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The World Is Bright And Lonely

by New Idea Society

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1.
You press reverse in the hearse to go back to before you cursed at the bomb that erased you, of course you didn't want it too. To eat the prickly puzzle piece that wore its hat around its feet and funneled it into your mouth before the route that it took out. You got it ___ is waiting there because there is nothing else to do standing on the nails that pushed all the stale water through and the pun that the gun spun out was sewn right into you so tight that it almost seemed as though it was lose but this case which was displaced then disappeared without a trace miracles are falling fast and you didn't even have to ask before one came through and hit you with a fever that burned new and all the clarity you see froze solid eternity. your favorite word and it's absurd though you sing it so sure and firm in a tenor telling voice that sings out "you have no choice" but to stand there in the light that seems to sever in half the night and believe in what you see as though it is real and it's for free but then the salt air makes it worse and your callous cold lips want to burst your eloquence speaks so slow that it talks itself hoarse and the delivery, it has been brought, and it's truer than you ever thought you must know that there is no other way that could ever make these ramblers stay of course the dream that swallows your mind is the mean and hurtful kind the penance that you try to give is made of seashell ornaments and the portrait of the shaking quake is just some ink on paper drawn on a train and the fear that rings clear is not even really here but it is an invention that will twist you up and tie you taught into a knot of course the fear that marks your mind is the mean and hurtful kind and there is no other way that we could live trying to sail this sinking ship you press reverse in the hearse and go back to before you cursed.
2.
All I need is a way through, All I need is a second grace, All I want's understanding, All I want is a filled in blank. But when you say the answer, I will misplace it still, I will be the falling weight and you can be its will, you can be its will, you can be its will. All I need is a good taste, All I need is a fever pitch, All I want is a good exit, All I want is a one way switch. When you say the answer, I will misplace it still, I will be the falling weight and you can be its will. you can be its will, you can be its will. All I want is a good exit, All I want is a margin space, All I want is a good entrance, All I want is a filled in blank. Because when you say the answer, I'll misplace it still, I will be the falling weight and you can be its will. you can be its will, you can be its will. Well my confession is that I will be lost still, Even on the warmest day I will feel a chill. All I need is a way through, All I need is what you said, All I want is a answer, All I need is a single thread, To catch this falling weight. A single thread, just a single thread. just a single thread. just a single thread. just a single thread. just a single thread. just a single thread. just a single thread.
3.
Don't Sleep 03:36
I was awake to late because I was out to see the daylight break, I've never seen your face except in the moonlight or the morning haze. I am not sure where I am, but the record plays and the ceiling spins, So I will slip right in and hold you close until my darkness dims. I am sure it is too late, and I will never get it anyway, My face is so tight I am not even sure that I am alive, I wish, I wish, that I didn't have to get up after this, Then it all fell apart, and I know the end just means the start. After all this time I don't want to go to sleep because I'll sleep when I die. You are divine so I just want to make you mine. You have got to work at nine so until 8:25 you are all mine, When the daylight ends I will meet you at ten and we will do it again, ...I always hope we will be friends. I think I see you falling apart in front of me, You feel free and safe, ...I will never feel those things anyway. I don't know who I am, could it be the same as them? But I will slip right in, and fall apart forever then. After all this time I don't want to go to sleep because I'll sleep when I die. You are divine so I just want to make you mine, You've got to work at nine so until 8:35 you're all mine. And when the daylight ends I will meet you at ten and we will do it again. ...I always hope we we can be friends. I don't want to go to sleep.
4.
