Mutations Lyrics


Tracklist

01. Cold Brains
02. Nobody's Fault But My Own
03. Lazy Flies
04. Cancelled Check
05. We Live Again
06. Tropicalia
07. Dead Melodies
08. Bottle of Blues
09. O Maria
10. Sing It Again
11. Static

Cold Brains

Cold brains, unmoved
Untouched, unglued
Alone at last No thoughts, no mind
To rot behind
A trail of disasters
A final curse
Abandoned hearse
We ride disowned
Corroded to the bone
The fields of green
Are bent, obscene I lay upon the grave
A worm of hope
A hangman’s rope
Pulls me one way or the other
A final curse Abandoned hearse
We write this song
Corroded to the bone
A bird of song
Is heard no longer
In the evacuated heavens
The drain is drawn
And drained and gone
And on and on
It doesn’t matter

Beck Hansen: vocals, guitars, piano, harmonica, glockenspiel
Justin Meldal-Johnsen: bass
Roger Joseph Manning Jr.: synthesizer
Joey Waronker: drums and percussion

Nobody’s Fault But My Own

Treated you like a rusty blade
A throwaway from an open grave
Cut you loose from a chain gang
And let you go
And on the day you said it’s true
Some love holds, some gets used
Tried to tell you I never knew
It could be so sweet
Who would ever be so cruel
Blame the devil for the things you do
It’s such a selfish way to lose
The way you lose these wasted blues
These wasted blues
Tell me that it’s nobody’s fault
Nobody’s fault but my own
When the moon is a counterfeit
Better find the one that fits
Better find the one that lights the way for you
When the road is full of nails
Garbage pails and darkened jails
And their tongues are full of heartless tales
That drain on you
Who would ever notice you
You fade into a shaded room
It’s such a selfish way to lose
The way you lose these wasted blues
These wasted blues
Tell me that it’s nobody’s fault
Nobody’s fault but my own

Beck Hansen: vocals, guitar, piano
Justin Meldal-Johnsen: bass
Joey Waronker: percussion
David Campbell: viola
Larry Corbett: cello
Warren Klein: sitar, tambura
Fred Sesliano: esraj

Lazy Flies

Lazy flies all hovering above
The magistrate puts on his gloves
And he looks to the clouds
All pink and disheveled
There must be some blueprint
Some creed of the devil Inscribed in our minds
A hideous game vanishes in the air
The vanity of slaves
Who wants to be there
To sweep the debris
To harness dead horses
To ride in the sun
A life of confessions
Written in the dust
Out in the mangroves
The mynah birds cry
In the shadows of sulphur
The trawlers drift by
They’re chewing dried meat
In a house of disrepute
The dust of opiates
And syphilis patients on brochure vacations
Fear has a glare that traps you like searchlights
The puritans stare their souls are fluorescent
The skin of a robot vibrates with pleasure
Matrons and gigolos carouse in the parlor
Their hand-grenade eyes invalid and blind

Beck Hansen: vocals, guitars
Roger Joseph Manning Jr.: keyboards
Justin Meldal-Johnsen: electric bass, percussion
Joey Waronker: drums and percussion

Canceled check

I hate to do this
But you’re a pain in the neck
I thought you knew this
You’re handing me a canceled check
You’re so helpless
Your girlfriends think you’re a saint
I’ll give you a quarter
I’ll keep my judgments to myself
And I get caught up in the moonlight
Reaching out for a rotten egg
I don’t want to beg
It’s crystal clear
Your time is nearly gone
Count your blessings
Do the things that you should
O the has-beens
Never had it so good
Stormy weather
The kids are making a racket In the wilderness
The wild lives are so mild

Beck Hansen: vocals, slide gutar
Roger Joseph Manning Jr.: piano, synthesizer, percussion
Justin Meldal-Johnsen: bass
Joey Waronker: drums
Smokey Hormel: acoustic guitar
Greg Leisz: pedal steel
David Ralicke: trombone
Elliott Caine: trumpet

We Live Again

These withered hands have dug for a dream
Sifted through sand and leftover nightmares
Over the hill a desolate wind
Turns shit to gold and blows my soul crazy
The end o the end
We live again
I grow weary of the end
O hungry days In the footsteps of fools
Gazing alone through sex-painted windows
Dredging the night
Drunk libertines
Stink like colognes from a new-fangled wasteland
Love is a plague In a mix-match parade
Where the castaways look so deranged
When will children learn
To let their wildernesses burn
And love will be new
Never cold and vacant

Beck Hansen: vocals, guitars
Roger Joseph Manning Jr.: harpsichord
Justin Meldal-Johnsen: upright bass
Joey Waronker: drums

