never learn
Why my love stays obscured, why I’m feeling so hurt,”
And I know what your words are worth now
little, next to nothing
Cuz I come home to you every night, though I’ve tried
To slip from your side, to the easy silence
To dance with the shadow of a life passing by
So the hours kept turning, felt the dawn coming on
She pushed me then, put it all to the test
Did I wrap ‘round your dreams, or is it a good time to leave?
Well I know what those words are worth now
As she drifted away, I didn’t expect so much pain
I was frantic, spent, clutching the bed
I begged her to stay, we sure as shit fell into place
So she knows what my words are worth now
little, next to nothing
Cuz I come home to you every night, though I’ve tried
To slip from your side, to the easy silence
To dance with the shadow of a life passing by
Lady I know I’ve been ready to go
For as long as you’ve known me by name
Time slipping past, I keep waiting on chance
But convinced that your something I need
But it’s never a good time, it seems
A good time to leave
Never a good time to leave
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8. |
Celebration Smile
04:18
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Bells over the rooftops
A celebration smile
Your father put his belt across your back
For the last of many times
Your sisters passed out flyers
Your mother’s still in shock
Awake through every endless summer night
While you were sleeping beneath the docks
A runaway with years to run on
Could get a long way out of queens
Yelling timber in the kingdom
Pulling fish out of the sea
A couple years, a couple boxcars
A carney, a marine
A half a dozen girls besides your mother
Shooting stars across their dreams
But I don’t want to grow old anywhere with anyone
Gonna keep the best intentions but regret the things I’ve done
I’m going down, I’m going down don’t you try to stop me now
Oh I’m not the man I thought I’d be and I won’t be coming round
Are those your children in the kitchen?
Are they Hungry or were you wrong
About the little orphan girl you married
Or your debts or dead end job?
A couple lost among the secrets
Broken windows and boarded doors
Do you recall the weight that left your shoulders
when you first left this town for good?
But I don’t want to grow old anywhere with anyone
keep the best intentions but regret the things I’ve done
I’m going down, I’m going down don’t you try to stop me now
Oh I’m not the man I thought I’d be and I won’t be coming round
But it’s quiet in the ward now
And the children have gone home
And left you with the nurses and technicians
And whatever’s killing all your bones
If I could wake up as a child
If I could wake up and begin
I’d burn up every dollar bill I’d ever touched
And throw the ashes in the wind
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9. |
A Year Lasts a Lifetime
04:27
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Like Everyone, Guess I'm coming undone
Getting colder as the years roll on
Has my skin gotten thicker?
Am I ready and willing to sell my days until my days are gone?
Better get it straight before you burn away
Before there's nothing left to know anymore
Tell me how could you love anyone much
when you know how good it used to feel?
Everybody Shuts off one way or another, you know it's true
So if you're gonna drown here tonight I want to drown with you
Have you seen her yet in her lily white dress
Making eyes with all the jealous men?
on her way up the aisle with a child inside her
and all the other things that might have been
Could you watch him stand with his pale shaking hands
like a heathen in the promised land?
Taking what 'aint his from a stranger's kiss
To share a ghost dance as the end begins
+++
As sure as the sky becomes the sea
my one true love is gonna tire of me
she'll go out in the night when the pale moment's right
to let the world spin watch it all unwind
and I'll turn my gaze to the endless waves
oh roll on ocean, roll on swollen and slow
So a year lasts a lifetime and the world could stay wild
For it's all become so narrow now
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10. |
One Night Show
03:48
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It’s a perfect one night show
Lights on in the morning when I’m walking home
It’s a shadow, it’s a wall of glass
Reflections of each other when we did our best
Is it enough?
I got a message that you passed along
To some other destination with the lights turned off
Past the pines.
In some bed awake at night where distant lovers lie
Say “it’s a perfect one night show”
It’s the one thing I’ll remember when I finally go
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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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