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Some Siren's Set List

by The Marbled Page

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glenatron
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glenatron Strongly recommended. Very smartly written, very much a complete album, the kind of clever, lyrical, songwriting I really appreciate - as you might imagine from the title, the album has an odyssey theme and I love how the songs share phrases and motifs, but also there are just a lot of very witty lines and deft rhymes. Favorite track: Lover, I'll Leave You.
mflotre
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mflotre A very good album Liz; congratulations on getting it done.

Murray
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1.
Some sirens never make the charts But bedroom tracks can still break hearts I’ll be tired of the next one Before it even starts So one and done Dear God, what have I done Because this stopped being fun A long long long long long long time ago In my first message to Jon since age 19 I claimed to explain everything But irony could die a thousand deaths Before I’d tell him anything remotely close to what I mean So he never did reply And I don’t care to wonder why Because I know I still sound like an asshole Even when I’m trying to apologize Now I’ll bet he’s glad to have escaped my claws My minor chords and major flaws I wanted less a lover than an audience Less an audience than just the thought of their applause So sail on back Sing, o muse, of the names of real people and places The faces I can’t recognize, the colors of eyes I never noticed in real life or in the photos Or the hackneyed, sordid stories we’d entirely forgotten were lies Sing the stories we’d forgotten were lies Sing the stories we’d forgotten were lies
2.
Paper Trail 03:43
Boredom sings it’s spring again When the things that I don’t understand Always prove more important than I thought But when my latest good intention fails I’ll trace snail trails and comet tails Across a long-outdated treasure map where repeated erasures mark the spot And if I ever did come back I’d stand beside you, but not with you Start but not continue To tell you only what I won’t retract I’ll drive away this summer day Maybe the things I never meant to say Can rest safely at the bottom of the lake But still I leave a paper trail Of heavy-handed fairy tales About a prince who was himself the curse some princess sent him on a quest to break And if I ever did come back (I won’t be there to catch you) I’d stand beside you, but not with you (The arrow points outside the heart) I’ll bolt even if you Give me all the breathing room I ask And if I ever did come back I’d stand beside you, but not with you No excuse to give you Just my half-assed disappearing act
3.
Under pressure, and for the changing weather I’ll drop the excuses from my letter Because I am going to try to be better when you get here Just don’t expect it There’s too much else I’ve neglected And if the past could be corrected I’d have half a mind To strike the times you suspected we connected I can’t stay long with so much to remember And so much shit to keep together I’ve got all night long to think about what I’ve done Perhaps regret, but not just yet Please don’t forget I told you not to hold your breath I’m losing interest already Trying to make you forget me But for the record, no, it may not be impossible Because I woke with this song in my head That said simple things can take years It appears that’s how we’ll proceed, if at all But what if I blinked and you’re gone So I blinked; now I think that you’re gone You’re gone, thank God you’re gone For the first month, I was cagey and reluctant Then I looked too far ahead and went silent It got too hard to play the part And to be every possibility at once With all this shit I kept to remember But it’s all that’s keeping me together I’ve got all night long to think about what I’ve done Perhaps regret, but not just yet Please don’t forget I told you not to hold your breath I’m losing interest already Trying to make you forget me But for the record, no, it may not be impossible Because I woke with this song in my head That said simple things can take years It appears that’s how we’ll proceed, if at all But what if I blinked and you’re gone So I blinked; now I think that you’re gone You’re gone, thank God you’re gone
4.
There’s nobody here, just the low-level fear That I drag around like a small suitcase in my waking hours It glares at me over the vase of plastic flowers Across the breakfast table every morning now And I know it’s not quite sporting how I’m going to go sleepwalking back out of your life again At any opportunity Without its ever affecting me Without conscience ever stirring me to reconsider I like to think this flock of migratory birds, strayed or straggling, Still follows me around, always seeming just about To alight on my shoulders But I’m ten years out and all I’ve really gotten is older The things that I was told were all so plausible To be responsible, turn back, and hear you out And that I must not know what I’m about To be missing out on milestones that I know I can’t make up But there’s little chance I’ll wake up in time to reconsider Now the happiest thing I can think of to sing Is that moment on the tarmac when the plane touched down in Rome And I realized I’d forgot my name, my age, and my home And you were never farther from my mind Borne along by the wrong bus line, I went out to find some sights to see Fallen columns strewn amongst the poppies and the pigeons Drowsily I spent the afternoon Draping garlands made of nonsense words over these quiet ruins We could do worse than to aspire to their condition
