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Small Talk

by Sister City

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J.J. Hameister
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J.J. Hameister Hey you! Do you wanna ROCK!? Do you wanna rock HARD!? Do you want intelligent lyrics that'll make you THINK!? Maybe even think HARD!? Well, SMALL TALK is the album for YOU! Favorite track: Horsey!.
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1.
Small Talk 04:04
I could have the smarts to tear apart a kid like Solomon But I'll die as soon as the next guy cause I don't take my vitamins I concede It's just like me To dislike everything My stomach's hurt cause I've been hungry but I've never been starving And this is one of maybe three things I've ever put my heart in I believe That it's obscene For a wretch like me to prance and preen So here's to long and lost lives, long lines, lost time and being left behind There's only a couple things I've ever said I truly wish I hadn't As I run my pre-arthritic fingers through the hair I still have on my head I sometimes wonder which machine inside of me will be the first to break Indulging each indignity's inspiring defeat My tail triumphantly between my legs, in luck and luxury Which I will shed Gradually Like baby teeth, these things that I no longer need And here's to jaded, overstated lessons for a completely different time There is only so much that anyone can realize As I stick my nose in generations old dejected garbage I will try to smell the rose that grows out of the wreckage There is hope for me Because I don't have real problems And I'll die one day From a list of gifts genetically I have come to terms With the wood and nails and earth and worms My attention full Looking for a miracle So stop me if the choir starts to practice what I preach I forgive almost everyone for almost everything I'm talking small, my tongue unthawed from pure misanthropy For I am patient, making changes to a new philosophy
2.
Faux fittingly I am forging ahead Never better than The last half-hearted heroic attempt To stop the spread The stench of sentience or any semblance Every sentence as penance I treat each symbol like a symptom Of an overbearing trust Buzzed because I always listen And I care far too much In the fight between substance and superficiality I will ignore the referee I will invite my enemies To take shots at me To lend credibility To my oh-so-wounded delivery I made a mess out of my memory But found a future of my own With each obscene release, I rinse, repeat And ramble till I'm home Cause I'm as deftly deaf as ever And stuck in skin I've seen grow old So if today's the day, fuck bold and brave The fight's left from my throat I hit a wall I had to crawl back And reassess each penny spent In spite of former confidence But when I taught myself to walk again I respectfully declined the chance And planted myself stubbornly instead And I stared at the ground And I found myself imagining That it meant something profound So I made meaning out of everything I found And silently I will inspire amnesty I will accept morality And then engender empathy and consistency To lend clarity To my oh-so-important biology
3.
Horsey! 03:30
With enough luck I could erase all I've worked for Not luck but skill, come to think of it that's more Like my tendencies My past proclivity Towards tripping over my own two feet Not tripping, but stepping deliberately Until my face is flush with the ground I crack a smile on the way down Some nights are a noose and a step stool But I can barely tie my shoes When I was young I joined a boy scout troop for a week or two But decided Nintendo was more my excuse Did you catch that misdirection? Do you hear this introspection? Am I just the sum of what I haven't done? The horse I rode in on, he died But I'll beat him alive I will try I will try With enough luck I could erase all I've worked for Not luck but skill, come to think of it that's more Like my tendencies My past proclivity Towards tripping over my own two feet Not tripping, but stepping deliberately Until my face is flush with the ground I crack a smile on the way down Some days I'm a parking spot away From convulsing into fits of rage And the forecast gets the final say If fresh air will get an attempt at my face Did you think it's worth a mention That my only real intention's Not to stick to the bottom Or broaden or blossom But breathe the belief that it's really this bleak And I fear this fight is fruitless That my errant ideology That ever-present potency That pallid personality May one day come to define me We've all become miserable people
4.
Every Stone 02:35
