St. Annie

by Nick Nihil

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03:05
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2.
04:11
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3.
03:10
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4.
02:10
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5.
06:20
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6.
03:55
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7.
05:33
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8.
03:01
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9.
05:23
info

credits

released 21 August 2012
Produced by Nick Nihil
All instruments recorded and engineered by Adam Prairie at Hoot House Recordings.
Vocals recorded and engineered by Tim Mendonsa and Nick Nihil.
Additional bass recorded and engineered by Nick Nihil
Mixed by Adam Prairie
Mastered by Vincent LaBelle at BOOM! Studios
Artwork by Caroline Roosevelt
Photographs by Jeremy Mendonsa

tags

tags: alternative experimental rock free jazz post-punk post-rock Seattle

license

all rights reserved

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about

Nick Nihil (aka Nick Mendonsa) is a guitarist/songwriter for noisy Seattle alt-rock favorites Sad Face. 'St. Annie' is his solo debut. Told through the fractured logic of a dream, the album unfolds a tale of the destructive nature of ego.

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Track Name: I Will Help You
My hands are stronger
Than the fear that
Grabs your hair
And holds you dear

You separate my
Head from time
I’ll take your lies
And make them mine

Your home becomes
You like a curse
You’ll look much
Better in my furs

Slumber safely
In my sound
In falling tunnels
Underground

I will help you

Light you up and
Leave ‘em falling
Bound and chained
And caged and howling

Never asked and
Never used
Come drink my
Lifeblood from my shoe

My hands are stronger
Than the fear that
Grabs your hair and
Holds you dear

Pinheads bounce
On feathered beds
You’ll find me near
Or find me dead

I will help you
Track Name: Two Girls
I have two girls
On my shoulders
Picking through my hair
Talons drawing seeds of blood

I have two girls
On my shoulders
Looking almost the same
Fusing with my bluing veins

(girls):
You never know, boy
Never know never know
What we’re gonna say

A riddle or a love poem
Derision or devotion
They look and sound the same

You never know, boy
Never know never know
What we’re gonna say

One is the harlot and
The other is the poet
But we look and
sound the same

Two girls
Minor seconds
Between the time
Between the time

Two girls
Molting blues
I have…
Track Name: St. Annie
I’ll kneel at the alter of your
Sensuous grace
And swallow every breath you breathe
I’ll drink of the wine-colored lips
Of your face

I’ll be good to you
if you be good to me

I’ll be the John to your Billie
But I don’t quite believe me
I look but I’m too scared to touch
Cigarettes in halves and some fleeting laughs
I lost my feet before I learned to walk

I’m a two-time dropout twenty grand in the hole
But I’ve broken more hearts than I can count
On my whiskers to feel if I’m trapped again

I could kill myself if I couldn’t be with you
But I’ll sway to your song and
make love to the mist, I insist I’ll always be true

When I need to be true

So drip that poison in my ear
And I’ll dream forever
Wear your daisies in your hair
Say you’ll leave me never

I’ll hold the doors for you Annie
When our house is burning down
Let it burn, let it burn, burn it
Right down to the ground

I’m clawing up the walls when
I can’t hear your voice
Rejoicing at the fall of the
Others who demand you

You’re the tower of Babel
The sophisticated snake
Wrap me in the evening
All my atoms I forsake

You may think I’ve gone
A little crazy
That’s ok baby
Nothing you say to me
Will ever lay me down
down down

I want to say I broke your heart
About as much as I wish you’ll break mine
In a fit of despair that’s purely by design

But I’ll be good to you
If you be good to me
Track Name: Patterns of Aggression
My dog leaves a trail of feathers
That cuts from town to town
My dog sleeps in the glow in
Front of me and doesn’t make a sound

My dog could be chief of police
And sings with sirens in perfect key
My dog is always around
Even when I let him be

My dog doesn’t like you
No

Release and catch the birds
Sweep the feathers down the drain

My dog doesn’t like you
No
Track Name: No Jazz
Where do we go,
Now the lights are out?