It is good to see that your fead's still moving, It is good to hear that your lime tree's falling down. I want to dance to that something music. Laktos Shandovar where are you now. Every grain of sand that you swallow it floats. You're interrupted by the babble of their throats, You could escape to where the edge is... Noticing, All of the other things are falling in place to the shape that you make, and all the other people around you are dead. You got your feet stuck in a 1940. This elevator drops into review, This is a movement that is the story, Landor Shakatos time is reversing you. The cement pool is cracking. Your fever dive is getting worse, oh no! Is your voice and, are, subtracting, Another wave, In the cupboard of things to save, Well, Don't look again your feet are broke, and all the other people around you are dead. DEAD The cement pool is cracking. Your fever dive is getting worse, oh no! Is your voice and, are, subtracting, Another wave, In the cupboard of things to save, Well, Don't look again your feet are broke, and all the other people around you are Dead. DEAD. It is good to see that that lime trees moving, It is good to hear that your fead is falling down, I want to dance to that something music, La-Laka Sandy where are you now? Where are you now?
5.
You are a drawbridge baby. I am counting molecules in the air. Is there a tighter way to draw the drapes to keep out all the despair. No matter how hard you look it still isn't there. There is no monster hiding in the closet, it is just you and fear sitting in that chair. You got a crimson cough and your hope fell off, You got fake eyelashes in your hair. Need is freed by the greed smog in the air. You are pushing just to get pushed, and no one cares if its fair. You might be standing there floating on a penny, but if it were a nickel it would really impress me and I would stare. The subway car is sinking in the silt baby, and the conductor is dead, but his wife is still telling him he will be late and get fired, and she won't be able to pay the rent. Well, the wheels are round and smooth but the track is bent, While my head is caught feeding the flame. The carpenter that they sent to repair, pastes politics to his chair, he never quite notices that the steel bends his nails, and he has got silver slivers in his hair, everything he looks after meets with disaster, and his teeth are just useless details. You are lost in the waiting and this fever is to much to compare. Copper flakes fast from your fingers and delicately crumbles beside your stare. The cross is hung high in the hallway, breathes out the keys to the delay. Some shelter and safety from the shiver, Though it is cold, then colder anyway. I climb a shoestring, Sip kerosene, Fill up my shoes with roots and dead leave, You walk on broke bones, Speak in a soft tone, Set the couch on fire with 12th century love poems. Erase the days from a baby's ages, Eat the dust from history book pages, We pace and pace but no sound will refrain and no reason to be afraid. Well you are a drawbridge baby, and I am counting molecules in the air. Is there a tighter way to draw the drapes, to keep out all the despair.
6.
The Fall decays, While the loss I feel it still remains, Days crash down like hammers on my face. This view won't change, the season of dying while winter awaits, a tombstone hangs from each hair on my face, I grasp for anything, just to stay. I just can't wait, Each hour seems like another day, Good feelings fade fast as though they are erased. You are late, I cannot help but think of what is keeping you away, the leaves just die as chlorophyll gives way. The only thing left in me, Is the breath I take. The rose bird sways, The wind blows so fast its pedals break away, and freeze to ice like every word I say. When all I know, Is your voice is so beautiful on this telephone, I am sure you hear clear my desperate tone, That if you were here, I couldn't let you go. The only sound, is the calling of the cold cold ground. The only sound, is the calling of the cold cold ground.
7.
Dress Shirt 04:23
I borrowed a dress shirt from my friend, I combed my hair until it was straight, I bought new shoes and I felt ill, I shaved my face and then stood still. I rode in the back seat of a car. I felt the wind wrap around us all. The girls all had their makeup on. I knew where I was and I was lost. I walked right through the entry way, and looked at pictures of your face, I saw the words that people framed, around the idea of your name, I stood inside a giant crowd, and felt the words your brother mouthed, I saw the object there in place, of the space you used to take. I would never wear that shirt again, I would never wear that shirt again, I HOPE IT FALLS APART AT EVERY THREAD. I stood beside the one I love, It was her legs that held me up. My head floated all around, It hit the ceiling then came down. I would never wear that shirt again, I would never wear that shirt again, I HOPE IT FALLS APART AT EVERY THREAD. I stood inside your mothers house, And watched video of you acting out, I was scared because I felt that same hurt. But now alone in that dress shirt.
8.
