Get all 7 Jon Hughes releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Sunshine Remorse, Where I Sleep at Your Door, Roger White, Dead Weight, Nobody's Friend, Voices From a Broken Window, and Physics Says.
1. |
Everybody's Friend
04:17
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Everybody's Friend
The moon is clipped, a fingernail
Hanging from a twig like a serpent tail,
And the sky is painted poison black.
The streets are pooled with light,
A terrestrial view from a satellite
Peering down with pale green eyes.
Save for a candle's glow there is nothing human here for miles.
The party came as a masquerade
Wired through the night-street interface,
All dressed in rainbow-colored furs.
Shattered glass rings a royal sound—
Everybody stop now and turn around.
The royal turkey's setting down.
He's talking fast and I don't believe he's talking kind,
Cause he's everybody's friend but mine.
The crimson man who's really white
Is stepping on my face and trying to start fight.
Now he's telling me what's on my mind.
And LadyDeath403 is looking at everyone mysteriously
And she's saying she remembers me.
So I'll disappear while the moon is down—
Nobody will notice when I'm gone
Cause they're everybody's friends but mine.
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2. |
Big Yellow Car
04:40
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The question now has been lost somehow
But he still wants to talk
About the work that he does where he stands
Watching everyone walk.
Enigmatic or lunatic act,
Like a psychotic star—
Should've said, 'You mind taking me home in your
Big yellow car?'
Seen it all says it all,
Says he's seen, seen it all
Where he stands.
Mr. Smooth has the same attitude—
Always emptying out.
When he starts he only stops when he's lost
What he's talking about.
He tells all of his sorcerer's tricks to the
Ignorant crowd.
I should've said, 'Could you please disappear?'
I should've thought it out loud.
Seen it all says it all,
Says he's seen, seen it all,
When he's lost.
All they ever want is to be misunderstood,
And all they ever do is more harm than good
To everything they touch and all they've spoken for,
Cause all they ever see is themselves and nothing more.
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3. |
Bigger Than History
06:04
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Bigger Than History
All her objects of affection
Are scattered around the bed.
A reputable selection
Of people she's never read;
And some desk drawer photography
I shouldn't have ever seen,
Like the figure in the mirror
Staring back at me.
Watch the figure suspended on ground
Rise or fall or float
Onto the puddled ink;
And if he ever sinks
Then a wreck's what he was meant to be.
She's bigger than history,
She's not a loss, she's a tragedy.
Rightly displayed or filed away
From her.
Under a bleak and yellow sunset,
A figure of her build
By some self-important painter boy
Who came here feeling unfulfilled.
He made a crumpled brush an artifact
A thousand years ahead,
Like the figure in the mirror
Standing by the bed.
Watch the painter prosaic and old
Bend or crease or fold
Into the broken spine;
Of volume number ninety-nine
And where he closes it's a century,
He's bigger than history,
He's not a loss, he's a tragedy.
Now I've seen seven days of sunshine
From room number 403.
Her blinding figure in the curtain cracks
Staring in at me.
And her faceless little painter boy
Whispers at my back
From the swollen, bending mirror frame,
Indelible and
Black as the horses,
With conquistadors they came
Through geographic landmarks growing
Different through the days—
Photos we take and file away
From her.
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4. |
Nobody's Friend
05:10
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Nobody's Friend
And now I'm standing again on my own,
Cold and contagiously, 'me, all alone,'
With the words of what somebody said
About the ideal way I could be,
High above love as authentic and free,
And I find that I'm nobody's friend.
And then the lights overhead start to spin,
And the rock-steady wall is feeling brittle and thin,
And I've fallen in somebody's way.
And when he sees me he says with a sneer,
'Hey, what's a loser like him doing here?',
And I'm falling in somebody's way.
I must seem so solitary, sitting, twiddling thumbs,
Just waiting for someone who may never come,
With the words of what somebody said.
Now the kick drum is knocking me down,
And the legs in my vodka contract in the sound,
In the noise of what everyone says.
And then the floor is slipping under my feet,
And I'm blown through the door by the popular beat
To the rain beating down overhead.
And then it's me standing stark in the glass,
A moment too soon for the moment to pass,
In the noise of what everyone says
When I'm standing again on my own,
Cold and contagiously, 'me, all alone,'
And I find that I'm nobody's friend.
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5. |
Wine
06:47
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6. |
On Tar-Covered Hills
06:02
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On Tar-Covered Hills
Sir, you could be saying you prayers
To a cold white wall.
You're framed, but I couldn't call it a frame—
A flat, robotic bust.
Once we drove around the universe
On tar-covered tracks.
Then you built your flying machine,
And I should've said,
'It's not my time to fly.'
Once...
Now, for every nightmare we share,
At tar-covered hills we stare,
Our eyes as red as the sun,
With arched bar-stool backs.
Now we're only digital kids
On a cold white wall.
Sir, you could be building a ship
To fly over the sea;
But it's not my place to say.
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Jon Hughes Ireland
American songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Jon Hughes, has been based in Ireland since 2005. He has shared a stage with
Damien Jurado, She Keeps Bees, and the legendary singer-songwriter, Buddy Mondlock.
Hughes' latest collection of songs, "Sunshine Remorse", was released in January of 2019.
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