Get all 4 Johnny Coull releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Hagiographies and Hit Pieces, That Cold Year, Songs to Control the Weather by, and City on the Hill.
1. |
||||
|
We keep the lights on here past midnight, you should know
But it don’t matter ‘cause you won’t need sleep no more
The party’s endless and there ain’t no place to go
But if you need it, man, we’ve got it
Don’t lift a finger, friend, our days are only holy
Yes, every joke is clean and every bite’s ambrosia
And all the sinners that were hankering to know you
They are gone but not forgotten
Ten thousand years of sunshine
Ten thousand years of moonlight
But I would trade each moment of this time for you
And our seven days of rain, our seven days of rain
They come in when it’s evening and their little wad is shot
They come in in the morning when loving’s all they’ve got
Some with their alibis and some without a thought
And some, like you, just hoping for a remedy
Osiris plays the bouncer and Orpheus plays the blues
Try not to notice but he only knows one tune
We’ve been trying to turn him on ever since she turned him loose
But still we can’t erase that muscle memory
After ten thousand years of sunshine
Ten thousand years of water gone to wine
Ten thousand angels in the exit line to you
To claim their seven days of rain, their seven days of rain
So, if you want me, I’ll be haunting by the bar
If you enjoyed the tour, fill out our comment card
And, on behalf of the trustees and of the guards,
I welcome you to this little slice of certainty
To ten thousand years of sunshine
Ten thousand years of moonlight
But I would trade each moment of this time for you
And our seven days of rain, our seven days of rain
First, forty days and forty nights
Just wandering our desert lives
Then seven days, those seven days
Those seven days, those seven dreams
And now I wake
|
||||
2. |
Helpless
04:08
|
|||
|
Help, may I present myself
A family man of family wealth
The effort needs some helpless men
To burn the city from within
Help, concerned citizens,
I’m just like you, an innocent
Dreaming of my name on the marquee
Helpless, I’m helpless
I’m helpless as a leaf
I’m helpless as the moon
Helpless, just a partisan
I ain’t nothing without you
Helpless, just a low man
With an elevator pitch
I’m helpless
My opponent, as you know,
Has nosedived in the polling, though
His sloganeers are spinning at the crash
To tell you that ain’t fuselage
Oh, he is easy
He will give you all you need
But only I, my friends, can tell you what you want
You’re helpless, so helpless
Helpless for a movement
Helpless in your faith
Helpless for a savior
To save you from yourself
Helpless for a guru
With a little bit of grift
You’re helpless
It’s a lovely day to be with you
It’s a lovely day to say I do
Solemnly swear that I will
Take care of my own
We’re gonna let ‘em know
We’re gonna let ‘em know
Yes, they’re helpless, helpless
We beat our trinity of branches
On the willing and the free
Not so helpless anymore
We cream our helpless enemies
Do not blame me, do not name me
You have made me, so now lay in me
Baby, we’re all helpless
|
||||
3. |
Old Pros
04:01
|
|||
|
Maman called me mad
All my lipstick and jazz
So I snuck out to swing
Behind the boulangerie
Then the men flooded in
Through the woods of Lorraine
And that thunder became
Our summer refrain
Now we’re pros, we’re old pros
On our feet for the show
Where we’ll dream our old dreams
Old pros at eighteen
Now I’ve worked for three years
By the boulangerie
Kindling flames of a kind
For the sworn enemy
In the back, the grunts crow
For a pre-war Bordeaux
For a rind of old cheese
They will whistle and sneeze
But we’re pros, we’re old pros
On our knees for the show
By the steel of our lies
Us pros will get by
As the Germans retreat
From their Maginot meat
Our village is stormed
By the liberators
The civilians gust
‘Round the Marianne bust
But for us girls it’s the same
Cruel husbands to tame
Ah, but we’re pros, we’re old pros
On our heads for the show
We’ve fought years here today
For our damn Marseillaise
So be quiet, like a pro
Not a peep, hold that pose
One more night to be maimed
Like old pros
Je me réjouis chaque jour
D’être venue si loin
Et ma fille, je te dois
La chance que je n’avais pas
|
||||
4. |
||||
|
As the critic snickers, Charlie knows that it’s all over
The museum patrons are receding from the lady’s torso
That took him seven years and iterations to create
And now it doesn’t look like much at all
Now all alone in the exhibition hall
He hears the echo of his father’s ghost:
“Son, you are going to be
A valuable member of society:
Their propriety, money and fame”
But how is he going to be
A valuable member of a society,
The kind that he doesn’t fit in?
No, no, no
In his atelier, Charlie’s whistling with kerosene,
First he waters the portraits, then those grey inanimate scenes
Not an inch of a Gauguin, not a fire-sale Monet
Ain’t my heroes great, he thinks, Papa, but I’m just okay
And in that moonshine glow, the colors peel
Dad’s cold breath beneath it all, his sane ideas
Saying: “You are going to be
A valuable member of society
Notoriety, money and fame”
Yes, I am going to be
A valuable member of society
Just the kind of me they would let in
Oh, oh, oh
Darling, have you heard about his latest show?