I took my clothes off before I went to bed again. I cast my sheets aside and tried to forget. But my sleepless dreams are not kind, and no tense is clear in this undefined. So the past and future may both collide. I am not sure where the memory ends and the dream begins. The springs I lay on are formed to my bones. This room that I am within is supposed to be my own. But the nails that hold it up, They are not ones that I struck. So it might fall down I don't know. I am not sure what to rely on, and on what to hope. Dazed on a mountain slope my grandmother wanders home. Along the high hollow the chill never broke. Her mother says with a drawl, "Oh child, the lord says it is bound to be your fault". And no house will ever again be your home. I am not sure what pain is, or how she coped. I walked on my own teeth through a humid July storm. And carried stacks of paper of things I never wrote. The paper turned to pulp, But no words bled out to be lost. And in a way that is so much worse. Words are totem poles they are relics of your mind. If you set out to look you can create something to find. But what will slow you down, Is the calling of the cold, cold, ground. It is yelling out for you to just lie down. I am caught up thinking within a dream. I am not sure if I am awake or asleep. My body is so hard to find, It is on the run from my mind. It is begging for me to decide. When to breathe in, and when to sigh When to believe, and when to lie.
9.
All except you will go, By tens, then fives with nuanced calls. No sound will flow when this fixture collapses. A rust will rust and a decay will crust, Intentions will finally turn to dust, The way you relate is far to late to fix what's been neglected. And the birds still sing despite how you feel, They care not how your head it reels, While you sit wishing you had just what you got, It seems so real though it may be not Because anything you ever thought, Is where your waking mind is caught, So you might think that you can escape by sleep to where your eyes are not, But when you close your eyelids those dreams have got them too. So you are just one more person crying, And each piece your release of your own self. Is freed to need more of the same thing, It just isn't clear if it will ever be near Though these sighs they are sincere, and how you feel is just a mirror, to what they said you should be aware, And it makes you so sick to know that you are right there well, It makes me walk with a cough so it seems like I am sick too. So what will happen if some tragedy or some victory, That makes us wail or makes us sing. Trying to get away or towards something, That will make this day seem to have some meaning. And I feel its pull to jump up there, When it becomes clear that there is nothing to fear but... This bullet shoots from my mouth with no volume. So you grab the darkness with your toughest two top teeth, and bite right through into the obscene, while the words gush down and the sunbeams gleam, and it all plays in to how things seem that, The World Is Bright And Lonely. The World Is Bright And Lonely. The World Is Bright And Lonely. That makes you run to the nearest hill or high place, And yell out words that just fall from your face, Like a waterfall in disgrace, Trying to explain all the time that lies in waste. Full from everything that has been discarded. You think to yourself what is the point of even trying, When all the people here are just living lying. Lost in a language that makes no sense, Not even sure what is this present tense and, What if something doesn't happen before I die? So you are on your own toenails just naked spinning, Feeling sick not sure if you are there or here, or even if the water on your cheeks are your own tears. And just who that is that is smiling. Because the only noise your aching ears hear, Is the sound of something humming clear, Some humming that rings so sincere and resonates louder, with all this fear, Some humming that just won't get quiet. So you fill up the space with things that will take, Up the air and still the quake, The atoms that chafe each other and fast gyrate, The noise that competes with itself and still vibrates, Though each gap is full and each space is shaped, The noise is dulled but you find you are suffocating. The stereo sings sounds that could connect people in silhouettes. Flower petals that might reject that bees pollen. The noise outside that the tires make, As the sluggish car tries to speed away, Is just the sound of slow screeching fate, For there is no gas left in the tank, What you hear, It is not here, It is a sound from somewhere, Beyond the reach of your ears. What is right here is nothing. The carpenters got slivers for hair, And pastes politics to his chair, His kneecaps rest when he floats on convicts. The fortune teller reads rhymes that might yet pass, and stares into a cloudy glass which my consciousness insists I smash, For each piece reflects a different past And relived she thanks me for the certain. I can see the shape that my shoes make, The Imprint that will be erased, My toes are in the future filled by the falling snow, But my heals are in the past already melted. In the world that is Bright and Lonely. In this World that is Bright and Lonely I expose film to light in the air of the mountain air, to trees and hills and granite stairs I find my way into a room in the deepest valley like a tomb I emerge and carry it overseas on a ship that brought me to my knees from hunger cold fear and doubt to a land of dryness and of drought when the rains finally came I was swept devout by a flood that rung the rain clouds out staring up into an empty sky, there was just blue no gray or white, the waters floated so fast up that the mountain tops became island rocks with just me standing at the top and, The World Is Bright And Lonely. The World Is Bright And Lonely. And what you fear, It is not here, It is a sound from somewhere, That just tricks our ears, What is right here is everything. For the sounds you hear, They are not here, It's a sound from somewhere, Beyond the reach of our ears, What is right here is everything.