I actually don't have anything to say today I am alone Taking responsibility On bedsheets freshly pressed And carpets cleaned I'm on a globe Most of which I will never see Oh poor insignificant me Ever since I learned to swim I've been furiously paddling I lost a little skin But I think everybody did I am a veteran of insignificance An old man bathed in bitterness If I lose all my friends It's because I thought I was better off I've contrarily weighed in For so long now I forget the reasons My treasure's turned to trash But I think everybody's has There was a light shone bright on a liar Decidedly guilty but citing a logic Contrary to science We must love that man despite it There was a sign held high in the sky for several hours Distributing light indiscriminately Undeservedly, to all inviting I didn't get dressed all day to spite it I actually don't have anything to say today I actually don't have anything
5.
Psalm 26 03:11
This is how I've been Still looking for connections This is how I live Synthetic misdirection This is how I've been Still looking for connections This is how I live Reverse engineering prophecy Taping wires to my shirtsleeves Cut my finger adding new keys Next to my savings card for groceries Making sound to quell the crowds Talking loud and breaking down Finding my head in the clouds Finding my head in the ground Offering my burnt skin To the man in my reflection Convince myself my pigments Are little more than fictions I tell to stop the swell I yell to break the spell Myself, my god, my wealth Myself and my declining health This is how I've been Still riddled with compulsions This is how I live With mostly good intentions This is how I've been In a self-fulfilling sequence This is how I live Douse myself in details The atomic weight of skin cells The speed at which my voice tells my hands they need to slow down Or I'll shake out all the sickness I've admitted keeps me honest The secret symbiosis of successful coexistence This is how I've been
6.
Kin 02:40
Esteemed members of society Us little boys and girls We should really learn to not be so ashamed Of our store brand sleeping aids Half-jokingly explained away "Better safe than sorry, just in case" And from the ashes of divorces Names of friends both cursed and praised And if the former more than latter Let us wait another day And on the backs of westward horses Not as ancient as we'd make Our blood but not quite family implores "Take us away" These syllables I speak sneak Past anxiety and chewed-up cheeks And climb and reach a peak past which I can't help but repeat: "The things you rank as sacrosanct Are often just wet paper bags Sustaining through the facts By subsisting on the snags" But take the sweat stains on our shirts As proof at least our bodies work And see the seams that line our jeans But don't get caught up in their worth And on the backs of westward horses Not as ancient as we'd make Our blood but not quite family implores "Take us away
7.
Room 222 03:05
I've got nothing to hide Save for the space between my two vacant eyes Cause you can't well let every sick thing slip From the space between your two cracked lips Too soon to know, too far to go Two hours like this and I've dissected Every step I've taken, every second I am ashamed and only just awake I fill my days with emptiness And it gets so dense Too hard to parse The shrinking space between Self-defense and entitlement I fill my nights with alibis Giant tar-black lies In some failed attempt to vent Or supplement my imagined indifference Intensely insistent So give it up for giving in For stubbing toes on stones you've thrown It's everyone's fault but your own And owning up to only what You can't explain away With shrugs or waves or little phrases Predicted phases or fronts Change is a four letter word But numbers were never my strong suit Success is a ten dollar term But money's not something I could ever hold on to Change is a four letter word But numbers were never my strong suit It's all a joke I once was told And pass off nightly as my own So give it up for giving in For stubbing toes on stones you've thrown It's everyone's fault but your own And owning up to only what You can't explain away With shrugs or waves or little phrases Predicted phases or fronts So give it up for giving in To find the key to please and the words to plead For increased credibility Amongst the proper tongues Who taste the trials and the triumphs And decide that neither one of them's enough
8.
Crystalline and delicate Or disparate and cheap I am waiting for the opportunity I am sweating out my sympathy And I'm still learning to reconcile My art and vehement denial Of holy, fault, and death My sizable smile relents A snake of a man in the grass So I stand Sit, take my weight of off my feet Stretch, dissect intangibilities Sever the stubborn, disavow the beliefs The practical person pretends He's already made his amends I am under no illusions I am underground But I still breathe in In and out and in and out Simple, elegant seclusion I am coming out Ashamed of only time I could have spent Doing something else I've typically been the kind to doubt The importance of a balance found Between irrelevant skeletons And a beautifully green-screened background But the longer I sit and I shake and I wait For particles to align in agreeable shapes I relinquish my expert opinion on hate And I strain and I scrape and it breaks So I say I am under no illusions I am underground Ashamed of only time I could have spent Doing something else
