The Horrible Fanfare / Landslide / Exoskeleton

(album: The Information - 2006)

[The Horrible Fanfare]

Ashes of ancients, the nations repainted
The chaingang chatelaine changing the station
The theme song playing, the anthem of normal
The horrible fanfare, The horns get distorted

On a public annoucement, the towns are impounded
Where the order resounded, cowards towered around it
Powerline buzzards surveilling the night
Talons in flight, the fake horizons ignite

Banality lives where hysteria kills
Civilian jungles with malaria pills
Animals bleed to buy a star from the night
Avenue kids wear a scar like a stripe

Send up a signal to the heavenly rescue
When the poison's coming from the person you're next to
Let the voltage of thought pull the plug from the wound
'Cause if the soul is a symptom, the condition is you

[Landslide]

We know it's a letterbomb hand-me-down
This thought is a perjury blindfold
When she crawls from the Himalayan rain
With the birds of prey and weapons on fire

She's riding a landslide down to me
Cutting the shackles off of me
Shaking the dead birds from the trees
She's taking the only air I breathe

Iron lungs and a plate-glass sermon
Don't call it death on the installment plan
She's pulling the armour on my back
Raking the coals over the tracks
Taking the knife out from the stack
She's bringing the blood that I have back

She's coming to see it's all a sin
She's coming to see the sun again
Coming to wash it off again
Coming to see herself again
Coming to see herself again
Coming to wash it off again

The weather reports from the Bristol radio station for 0400 GMT
NW 4, slight showers, 70 minutes
1 thousand and ten falling slowly
Storm away, SWS 3 resent rain, 7 miles
1 thousand and 7 rising while slowly
Lowick, west 4 resent showers
16 miles, 1 thousand and 2, rising more slowly

[Exoskeleton]

"I picture like an illuminated manuscript, ya know. Made by monks.
They hand do them in record forum. You'd have to have them hand done each time."

"Like change depending on what mood your in... like the best...
or depending on like when you listen from a different age could mean something different"

"I don't like it when they change" "It frightens me"

"You want them to stay the same"

"It makes me feel like someones pushing me from below...trying to put me... turn me over and put me down
that's what it makes me feel like when they change."

It has to tell you how to live... it has, is an instruction guide.
Subtle. It doesn't push. It nudges. It entices or seduces.
It has to encompass the whole world.
Everything that has been. Is. And will be.

"That's.. that's true"

"..And could take it into space. And that's why you build a space ship.
Because ultimately that's what space travel is all about.
Was sending up ships from earth into space.
And not just in some space shuttle that's got all the foam coming off of it.
You need your own, glowing, ya know multi-colored space ship.

It would be inside the space ship and also the space ship. You know what I'm saying?
Like an exoskeleton."