5.
You found me waiting in the station Reading from The Four Quartets Looking like someone else’s ride home Like everybody you have never met And wish that you had not Now with the benefit of hindsight You don’t have to feel so special Because I’ve been lying to strangers all night long Please don’t wake me Maybe I could lose myself today If I stay or if I leave it’s going to be For all of the wrong reasons This apartment is freezing Now that I’ve spent every last dollar trying to buy more time To sleep off the afterthoughts And hold out for at least another season All those ardent lines you sent me And could not retract in time Felt like the one before the one too many I’d give anything to get you to let me fall behind The “Keep off the grass” signs And the well-worn greeting card doggerel Be my Easter egg, my April fool But I’ll always be my own valentine Please don’t wake me Maybe I could lose myself today If I stay or if I leave it’s going to be For all of the wrong reasons This apartment is freezing Now that I’ve spent every last dollar trying to buy more time To sleep off the afterthoughts And hold out for at least another season Now I walk along the lakeshore With the lonely jagged rocks Still not knowing what I came for I built a barricade of styrofoam and boxes If you try to reach me at my new address I’ve got to disappear discreetly Anything but maintain or feign interest
6.
No excuses, no rules No script, no readymade defense Only this silence, only me And I’m always such a bitch to you Because I don’t know what to do I meant to will to love you But I guess that I forgot to after all And if you’re not appalled, you should be Although I swear I meant no harm, dear I still lie without wincing So convincing without meaning to be Finally meaning nothing Without provocation I’ve gone months without speaking to you Always leaping without looking Till I leave without loving So I drew you a map With monsters in the corners of it But these warmer winds still filled your sails And so you failed to see That the monsters all were me Or the storm already gathering As the dawn threw squares in red Upon the wall beside my narrow bed Where I lay alone, and that’s as it should be Although I swear I meant no harm, dear I still lie without wincing So convincing without meaning to be Finally meaning nothing Without provocation I’ve gone months without speaking to you Always leaping without looking Till I leave without loving
7.
Another siren Making commitments and excuses and mix tapes Realizing I just wanted to escape, But it’s too late So now I’ll try to honor my mistakes Because otherwise it sounds too fake Just like a siren Laying simple grooves down over a scratch track That I promised I would try to leave intact But perhaps It can remain one still in spirit Though not anymore in fact So now I dare you Lash yourself to the mast, open your ears, And sail on by–there’s really nothing to see here And I fear The references, except on this song, Are impossibly unclear But I’ll write another Because there’s no sadder sight than a siren Shutting up and getting used to the silence Of this island Where I keep bringing on the shipwrecks Without ever even really trying
8.
Lover, I’ll leave you emptyhanded And make my exit the way that I planned it I’ve read some books, broke some hearts, Wrote this song, but it was all wrong from the start Because I know I’ll just do the same thing again Give me three weeks at the outside and I’ll do it again And write another song then We are a scene change, a turn of the page Such perfect mirror images that the whole thing feels staged But try as I might to suspend disbelief I still play every plot hole for comic relief Each tired motif and cliché (and that thing about the swans, I admit, is underdone and tacked on) A forced attempt to fabricate the attraction Between a stock character and a stubborn abstraction It’s going to be a cold winter–what will we do? I’ll fix it in memory and love it over you May the angle of light and relentless north wind Recall every moment as it had to have been It’s like this old photo of myself in a rowboat as a kid Where I don’t look scared, just a little dismayed Without the sense or the strength to get back to shore But here I am, so I guess I did It’s going to be a hot summer–what will we do? I’ll wait it out underground; I don’t know about you Will you still be here waiting when I come up for air After estivating until I simply don’t care? When I asked your forgiveness, I more than half hoped you’d refuse And in your disgust, cut me loose Now there’s a dozen more like you I still have to get rid of If you’ve got any tips I could use Lover, I’ll leave you, like I’ve done before But drunk on nostalgia, I can’t find the door