Tropicalia

When they beat on a broken guitar
And all the streets
They reek of tropical charms
The embassies lie in hideous shards
Where tourists snore and decay
When they dance in a reptile blaze
You wear a mask
An equatorial haze
Into the past
A colonial maze
Where there’s no more confetti to throw
You wouldn’t know what to say to yourself
Love is a poverty you couldn’t sell
Misery waits in vague hotels
To be evicted
You’re out of luck
You’re singing funeral songs
To the studs
They’re anabolic and bronze
They seem to strut In their millennial fogs
Till they fall down and deflate
Now you’ve had your fun
Under an air-conditioned sun
It’s burned into your eyes
Leaves you plain and left behind
See them rise and fall Into the jaws of a pestilent love
You wouldn’t know what to say to yourself
Love is a poverty you couldn’t sell
Misery waits in vague hotels
To be a victim

Beck Hansen: vocals
Roger Joseph Manning Jr.: synthesizer, organ, percussion
Justin Meldal-Johnsen: acoustic bass, percussion
Joey Waronker: drums, percussion, synth drums
Smokey Hormel: percussion, quica, acoustic guitars
David Ralicke: flute, trombone

Dead Melodies

Where will you go
When this day is over
A gambler’s purse
Lays on the road
Straight to your door
Snakes have gone crazy tonight
Winding their way out of sight
A laugh, a joke
A sentiment wasted
Seasons of strangers
They come and go
Doldrums are pounding
Cheapskates are clowning this town
Who could disown themselves now
Engineer, slow down this old train
Cinders and chaff
Laugh at the moon
Night birds will cackle
Rotting like apples on trees
Sending their dead melodies to me

Beck Hansen: vocals, guitar
Roger Joseph Manning, Jr.: keyboards
Justin Meldal-Johnsen: upright bass, background vocals
Joey Waronker: percussion
Smokey Hormel: guitar, background vocals

Bottle of Blues

I just found me a bottle of blues
Some strange comfort
For a soul to soothe
Ain’t it hard, ain’t it hard
To want somebody who doesn’t want you
And I’ve been waiting for a year or a day
Some strange weather must be blowing my way
Cos I got no mind to go or to stay
Or be left behind
Holding hands with an impotent dream
In a brothel of fake energy
Put a nickel in a graveyard machine
I get higher and lower
Like a tired soldier
With nothing to shoot
And nowhere to lose this bottle of blues
Egos drone and pose alone
Like black balloons, all banged and blown
On a backwards river the infidels shiver In the stench of belief
And tell my mama
I’m a hundred years late
I’m over the rails and out of the race
And the crippled psalms of an age that won’t thaw
Are ringing in my ears

Beck Hansen: vocals, guitar, harmonica, synthesizer
Roger Joseph Manning, Jr: synthesizer, background vocals
Justin Meldal-Johnsen: bass
Joey Waronker: drums

O Maria

There is no one, nothing to see
The night is useless and so are we
Because everybody knows
The fabric of folly is falling apart at the seams
And I’ve been looking for a good time
But the pleasures are seldom and few
There’s no whiskey there’s no wine
Just the concrete and a worried mind
Cos everybody knows death creeps in slow
Till you feel safe in his arms
And I’ve been looking for a new friend
I don’t care if he’s decrepit and grey
O Maria haven’t you known
Days so careless
All on your own
Everybody knows the circus is closed
And the animals have gone wild
And I’ve been looking for my shadow
But this place is so bright and so clean

Beck Hansen: vocals
Roger Joseph Manning Jr.: piano, organ
Justin Meldal-Johnsen: upright bass
Joey Waronker: drums
Smokey Hormel: guitar
David Ralicke: trombone

Sing It Again

A town of disrespect
The trains are wrecked
The night is younger than us
Nowhere is anywhere else
You keep to yourself
Stirring the dregs where I have laid
The exit signs are flashing
Dead ends they won’t come to life anymore
I pledge the rest I should have guessed
Your love was hanging by threads
Tongues tied under the moon
My love is a room of broken bottles
And tangled webs
The misers wind their minds
Like clocks that grind their gears on and on
And if it’s meant
Some accident
Some coincidence
Crumbs fall out of the sky
When you wander by
The dust clouds blow
Nobody’s home
Oh won’t you lay my bags upon the funeral fire
And sing it again

Beck Hansen: vocals
Roger Joseph Manning Jr.: piano
Justin Meldal-Johnsen: upright bass
Joey Waronker: drums
Smokey Hormel: guitar

Static

It’s so easy to laugh at yourself
When all those jokes have already been written
Seems like another vain attempt
To let yourself fall out of the oven
Holy mountains
They look so tired
And it’s a perfect day to lock yourself inside
Who you fooling if the fools are right
It’s the same thing but it’s almost as different

Hard to tell when it pacifies your mind
Leaves you stranded with a broken engine
Lazy desert looks so mangled
Let me drown in a convalescent bliss
Get up from your bed of rest
It’s been a long time since you’ve lived
And the static in your mind
Leaves you hollow and unkind
With a shock electric wave
Turns you on
You’ve been flunked out of the devil’s house
Delinquent hygienes are so abrasive
Some distortion that’s never been known
On the treadmill you’ll be running forever
Holy mountains
They look so tired
And it’s a perfect day to lock yourself inside

Beck Hansen: vocals, guitars
Roger Joseph Manning Jr.: electric piano, organ
Justin Meldal-Johnsen: bass
Joey Waronker: drums, percussion