The City in the Distance: Retrospective 2008​-​2018

by Taylor Project

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    The City in the Distance: Retrospective 2008-2018 is a 'best of' covering 10 years of Taylor Project, with 19 songs taken from albums 'Elon Musk', 'Doreen, Doreen', 'Life, Death, Prizes', 'Love in the Time of Scurvy' and 'The Happiest Girl in the Whole Wide Street'. As voted for by (like, 15) listeners. The CD comes in a digicase.

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about

'The City in the Distance: Retrospective 2008-2018' is a kind of 'best of' of Taylor Project songs over a decade: taken from albums 'Doreen, Doreen', 'Life, Death, Prizes', 'Love in the Time of Scurvy', and 'The Happiest Girl in the Whole Wide Street', plus the newer single 'Elon Musk'. As voted for by the band and also (like, 15) listeners. Geography, biology, death, transport, banjos, violins, coconut drums, and creepy lyrics covering small towns to post-industrial cities and bacteria to bushrangers. Get the digital download or buy the CD for the archives.

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released December 15, 2018

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Track Name: Elon Musk (through a glass darkly)
See film clip here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuI990hpfB8. This track was written for the March 2017 Lomond Hotel Writer's Block. The prescribed theme of that month's songwriting event was "the planet". As it happened, the theme was well timed as Sarah had, around the same time, finally asked "who is Elon Musk?" during a grownup conversation. She'd heard the name bandied around in the preceding months but perhaps missed several witty conversational punchlines, not quite knowing who this person was. She was advised to read this blog post:

waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-man.html

The song was written shortly after reading this informative post, and, incidentally, while sitting about the house watching a library DVD of “Carry on up the Khyber”. The movie served unintentionally as a reminder of how quickly new things get old. (For the record, it was still pretty funny).

We recorded up in Elmore in May 2017, and there was lots of help from “JJJ” – i.e. Juliette, Jason and Jen. Andrew did the mixing. We basically took an Agile development framework (without calling it as such), aiming for a quick turnaround from inception to production. Hence the release of this Taylor Project track, along with... more
lyrics
LYRICS (WITH SAMPLE FROM ELON MUSK DOCUMENTARY)

[It’s kind of amazing that this window of opportunity is open for life to go beyond Earth]

And when our bodies are long gone
A piece of us may carry on
In tiny polaroids of DNA
In a space ship heading off to Mars
With the proceeds of electric cars

The future’s always getting old
The here and now’s already gone
When I was young we had no HBO
In the 1980s we got tanned
In the 1990s we got fat
In the late 2000s we quit smoking but
Now the planet smokes for us
And in Elon Musk
We trust

Ask any teenager who’s stoned
To look at the stars and they will know
There is no up, there is no down
Just our bodies pressed against the ground
On the ceaseless giant spinning round

To Ellis Island dressed in rags
Old generations made their plans
For new beginnings in new continents
With their bodies pressed against the boughs
And the giant statue looking down
Only one way tickets to be found
Their ashes and ashes
And dust to dust
They sailed their ships
Like Elon Musk

[Creating the self-sustaining civilization on Mars would be the greatest adventure ever - ever in human history]

The only home I’ve ever known
Has my own fingers, my own toes
Every piece of wet cement
I wished I’d put my hands in it
Because like a captain I will go down with this ship
I see the future but it’s through a glass darkly
It’s a green light that recedes before me year by year
It’s a planet with my bones in it in rear view mirrors

Ashes to ashes
And dust to dust
In Elon Musk we trust

[It would be so exciting to wake up in the morning and think that’s – that’s what’s happening].
credits
released June 6, 2017
Sarah Taylor – lead vocals, acoustic guitar, lyrics
Liz Taylor – piano, backing vocals, lyrics
Andrew Bonnici – electric guitar, backing vocals
Jason Emilionowicz – bass, backing vocals
Scott Boydle – drums
Jen Pearson – backing vocals
Juliette Fishlock – backing vocals

Recorded and mixed by Andrew Bonnici @ Elmore
Mastered by Adam Dempsey
Track Name: Love in a Small Town
Love is hard in a small town
You've got to call on friends
Just to sleep around
But I know that after you've had
Everyone in town
You'll come back to me
Next time around
On the main street walking
And I see your handsome face
In the morning sun and I
Have forgotten many things
In my lifetime but I
Have no intention to
Forget the time that you
Said come back to my place
This time around
You don't look so bad let's
Try it out
And I say
Love is hard in a small town
Track Name: Detroit
One morning in Manchester, I’ve never been there but I can picture it
The kitchen scene, the flowers growing in spite of it
The kettle boiling like puberty, tell the girls to be in time for tea
Outside there’s boys in jeans with no need to wear sunglasses
Staring back at me, the post industrial poster boys
For a feeling that I sometimes have when I’m gazing up at power lines in a fading light

