Annie Clark

While people will cheer on the spectacle we've made
I'm sitting and sculpting menageries of saints.

I always looked at any instrument as just a tool, an expressive voice to write with. It even differs from guitar to guitar. Some guitars demand that you play them delicately and really respect the instrument, and some beg to be abused. Same with piano. I know with guitar, I'm intimate with it enough to know when I put my fingers here, it will sound like this. I prefer writing on piano because it's always a surprise.

We're sleeping underneath the bed to scare
The monsters out
With our dear daddy's Smith and Wesson. We've got to teach them all a lesson.

Romeo, where'd you go?
It's been years and still no sign,
But I'm keeping hope alive.

What do I share?
What do I keep from all the strangers
Who sleep where I sleep?

I was recording with The Polyphonic Spree, recording The Fragile Army, and we were holed up in January in Minnesota at our studio. They called Mike in to play, and we just hit it off, in a really, really special way. Actually, the night after meeting and having a conversation with him, I sat down and I wrote "All My Stars Aligned". And I just kind of had an idea, "Wouldn't it be amazing if Mike Garson played? So the guy who played solo in Aladdin Sane, wouldn't it be amazing if this guy played this song?"
And I wrote it, based on a conversation we had, but I didn't want to ask him, because I felt shy, and nervous, and everything. It was a few months later, actually, we kind of got in touch, and, 'Oh, what are you doing?', and I sent him a couple songs that I was working on. I sent him "Your Lips Are Red" and I sent him "All My Stars Aligned", just to show, you know, 'wink-wink, hint-hint, this is what I'm doing.' And he wrote me back, the things that we'd said, and asked to play on the record. So I was, 'Well, okay, if you insist…'
That worked out pretty miraculously.

While Jesus is saving, I'm spending all my grace,
on rosy-red pallor of lights on center stage.
While people have cheered on the awful mess we've made,
through storms of red roses we've exited the stage

Let's pour wine in coffee cups and drive around the neighborhood
And shine the headlights on houses until all the news is good.

Here's an awesome tour story: I was playing these two shows last fall in Europe, we played at Reykjavík, and the three or four days we were in Reykjavík happened to be the one and only Sugarcubes reunion show… So it was like, tour of a lifetime.

I wish I had a gentle mind and a spine made up of iron.

I'm not your mother's favorite dog
I'm not the carpet you walk on
I'm not one small atomic bomb
I'm not any any any anything at all.

We are waiting on a telegram to give us news of the fall
I am sorry to report dear Paris is burning after all
We have taken to the streets in open rejoice revolting
We are dancing a black waltz — fair paris is burning after all.

Tomorrow's some kind of Strangerland where all the news is good.

Good souls have born better sons,
Better souls born worse ones.
Paint the black hole blacker...

The keys are in my pocket and they rattle you awake.

Bodies like wrecking balls fuck, fuck with dynamite.

What me worry? I never do
I'm always amused and amusing you

I'm just the same but brand new
And anything you wrote I checked for codes and clues.

Some songs I wrote that night, and some songs took nine months to arrange, get how I positioned them. Some songs I wrote parts of when I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen… Just putting it together, just finding the right place for it. So it's really been a long time coming. ... I'm actually really restless, in the sense that I'd rather be always making something new. I'm really excited about making a second record. I've got a lot of things up my sleeve, I guess.

I'm a wife in watercolors I can wash away what seventeen cold showers couldn't wash away.