9.
Now sing, o muse Of my last best chances to love somebody back Or to recognize a lack That was never really there So I guess it’s funny I should care How somebody somewhere might react And if I choose To play fast and loose with several of the facts Relax I’m perfectly aware That we all get kind of scared When the fictions for which we were prepared Are inconsistent in their collapse Andrew, you’re a problem in the abstract That I’ve slowly learned to live with In simple, in concrete but evasive ways As familiar as the doorknob of the house that I grew up in I skipped town and I holed up there for days and days and days That’s where I live now Although it’s getting harder I often get the feeling that I fell out of time But I’m just trying to make my way slowly back upstream To that fever dream–but let’s move on Jon, you stayed standing at the center Of a great misunderstanding Always searching for the one thing that would wake me up for real From those yarns I’d try to spin you as we circled around from Highlake To Prince Crossing, glossing over all you knew I couldn’t feel But as a hollow courtesy I let you grope me in the basement And the Antiques Market parking lot on Parkway and Main Both of us believing I could change But not for you, and not for [redacted] Though that name perhaps felt like The most intolerable fiction, It was fiction, after all, that first got me into this mess To populate imaginary cities and have you stand in them beside me Was the only thing that I thought might be happiness I know you rarely cared to And my attempt to change the subject In the rain outside the Aqua Bar was so poorly played But that’s why I’ve abandoned everything I’ve ever made
10.
I was a rain cloud, I was a cold front I was the snow and the ice on the beach Just a chilly rebuke from a temperate climate Of your vernal headstrong eagerness to overreach Send all your friends to beat a path to my front door With mousetraps, metatheater, and math too crooked to ignore I just want to live in certainty But I want to die in irony I want to do defiantly Most everything you won’t Lord have mercy, because I don’t You were a quick fix, you were a long shot A deus ex machina, a skeleton key The drag anchor of conscience and the unrequested answer To a question that would never have occurred to me Now all our friends would sell you out to have me back And send your tender heart to shipwreck on everything I did to try to leave it intact I just want to live in certainty But I want to die in irony I want to do defiantly Most everything you won’t Lord have mercy, because I don’t If the wind is from the south, well then it may not be impossible If from the north, there’s not a chance I just want to live in certainty But I want to die in irony I want to do defiantly Most everything you won’t Lord have mercy, because I don’t
11.
Tightrope 04:18
I was wet cement, but I set up much too quickly For you to write your name in me Alongside dirty words and footprints But if you wonder where I went, I have been all over this city Inkstained but still doing pretty Full of five-dollar words and misprints, hey hey Give it up for the tightrope For the slight hope of a soft and graceful landing Understanding that I won’t be there to catch you When you fall from high above The cold hard ground that you mistook for love Or waiting on the other side I just took the ladder down The scaffolding that fell apart had been unstable from the start It sent all my finer feelings running for their lives Because there couldn’t be a lower art The arrow points outside the heart To where the hipster literati Are getting out their forks and knives already But get out on the tightrope On the slight hope of a soft and graceful landing Understanding that I won’t be there to catch you When you fall from high above The cold hard ground that you mistook for love Or waiting on the other side I just took the ladder down Look out below
12.
Your still-beating heart was a dead metaphor Or a dead horse, a pang of buyer’s remorse And I, with nothing to lose, shook the rocks from my shoes Because it’s a long walk to the fifth floor I’ve saved up pictures of apartments I won’t live in and you won’t see A garden of forking paths Float every possibility till the morning We’ll figure out everything in the morning Just wait until the morning I’ll get back to you in the morning In the morning Although I tried my best, I couldn’t lose you in the move So tell me what’s it going to take to get forgot? I won’t conceal I was a crooked, crooked deal But still the only car left on the lot And if you’ve got your heart set I’ll do anything to change it But for now I’m keeping silent I’ll read more carefully in the morning As the grass grows and the paint dries And the wind blows sand into my eyes I keep the past close, more than life-size God, I hold those afterthoughts like a prize Don’t act so surprised I tried to give you every warning But that’s not how it’s going to strike us In the sober light of morning In the morning Just let me figure it out in the morning I’ll get back to you in the morning Just give me till the morning There’s a hallway in my heart But somebody changed all the locks There’s a hallway in my heart But the fire escape is blocked