9.
Who Knows 02:55
Probably I'm not as angry as I should be A stiff and stoic apology From a crumbling bastion of closed-eyed empathy I don't believe In the curative properties Of rivers or of centuries-old exercises for our egos or Of pushing my beliefs on anybody I've already lost them I couldn't care less Suddenly I am brought to my knees By all the things I see So unabashedly In disrepair Insight inciting fires in my stare So goddamn self-aware In conflict or in tandem with the "I don't cares" As genuine as irony thrown unprepared And ignorant and faultless Like the men nailed up on crosses The horizon duly dotted On any given day If I leave Or is it when, I mean? I will turn around And take in everything And I'd expect that I will see There was always something there for me
10.
Butcher the song Tear out the pages of back catalogues Endeavor whatever revisionist wont Scrape off your shoes On the walk to the room That you sent off a check for last month Denounce what you've done For the sake of nostalgia Remember you're still young And problems aren't problems Unless you're too old, sad, or tired to solve them You're none of the above Scavenge through the sorts of things You wouldn't want to touch To find the definition of "enough" is too much Settle for love For comfort, security And curse the good luck You can't lose There isn't a soul in the world You'll find flawless And guess what? You're one of them Accept the relentless Omnipresent tug Admit you've not changed all that much Where the blood on my hands is concerned I'm not worried I'm just sick of thinking circular Confirming sad but true but sure What if there's no other way A balanced scale, two equal weights One for each shoulder Where the taste on my tongue is concerned I'll continue to spit at and spurn Each part of speech that attempts to explain The mundane or the meaningful With the right set of eyes you'll find life at a funeral
11.
I sat along the sand and rocks Like a thousand contemplative songs Anyone who knows me knows I spent the night inside The wind was radiator hum The sand was dust The setting sun was the ever dimming laptop light as the battery died Welcome to the future Welcome to the new year Where if that's a poignant image, then I don't want to write I slept through the scenery If there ever was a view And drowned it out with dreams about what it looks like in truth Cause we like to think we've conquered That we've overcome the odds But we're only as accomplished as the least inviting arms If I make a record If I hold myself to standards If I stick to a song or I work for too long I'm just turning myself in I know where I come from And I know what I have done I know where I come from And I know what I have done And I know what isn't realistic But if the seeds I sow don't grow that's self-fulfilling And I don't buy that anymore so I skip between suburban homes And the sort of comfort I've always known That I resent but represents an actual goal Maybe I don't want to finish anything Maybe all the big work's done and carted off And all I'm left with is small talk I know where I come from And I know what I have done I know where I come from And I know what I have done And I know what I wouldn't rather do I meant what I said, but I sounded so damn desperate that it didn't sound true I sat along the sand and rocks Like a thousand contemplative songs I sat along the sand and rocks Like a thousand contemplative songs I sat along the sand and rocks Like a thousand contemplative songs Anyone who knows me knows I spent the night inside

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Okay folks! Sister City - Small Talk is now yours. Please treat it with love and care. It is our absolute pleasure to share these songs with you.

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released April 9, 2013

Recorded December 2011-October 2012 in Philadelphia, PA and Rockville, MD
Sister City is Daniel Abzug (Drums) and Adam Linder (Everything Else)
Engineered by Adam Linder. Acoustic guitars engineered by Michael Cantin
Produced by Sister City
Mixed by Adam Linder
Mastered by Michael Fossenkemper at Turtle Tone Studios
Artwork and layout by J.J. Hameister.
Photo of baby found by Quinn Burton
Lyrics by Adam Linder
Music by Sister City

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Sister City Maryland

Baltimore / Philadelphia tenuous punkish kinda indie rockish

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