10.
Don't take your medicine it will give you a chill. If you get caught outside the planets will stand still (and they will). Spiral softly gone is gravities great pull, In answer to the glance that you require. You are the one who broke your teeth chewing on the forks. The civil war sergeant randomly retorts, "You don't got to eat while your head is in this fort" "Your sustenance is remorse and violence". Cataloging your eyelids, memory speaks slow. Calculating the medicine show. I am getting off on the duchess of divorce, She combed my eyelids with sand and remorse, but to covet these feelings the pupils must be forced, with mouthfuls of dust and desire. The insects are flying in through the holes in the screen door. They carry me away though they don't know what for, Then the wind flies by and says, "Huh, then what are your feet for"? They singe their wings and retire, They realize their movements and conspire, They concede their space and expire. While satellites weigh your eyelids, mercury moves slow, Calculating the medicine show. The president of the younited states issues a decree That all flowers and butterflies must act vigilantly, And hide their colors so that no one will see, They do this to obey and turn grey. Meanwhile back at the gunman club ranch They are filling up fate far in advance Making sure their fears come true as though in a trance, Of course they succeed and of course they blame eternity. But me I am disappearing into some thought that I had one time, The idea and my foot are coming out the other side, I am forced to believe and too shiver with pride. Writing down the conversations of Liars. Satellites weigh your eyelids, mercury moves slow, Calculating the medicine show. So don't take your medicine it will give you a chill, Every sound that you hear is shaken and shrill, You won't know where you are, though you will be there still, So calm as to light the final flame afire. Satellites weigh your eyelids, mercury moves slow, Calculating the medicine show.
11.
Let It Be 05:59
I've got a memory in my pocket. A leak in this pen that turned out to be never ending. You can walk closer, it won't mean a thing. You can talk softer, my ears are still gonna ring. These feelings they all change, they will fall off and you will sprout new leaves, Maybe all the flowers you've grown, well they really are just weeds. I've got nothing left to feel, except feelings. My holsters got no gun, just a rumbling. I don't pretend to know a thing, but I pretend to believe. I don't notice when I am sick, but I feel it when I am well. I apologize if you are all bored, but this is really all I've got in me. Even when I am alone in my room, I sing quiet so no one will hear. The distance to that sound, I wonder how far it is from me. Though it may never get any closer I realize, I must let it be.
12.
Compass 02:23
All of us here are bored from thinking Someone kind of mentioned that the ship we are on is sinking, You are bailing out water with teaspoons to blankets, choices are made with no want to understand this... So I realized my compass and started just walking, It was in no pocket and no fingers quite clutched it, like abbreviations are short for something, like a person with no words who really says something, With all the heat a degree feels like nothing, I could barely notice it was not my own shoes I walked in, That compass was quiet like leaves in my pocket and a glimmer of sunlight never quite touched it well, all the people I saw there their hands were empty and if they empty their hearts a bullet might fill it, those that empty their hearts live in a mansion of prisons and those that aren't emptied their hearts know its trying to be emptied. But me I memorize my words before I sing them then I run into sand that I know I will sink in, I lay on the equator so that there is no half that I am in, My compass was quiet like leaves in my pocket, well. All of us here we are bored from thinking someone kind of mentioned that the ship we are on is sinking and bailing out water with forks to cupped hands choices are made with no want to understand this well, Like abbreviations are short for something.
13.
Hey! This is the natural sound, of air through throat and speaker tones that do distort oh! with our hope. Freeing the molecules that might remember, the shape and the tambour of… those feelings that were felt, long before words were spelled, they were, held in that place by magnetic pulse, until you stumbled in and knocked the power back out, louder than the fake rages, of any of those history book pages. A static for shaking of static, a measuring stick against the music, that is, the same loud or soft, on or off, the crushed cold ripple, ravaging the pelagic, bounding off. We take in so much, that nothing seems real, Except for the fixed shape and the bent light flakes, that this needle sized pupil takes and we have this, we have this we have this, we have this we have this, we have this we have this, we have this we have this: This is Hope and Songs to Sing.
14.