13.
Sackcloth 04:56
You and I are two sides of the same coin Heads and tails, so close that we never can face And I knew it; I tried to sleep through it But woke to find the problem in exactly the same place Because I’ve tallied up lean years and vague fears, the leers and the catcalls Their sum is the city that’s turning me mean All rat poison, gas leaks, the chain and the deadbolt, Blue lights at the corner, and a murder scene And if I were sorry, I’d write you a love song Like these people all want to hear And I could, because I’ve studied the postures I never got one wrong till now And it’s given me away entirely, I fear On the long bus ride home from the Gold Coast I draft my confession Though I know I’ll lose heart and just throw it away The same way I’ve done with everyone Who swore I could not be as cruel as I say My reluctance it clashes with sackcloth and ashes But each winter, which one do you think keeps me warm? When you were just a New Year’s resolution I could never stick to, and left only half-formed And now I’d sell my life story for a small cup of coffee If I could cross out the parts I don’t like And I would: I would leave it so boring That you never would want me at all Just keep erasing till I prove myself right
14.
Lie the lie, I’ll lie the lie Because it’s the one thing left to try This hopeless April night With trees like nerves against the sky Tongue-tied, you just sigh A bit too often As you pace and pace around a scene I’ve been trying to erase, and trace A hardshell case, a borrowed bass, and my mic stand That I sent you across the street to try to get back from the new band They more than likely formed to spite me But you asked them so politely It seemed unsightly So I waited, clinging tightly to the songs I was trying to save That they claimed, but to my knowledge never cared to play again And bitterly I’d say That that’s what friends are for But not anymore I got tired, so I forgave But still this ineffable pull from every kind of light and weather Leaves my heart too full to drag it from the place it’s tethered The only difference now is that I can keep a secret better And lie the lie, lie the lie I’ve relied on little lies They padded out my whole reply I’ve been revising half my life I still haven’t got it right What you implied, I don’t deny But it’s never been as simple as you think The walls are thin, so don’t begin You’ll never know the places that your ghost has been I’ll never know how much I forfeit Or what I may someday regret I cut the rope and kind of hope that you’ll forget me someday God bless you if you don’t I just try not to think too much on what I’ve pissed away, Give no one grounds to say I’m breaking character at last Relax. Some sirens never change Nor stray beyond a narrow range of subjects In these lonely jagged rock songs I wish you’d sail around to hear Stop by sometime and have a beer I swear I’ll explain everything I don’t regret At least not yet–maybe give me twenty years But on a good night, you might imagine me to be Penelope, unraveling and traveling just fast enough To keep one step ahead of all the stupid shit I said I hope that you remember I hope you don’t remember And that it doesn’t trouble you How these things can take forever In the meantime, I get sidelong visions Not of what might have been, But of things as I suspect they really are This melancholy dream’s the only one I care to offer Of a mostly empty restaurant where I met your wife and daughter It was stilted and unpleasant, but the kid was well behaved I hope she grows up just like me and gives you hell someday But I’ve gone on And against these premonitions I’ve kept and scrapped, Then reassembled beyond recognition All the least important pieces Of the story I loved more than you Yet tried to let you in on In its irrelevance, its lack of any real direction It’s taken on a certain unexpected beauty I know that if I tried to tell it over, though, It would seem to you like getting called for jury duty I guess I failed I think that ship has sailed I know you never will reply But if you were here now I’d tell you how the DuPage County courthouse rented a pair of swans To ornament an artificial pond But if I took you there to see them on the weekend, they’d be gone

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released January 8, 2022

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The Marbled Page Chicago, Illinois

One-woman band from Chicagoland, with big guitars and quirky melodies

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