The singer’s words
Have scattered and
The burning tempo stalled

Unease is a knife
In the alley
Your grace is overturned

We were beautiful
Now just ourselves
But, man, those players burned

Where do we go,
Now the lights are out?
My radiator’s broken
But you can stay a little while

I danced you to the bottom
I held you towards the sky
The airwaves rumble empty
So kiss me like a lie

There’s no jazz here tonight, my friends
No scat, no swing, no cats
Just dogs with chains and bones
Howling at our backs

There’s no jazz here tonight, no no
You lovely boys and girls
Get home to your records and rotgut
And get yourselves unfurled
Track Name: Crane
The crane that built the empire
Is the crane that’ll bring it down
Turning over the buried one by one
And then never to be found

And in the scablands
That echo with teeth
The lone bird set
Down to a rest

Lazily you crossed
Your legs across the
Absence of my chest

The veil of optimism
Held by the promise
of the new

Misconstrues the text
And intentions
In a holy feverview

And this crane would
Touch us and lift us out
Of our burning home’s remains

Moving summers with
The ease of a barrel
Rolling through the barren plains

But the operator chokes and
Walks away from the switch
“I’m not paid enough,” he says,
“life’s a bitch”

And the crane that built the empire
Is the crane that’ll bring it down
Don’t look for answers
In the sky
The crane has settled down

The crane that built the empire
Stately, long and tall
A beacon in the lonely night
That all empires fall
Track Name: Cigarette Girl
All the talent
All the brains
A back full of aches
And pains

Your eyes will blaze
And your head will twirl
Still, he’ll be nothing more
Than a cigarette girl

Toe the division
Dance on a fencepost
The song fades
With the evening breeze

Call like a crow
And hide behind the trees
And lure the mind
Of the cigarette girl

Out at first
A dream deferred
Fractures crash
And scatter like rain

It’s all the same
In gutters and in fame
The princess
Or the cigarette girl

Sweeping Central Park
Asleep in a bookshelf
Til she rang
The cigarette girl

A Spanish balcony
A blackened summer pool
Two notes are the space
Between everything

Scam the last bit of
Lucky we can find
Tuxedo tails, smoking jackets
Loaded dice

She followed me
The cigarette girl
Prayed above my shoulder
And never knew the price

We had the life of a matchstick
In a burning bush
Inhaling our breakfast
Saying grace with a cough

Play from the rafters
Rattle the floorboards
Toss the nickel
Into the empty trough

The blood drained from our heads
The band had gone
My axe in a coffin
A forgotten song

Stumbling late
Onto cold and empty beds
Look right through
My pale and naked cigarette girl

Stand me up with scissors
And stain me by the sink
Don’t ask me if I care
Or think of what I think

The lantern’s dying
And the flies are in a panic
Sing to me, whispered
The cigarette girl

Tango down on Pike
And disappear into the lights
Smelling my fingers
And flashing my knife

The dress was perfect
Now buried in a bin
it hangs like age
And your arms are too thin

Plexiglass at the Kent
A Bowler checks us in
Hang low from the bars
Of a rusted iron vent

Years inside of minutes
Talk an endless drone
Lips bloom like flowers
But smell of fish and of bone

And from the boxcar
My bags were thrown
I jumped and the gravel
Stayed around to catch me

I know your moan
From every corner of this world
And my shadow, my shame
My cigarette girl

Back at the game
Washed up, bleached,
and shamed
All I want is just
One more cigarette
Track Name: Olympia
Between the Northern
And the 4th Ave
I’m looking for change
To give my shirt a wash

I woke up at the
Greyhound Station
On a bed of
Leaves and rocks

My eyes they itch so bad
I scratch an imposing mote
And a pickaxe digs for coal
At the bottom of my throat

The streets they all end
Before they begin
But sirens coat the night
Like paraffin

Between novelties and tanks
A thick summer dust
And a vague sign indicates
The National Trust

In the funnies
They called me Charlie Brown
Drawn an abstraction
Of a nondescript frown

In town for how long
God knows
Maybe
How long

A metronome ticking out
My day and night
But I’m losing sense
Of wrong and right
It’s ill advised to pick up
Girls inside of lint screens
They crumble in your pocket
And reappear an incessant itch
And if my dick fell off it’d be all right
With me
All right
All right with me

The streets they all end
Before they begin
But sirens coat the night
Like paraffin

Between novelties and tanks
A thick summer dust
And a vague sign indicates
The National Trust