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the Passengers

by Landlord's Daughter

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1.
persuade her to remember every little instance of abuse don’t think I know or care- I just look for other lovers to accuse I tell you what you need, I tell you how to take it if you can you fly above everything, your precious little arms like rubber bands I’ve got another way to show you this nutritionist’s for you another touch or just a little kiss and I will be the one a sandal drops, a single cough, another glance aimed towards the land you can back to the earth or you can smile and take my hand I tell you what your body needs, and how to fake it if you can the things you put into your mouth can cure you, they can help you understand I’ve got another way to show you this nutritionist’s for you another touch or just a little kiss and I will be the one
2.
Alice is singing in the garden a host of wild flowers at her feet and when she dances they are trampled as her sisters start in with the harmony Alice is reading in the schoolyard her ringlets taken by the breeze she sees the words, she sees the pictures she sees him watching from the boundary of trees one day Alice noticed she was older in the looks of all the people in the street she knew for sure her world was of a transitory nature built on brittle smiles and dirty dreams Alice is standing in her garden her image captured by machine now on a hundred thousand postcards she’s staring out from glossy magazines and if she’s tired she don’t show it down in the hole she never has to dream the bottle whispers, “Drink, honey, let's get smaller" then she fades till just her smile remains another night of bad intentions, another night of syncopated sleep and Alice still the same, pressed between the pages suffocating you can't hear her plea burn the book and let her have some peace . you can break the glass and end this misery.
3.
your Hitler eyes and Anne Frank smile drawn and erased you helped them all to help themselves I needed a taste I’ve never know anyone like you we trace the bleeding kiss, the velvet bruise both of us are satisfied, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye mirror love, inverted twin we’ve been tied up for days my skin raw where your mouth had been I made a mistake I’ve never known anyone like you you bind my hands, you cut me loose everyone is satisfied, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye a sad book to while away the hours I can only read when we’ve satisfied all other possibilities lay me down here amongst the flowers can we pretend a little sweetness if it’s just for the afternoon? let’s be sisters again let’s just be sisters again
4.
I'm just an elephant painter--you show me the moves till I'm good and I'm trained and I know what to do you taught me so perfectly in my pen in your zoo but I made all these paintings for the peanuts you threw brushing white canvas will never be stroking your hair too caught in the thought of who else had been there but these words are just symbols we launch into the air my paints are all laid out, the canvas prepared red desire's naked light the lamp-black blot of another wasted night we clean till the paint runs away we drink till there's nothing but gray I'm not the beast you've mistaken me for but the sting of your hand has a certain allure bound to obey with slow silent consent but don't dare turn your back, cause I never forget cause I'm an elephant painter--you showed me the moves till I'm good and I'm trained and I know what to do
5.
please, don’t pass me by please, don’t pass me by this is better than right and what does marriage mean but a triple-tiered cake and some new things to break? there’s a world of twinkling lights and I want my share- all my body can bear like smoking in reverse, you're twirling with me in the street I turn away from you in sleep and how can it be that third person has made me so weak? I didn’t mean her to I wanna share her with you I need to touch your face and examine your scars to see where you’ve been to know where you are I know you’ve loved before and I want them to watch us as you yell out her name it's your paper thin skin and fresh perspiration and your freckles like stars burn with new inspiration
6.
NYC Refugees 03:36
I could tolerate the silence if the people round me breathed would you rather take the subway then stumble home with me? I can feel it coming closer- the end of history you will know me by the shaking, and by the company I keep a small adjustment of the brain to make me happy just one spike, another night of unchecked energy and did you mean it at the time? a life without connections we loose the tether from the dock and cast off to the deep in the cold one-room apartment, another Dixie cup of gin it’s not enough to make us warm, but it just might keep us in I see your face, I sit and wait for fission to begin and too late I postulate just what we’re swimming in I saw the pulsing of the grid on the ground below us for each spark another life, a thousand fantasies for all the ones that failed to thrive, we keep on living and stumbling, strive to stem the tide of vicious doubling
7.
I want my first time with somebody I don’t care about at all my breath is coming quickly, my back against the wall who said there’d be a difference as the summer turned to fall? in the darkness as the cars passed, I didn’t see his face at all you see, my legs are scraped up from the fences that I’ve climbed I was chasing half the summer- if I’d caught him he’d be mine he’s just my size and look, besides, he helped me with the car if you’re strong from walking everywhere it don’t seem that far at all dirty your face, cut back your hair darken your eyes- I’ll still be here how many thousand born in a year? darken your eyes. I’ll still be here well it was your house girl, I was looking for the place with hot lines of tears and charcoal running down my cheeks you weren’t much to hold on to, but there wasn’t much to say the friendly pose abandoned, our clothes in disarray dirty your face, cut back your hair darken your eyes- I’ll still be here how many thousand born in a year? darken your eyes. I’ll still be here
8.
Second Best 03:03
if you don’t know the things I want, then fake it I’ve always been the easiest to please when we were young we played the Allied Powers now you just wanna be the Japanese who knows the words that always bring me down? And the vows we break won’t always make a sound the girls I knew before you were all losers but I cared about them just the same and kept score in my flashy Trapper Keeper filled with many variations of our names who finds his failures live in simulcast? who’s been assured he’s always second best? it’s my narrow writing crawling down the wall should’ve never told you “I need you like a spider needs to feed again” but it doesn’t mean a thing- you know that I will clean the house up if you promise not to leave it’s not in your blue-eyed cool compassion it’s not the way you fill your favorite jeans it’s cause after all this time you still believe me I love you for your gullibility so grab your Starfleet boots and your studded leather vest and let’s put my double dealing to the test
9.
In the Park 03:51