L.A. to Istanbul and even Tokyo
A thousand objets d’art burned to a crisp
They’re all calling it a modern masterpiece
“Son, you are going to be
A valuable member of society
With piety, money and fame”
And now he is going to be
A valuable member of a society,
And so what if he can’t even paint?
“Son, you are going to be
A valuable member of society
Ah, finally like your old man
Boy, you are going to be
A valuable member of society
Don’t lie to me, don’t cry on me
Just shine on me, just shine on me"
“We’ll start the bidding at $20,000. Do I have $20,000?”
“20,000!”
“Okay, I’ve got 20,000.”
“50,000!”
“There, at 50,000 now! A hundred?" (A hundred!) "A hundred, anybody? Would you like two hundred?” (Two hundred!) “Two hundred!”
“I’ll give you one… million… dollars!”
“Sold! To the man in the red blazer, with the red eyes, and the red horns, and the red tail!”
|
||||
5. |
The Space in Between
05:07
|
|||
|
She crawls in at a quarter to midnight in the shimmering rain
Leaving her suitcase and the carriage in the entranceway
She turns on the heat and the pipes and the movie machine
The peace and quiet is nice, she thinks, as she cruises the scene
And she shakes out her little black halo and her medicine twice
She will water the terrarium earth tonight like a good wife
She will eat something, baby, she’s fine, oh baby, she breathes
As she leans for that space in between
She dreams, she dreams in that space in between
He’s a reasonable man, yes, he knows that it’s not her fault
Yeah, he repeats it all every week or so, with his good, fine heart
Even Rome took some time, he divines or lies with a smile
With a heart so cheap, every inch is deep, every gesture goes a mile
But they claw at her back, all those years like a creeping barrage
As she struts with her thumb in the no-man’s land mud, to the same obscene mirage:
A shade in summer to grieve in, a winter to hold
To hold in that space in between
She leans, she leans in that space in between
She dreams, she dreams in that space in between
As she breathes, she breathes in that space in between
As the midnight lovers bathe
In rumbling L-train wakes
Of neon deep and Hollywood veneer
She runs her lines again
That life of left-unsaid
Whose circus fills her head
With empty sound
She comes around
And the rising sun beats on while the ministry sleeps
She will stay for a while this time, she decides, to the same, lame, chained beat
To a life lived in shadows and another one lived in her dreams
But still she breathes in that space in between
She leans, she leans to that space in between
She keeps, she keeps in that space in between
She dreams, she dreams in that space in between
|
||||
6. |
||||
|
The soldiers are frozen, they’ve waited for years
Manning their porcelain battlements here
While their indolent general leads in his bathrobe
Trenched in cassettes where the magnetic tape has unraveled
We’re born with nothing, we die with nothing
So, in between, I would kill to have something to call my own
They call me the hoarder, the tangible man
The king of the keep and the lord of his land
Yes, I believe in a world of possessions, a world of my own
The windows are famished, the doors mere suggestions
I’d open them sometimes if I could still reach them
And, somehow, it feels like this ain’t what you meant when
You told that old joke where the monk says: “Make me one with everything”
We’re born with nothing, we die with nothing
And so, in between, I just ache to have something to call my own
They call me the hoarder, the tangible man
The king of his keep and the crab in his sand
Yes, I believe in a world of possessions, a world of my own
Out in their flock, your new poets and prophets
Turn out their pockets for free
Their hearts aren’t tethered, they love like ascetics
And that’s all you wanted from me
But how could I see past these earthly dreams?
So, bring me your baubles, your coffee-ringed letters
All those receipts from our season together
Bequeath me a beat of your evening music
A jar of your humors and those scars from your losers
Return me that day when we rolled in the heather
The perfume you wore and a piece of the weather
Grant me that city, that man and his measure
Yes, I’d raze every inch of this tomb for you back, oh my darling, my treasure
We’re born with nothing, oh holy nothing
And so, in this place, I keeping waiting for something to call my own
They call me the hoarder, the tangible man
Oh, they call me the king and the lord of his land
Yes, I believe in a world of possessions, a world of my own
Yes, I believe in a world of possessions, a world of my own
I just believe in a world of possessions
|
||||
7. |
Transatlantic Love
04:14
|
|||
8. |
||||
|
Jennie, libidinous, venomous
Led him on, lured him in, now she’s ended it
Sentencing proceeds without a hitch
On the Sistine restroom panes
Where the boozehounds paint her name
Jennie goes down in history
Jennie is guilty
Jennie goes down in history
History’s all that she will be
Man, he’s so innocent, ain’t she penitent?
Courtroom remedy, crime of the century
“Women,” one spits, as they dream up the details
So the sexless husbands tweet
To the parson’s drumhead beat
As Jennie goes down in history
Jennie is guilty
Jennie goes down in history
Something else, ain’t she?