about

The download contains two bonus tracks originally released as extra songs on the Japanese version of the CD.

Exotic Fever Originally released The World Is Bright and Lonely on CD.
Altin Village released the LP in Europe.
Daymare Records released the CD in Japan.

Recorded in Brooklyn in January of 2006 at Mike Law's Translator Audio Studio in three days and two evenings, totally live in a room, vocals, mistakes and all.
The band, assembled to bring life to demos Mike Law had circulated to Steve and Chris of 57 songs written around 2004 and 2005, the favorites being chosen to be learned and recorded in the same day. Most of the band had never met each other before recording began Friday afternoon and without a single practice dove into and finished songs like "Where Are You Now" and "Dress Shirt" that first day. By Sunday evening Drawbridge Kid wrapped up all the songs that had drums and in three short days the album was nearly complete.
Mike played a solo show Monday night in D.C. and returned to complete the final tracks with Steve like "Let It Be" and "Press Reverse" over the next two evenings. Only "Don't Sleep" was tracked in stages by Mike later that month.
From Mike:
"This album has often been something I thought of somewhat negatively over the years. It seemed too long and rambling, too many songs were demoed so it was hard for the other guys to help edit them down to what the best ones were. We played them all live in the studio with no overdubs and no practice beforehand which felt hit or miss at the time. It also left no room to correct any vocal mistakes or make things better. The tour that followed ended in a van wreck on the German Autobahn that was our drivers fault and left me with five broken bones… but now, when I look at the individual songs I see some of my absolute favorite recorded moments like playing "Let It Be" late one night in the studio with one of my best friends and most unique musicians I've ever seen, Steve Brodsky, and it feeling magical. "Waking Dreams and Rooms" and "Drawbridge Kid" being some of my favorite songs lyrically, the challenge of "Part II:" and how much people loved "Don't Sleep" and "Where Are You Now" when we played them live have all made me feel more fond of The World Is Bright and Lonely. Years later I now view the album much more favorably although I still wish I had cut a few songs out, just to make it easier to absorb… and by the way, the LP came with a bonus CD of extra tracks called Third Floor Songs. This is the album I learned how to edit"

credits

released September 23, 2007

Songs by Mike Law except Single Thread which Mike and Steve wrote together.
Mike Law sang into a SM7, mostly played a 70s Yamaha SA 2000 through a Fender Super Reverb, Steve Brodsky mostly played a 90s Jazzmaster through a Fender Twin, Chris DeAngelis played a Rhodes, Wurlitzer and heroically, a comically tiny casio with a good organ sound. He also played Melodica and arranged the viola parts Ania Gresnik performed on "The Only Sound" and "Let It Be", Mike Ushinksy played a Gretch kit that eventually got washed away in a hurricane and Andrew Schneidire played a blue Fender Jazz bass.
Hope and Songs To Sing was recorded by Mike around 2004 on a cassette 4trk as a demo for EULCID and got released on the Japanese CD for some reason. The Leaves Won't Fall On You was some kind of improv jam thing the band did at the end of night two.
Kurt Ballou played an overdubbed guitar track on Drawbridge Kid.
The cover photo is by Zsuzsanna Visnyovszki and the layout and drawings were by Ameila Bauer.

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