That we are all Detroit, we are all Detroit
We will all be destroyed, we will all be unemployed
We are all Detroit, our feelings are embroiled
We will be reborn one morning in Detroit

Slouching to Bethlehem under blue skies in Baltimore, there is grandeur here
Old stories will reappear under ancient signs of the groceries of the sixties
There’s nothing quite as old as Modernity
Each morning the sun still shines and we will ask what’s for breakfast
Cheerios at nine, served with poverty in excess
In the bar tonight is the unbending instinct which is not concerned with dignity
There’s more than one way to lose your virginity

And we are all Detroit, we are all Detroit
We will all be destroyed, we will all be unemployed
We are all Detroit, our feelings are embroiled
We will be reborn one morning in Detroit

We will all foreclose, a mix of fading-fast instinct
And the roots and leaves of incorrigible pheromones
On the prairie lawn we reap what we have sewn
We click our heels and grow familiar with the mould
Track Name: Guilty Wretch
I don’t know, I’ve just been told, guilty wretch that I am
I came into the house after everything was settled
That night we went without meat and everything was scuttled
Three of us were cornered had to come up with a story
One for them and one for us and one for the informants

I don’t know, I’ve just been told, there is right, and wrong
Look out on the corner and you’ll see a heart of darkness
My friends were waiting for me I could see no better option
Mother came to meet me, said that I should reconsider
I said I’d write a story and that I would put her in it

I don’t know, I’ve just been told, I won’t grow old
There’s another detail that I won’t neglect to mention
Sullivan was doing thing beyond the group’s intentions
In the mountains behind Nelson he came forth as the true villain
As we dug the shallow grave and took the three pounds sixteen shillings
From a labourer we came upon the track while we were waiting
We took those three months’ wages and we drank them down in town
And at the tavern I could tell that he had plans to make me look bad
But I was only robbing the Maori camp I hope you understand
Those Jury men, they’ve just been told different laws than my own

There are many crimes to which I’m readily confessing
And others which I’ll spend my dying days to have corrected
Thieves will have their owner if they hold the silence golden
And they know the biggest rule of all is ‘always be a man’
And guilty wretch that I am, at least I have that
Track Name: Doreen
The city in the distance, and a ripple in the long grass
An exit from the highway, and a stillness in the sunshine
A home is like a long dream, there’s room for dreams in Doreen
And some people dream about making amphetamines

Doreen, Doreen, Doreen
Turn around, turn around, Doreen
Doreen, Doreen, Doreen
We came here to get clean
Please, Doreen

The same sets of conditions that help us take it slowly
Are also advantageous for speed laboratories
A fondness for high fences, not too many questions
Remove all suspicion by waving on occasion

Doreen, Doreen, Doreen
Turn around, turn around, Doreen
Doreen, Doreen, Doreen
We came here to get clean
Please, Doreen

An old drag on a new street, police tape on a crime scene
A kitchen in a garage, a body beaten savage
Police would like to speak to two men driving a white ute
They’re asking round locally for help with inquiries

Doreen, Doreen, Doreen
Turn around, turn around, Doreen
Doreen, Doreen, Doreen
No more pessimistic scenes
Please, Doreen

Police said it had all the hallmarks of some sort of debt
There’s fixed rate or there’s varied rate or there’s just a kick in the head
It’s not supposed to be here, crime is a city thing
I saw it in a movie; the man gives up his life of crime for a girl called

Doreen, Doreen, Doreen
Turn around, turn around, Doreen
Doreen, Doreen, Doreen
We came here to get clean
Please, Doreen
Track Name: Sitting on a Train
So, sitting on a train, going home again
Going from city to another
Blue light out in the dark, hear the engines start
Rolling slowly over and under tracks of other peoples’ lives
You see them in the lights, going from one station to another
Then somewhere in the night, awakening my eyes
A scene that is not home but is familiar

So, sitting on a train, going home again
Going from city to another
Blue light out in the dark, see the nighttime start
Coloured in for people who are lying still
They’ll be here the next day, but we’ll be on our way, going from one city to another

See this country in the dark, the trees like body parts
Crawling out of gullies in the act of haunting those who stay
In a place that is too strange to ever make much sense in the middle of the night
See the lack of rain, feels like home again
Travelling from Sydney to Melbourne
Signs of other peoples’ lives flickering outside
Flickering like eyes in the middle of the night

So, sitting on a train, see the landscape change
Going from city to another
Blue light out in the dark, see the nighttime start
Coloured in for people who are lying still
They’ll be here the next day, but we’ll be on our way, going from one city to another
Red light out on the plain, see the morning made
Coloured in for people who are waiting here
In a place that shouldn’t be home to anyone
But is home to every person that I’ve ever known
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