In the tabloid of her life
The headlines multiply
They send pharisees out
Yes, they’ve figured her out
So she’ll pay her little visits
To the shaman’s feel-good clinic
He will comfort her with easy lies
It’s easy to be right
When everything’s wrong
When everyone’s born all wrong
In that village, the pillaging’s finished
The centuries flicker by, fading her image
A burial in thrown shade and Cheshire smiles
But, to this day, their fingernails still sprout
Six feet beneath the ground
Jennie goes down in history
Jennie is guilty
Jennie goes down in history
All that she will be
Jennie goes down in history
Jennie is guilty
Jennie goes down in history
Something else, ain’t she?
Jennie is guilty
Jennie is history
Jennie is history
|
||||
9. |
Colin
04:36
|
|||
|
Colin, but for Sunday,
Would never take a sip
Colin, but for penitence,
Would never bend a hip bone-
Deep in mother’s closet
‘Neath the silky things
That hide him from eternity
Even just one life’s too long for him
Colin, Oh Colin
The midnight mass is done
The boys are all out getting drunk
And the girls are having fun
Colin, Oh Colin
Faithless for a night
Throw that little number on
And see this world’s all right
Colleen’s new vermilion
Thrashes round her lips
Imitating fashion
Strutting down the airstrip-
Teasing with a sermon
Slung down from her hills
Dreaming this strange body
But under her deceit he is still
Colin, Oh Colin
The midnight mass is done
The girls are all out getting stoned
And the boys are having fun
Colin, Oh Colin
Nameless here tonight
Throw that holy shadow off
And see this world’s all right
Gentle boy makes gentle man
The movie stunts couldn’t comfort him
Like the missionary pamphlets always did
With the baritone of a piccolo
And some Juliet in his Romeo
And a manacle so invisible
That he wears it like a skin
And the pious hordes of pilgrims
Don’t come to see him through
The bugles line their cases
And the pigeons do not coo
He tears her Sunday rags off
Spilling warm bijoux
And tiptoes from the closet
Careful not to wake her holy wrath
Too late
For Colin, Oh Colin
The midnight hour is done
The girls tucked in their beds again
And the boys all on the run
Colin, Oh Colin
Creeps back to his light
Kneeling for forgiveness
So moral and upright
|
||||
10. |
The Portrait of Camille
03:55
|
|||
|
The portrait of Camille
Leans by the window, half-revealed
The maiden and her cigarette
Our still life hanging by its thread
I thought that I’d be sure
By tracing every contour
A prayer to contain her
With each crooked stroke I painted
But our frame could not restrain
Her restless heels, her movie reels
And so she fled for what was real
And here remains the portrait of Camille
The billboard of Camille
Stares down on the Elysian fields
Where lay to rest our tirades
By our shabby stretch of highway
Beneath her lacquer shell
She lives forever never well
Each mood of chiaroscuro
And anesthetized refusal
And her mouth is just ajar
As if a kiss she’d take too far
And as I breathe, these memories
Are real, so very real, in the portrait of Camille
The portrait of Camille
The slideshow of Camille
Revolves her like a prayer wheel
About an open cedar frame
The only one that could contain
Her breath will come to life
And every smile, a palette knife
And those dark eyes now follow me
Though they are still, yes they are still
The portrait of Camille
|
||||
Johnny Coull Montréal, Québec
Johnny Coull is an independent singer-songwriter based in Montreal, Canada. His debut album, “City on the Hill”, was
released in November 2013.
Firmly entrenched in the vintage rock tradition, Coull tackles intensely personal themes, at once melancholy and incisive, set over punchy melodies, bright choruses, and virtuosic piano licks.
... more
If you like Johnny Coull, you may also like:
Out on the line
by The Blue Highways
The slashing roots rock on “Out On the Line” always makes its way to the kind of triumphant chorus that quickens the pulse.
go to album
Fear of Frying
by Eggs Over Easy
In honor of the band’s 50th Anniversary, Yep Roc have reissued the 1980 album by pub rock pioneers Eggs Over Easy.
go to album
Locals // If You Swim Far Enough
by Rachel Alina & Birdie Busch
A musical and visual journey through Ocean City, New Jersey via gentle Americana and an illustrated poetry book.
go to album
Downey to Lubbock
by Dave Alvin
Soulful guitar interplay form the heart of this lovely Americana collaboration from Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore.
go to album
The Power Of The Heart: A Tribute To Lou Reed
by Various Artists
Keith Richards, Rosanne Cash, Lucinda Williams, Joan Jett, and more pay tribute to the enduring and visionary music of Lou Reed.
go to album
featured on Bandcamp Radio Apr 12, 2024
go to album
Goodnight My Children
by The Neptune Power Federation
featured on Bandcamp Radio Mar 15, 2024
go to album