a plague of perfumed things all the niceties that monies bring "ours” turns to “yours”, you sleeping within my hair hanging greasy and glittered again you said I'd always been the reckless one someone else might call it fearless out of the window into the yellow sun living in the park beneath the lightning-blackened Cyprus trees the motors in the distance like the ocean breaking on the sand drinking from the stinking water basin, if you push you will get pulled apart by the machine, the heavy consequence of gravity I can’t forget that no one new is warm these days a harem populated by memories drawn to distraction and self-satisfaction how bout all this talking in code? how bout I just say that I want you? they said that they knew you but I see right through you
10.
11.
the skyline is bright and hazy haven't seen the stars for days I get all excited but you say it’s an airplane with its light on to show me the way cool calm fine disappointments expectations mean being let down don’t try to pretend you ain’t done this before- I promise you I've been around salt and sand, we emerge hand in hand from the sea I gave it my best- I guess shame is just safer than all of the other transmitted diseases butt here now I linger, still so reluctant to leave we are collections of parts, we are skin, we are the wintering weeds maybe I was too tall, too skinny, too cynical to be someone you’d publicly like but the things that arose from just pressing against you kept my hands and my feelings well occupied you were always my itch, you were my one lotto ticket now the vice I can’t cast to the side in this torrent of words I’ve only just scratched the surface of the things that you gave me, and the things you denied sure I knew you before her but the night is too bright for the darkness to cover this our coy ministrations, our coded goodbyes but if I go back now I'm done for taken by teeth or by tongue, but not taken alive salt and sand, our impressions can't stand to the sea I gave it my best- I guess shame is just safer than all of the other transmitted diseases but here now I linger, still so reluctant to leave we are collections of parts, we are skin, we are the wintering weeds the skyline is bright and hazy haven't seen the stars for days I get all excited but you say it’s an airplane with its light on to show me the way
12.
Your handprints in the applesauce a little bit of glass a clue, some fraction of a grand design that broke and disappeared with all the rest your handprints in the applesauce a sign, a sin or something less the things we leave are left to us as we push about this complicated mess as we learn to leave the ones we love the best the sky is clear and uncomplicated your lips are chapped and dry the swarm of strings just punctuation for the understated, oversold goodbye your hand prints in the applesauce once buttressed by the jar I could not clean it up or put it back together cause it's flecked with dirt and filled with tiny shards I do not mean this figuratively it used to have a shape a single blow has turned it over now all that's left is implicating space now all that's left is implicating space
13.
Ovals 05:31
you haven't felt this way since you last rollerskated stepped into rentals and staggered out onto the floor while the others were streaming on by
14.
when I was born I don’t remember much but greed and pain and milk for lunch I would go out into the day I would play in the abandoned lots they were cleared for me they were clearly for my pleasure,  for whatever little project I had started and then my brother came; my brother, and then all of these things they changed I would fly from feeling squeezed out and abandoned straight to guilt then to these things in tandem, simultaneously sickened and enraged When I was a child I was a loser, I was a whimper, I was a product of the praise parade an over-privileged undeveloped strain of second grader brain of outsized expectation, best in the nation, in the estimation of those who loved me, those who taught me that every act of love it is transactional in the arms of my mother, from a distance with my father on a bike ride with my brother. with the dog through an electric fence and when I lived there in the trailer, I was her lover, I was her dedicated Minstrel, doing time with all the narcissistic men who had spurned her, who put her back to bed without dinner, never shaking her awake even now I am creating, I am fabricating every living thing I need from your headache, from her stomachache, from the pulsing beating body of her flesh the precious temple of your flesh and when I traveled cross the country it was torture it was glory it was light upon my face but the loneliness it comes in waves and what I learned then from the grasses, from writing one song every day, was nothing to the truth extracted from every cultural collision con’t take rides from strangers don’t take nothing you can’t handle, you can’t separate from your own piece of mind from your prick from the groping educating hands that show you how it is among the primates zmong the people that you love and those that loving’s always done to once we shared a couch I used it for sleep you for pleasure you for pleasure every Sunday every Sunday you would meet them at the same time they were your friends they were your cathode ray companions beamed from space they taught you science I taught you love and other automated things once we sang together at first we weren’t very good then you weren’t very good then we both felt pretty awkward as I pushed for always more improvement, always forward movement on the fronts that meant the most to me with my nose to every titty that I’d see I am a loving sex machine in the sense that it would take a specialist to repair me, to repair me but I can’t stand this being fixed I’d rather if you’d knock me about then I could be mad-- instead, despairing instead, despairing instead of laying in the ditch with all the refuse of the roadside refugees those that travel on in search of many-colored dreams instead of all this hardcore stuff photography. you wanna put me in your book under plastic with all the men and women lost to time with all the other memories another piece of refuse is refusing to come to your attention it's hardly worth a mention that this garbage has a name I cannot win I lay here on the floor not in the middle of the floor but to the side where you can choose now to ignore me to ignore me until it is time to pack your things and then to go to the seashore to the ocean to the place where we were born once before we were humans we could live there we could swim and we could breath znd at the bottom of the ocean zre all the things you’ve left behind they’d been waiting anticipating the time that you’d arrive here’s a quarter here’s a penny here’s that sweater that you loved here’s your dance shoes here’s an apple core znd way down at the bottom there is me I’ve been a martyr I’ve been a diver I was your grumpy greyhound driver I was the bangle on your wrist I was the chocolate you couldn’t resist now just a piece of this rusted ruddy edifice this crayon-ready assemblage of the still-unsteady tribute to the weak and wary passengers here’s to the passengers to the passengers the passengers here’s to the passengers to the passengers to the passengers of love

credits

released May 21, 2012

Landlord's Daughter- the Passengers

Mitch Ebert- drums, banjo, toy piano, vocals, piano on 1, 5, 8, 12
Alma Garcia De Lilla- vocals, violin, piano on 3, 13, 14
Chad Lindhorst- vocals, electric bass, piano on 11
Christy Mooers- violin, vocals, upright bass, piano on 9
Sean Michael Robinson- vocals, guitar, organ, piano on 7, 11

with--

Conor Apperson- drums on 1, 10
Kris Hambrick- keyboard on 1, piano on 10
Lee Redfield- saxophone on 8, 14
Kevin Wilson- steel guitar on 5, 10
Rachel Erin Sage- vocals on 5, 6
Jonathan Spruance- piano on 2

All songs written by Sean, except--
1, 2, 6, lyrics by Sean with Alma
3, music by Jonathan Spruance and Sean
4, music by Chad and Sean

Produced by Sean and Landlord's Daughter. All tracks engineered by Chad with Sean, except 1 and 10, basic tracks engineered by Jonny Mendoza at Avast! Studio B in Seattle, WA. Mixed by Sean. Mastered by Rick Fisher at RFI CD Mastering in Seattle, WA. Artwork and design by Carl Franzen Nelson.

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Landlord's Daughter Seattle, Washington

"The violin and guitar work on the album are impeccable..."
"The Passengers isn't a rock musical, per se, but the album certainly strikes that chord. In the vein of the Decemberists' The Hazards Of Love (though a little less gruesome), Landlord's Daughter are melodious, theatrical storytellers."

—Line Out, The Stranger
... more

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