Annie Clark

You're a supplement, You're a salve,
You're a bandage, pull it off
I can quit you, cut it out.
You're a patient, iron lung.

Come, my love, the stage is waiting,
Be the one to save my saving grace.

I think anyone who is creative or self-aware in any way, there’s like a humility to it, or I should say a humiliation to it. But there’s also a self-delusion — the provisional ego, as my uncle would call it. The self-delusion is the thing that makes you go, oh you know what, all the music that I’ve ever loved in the world, I want to be a part of that — hey, listen to what I have to say, it’s really important, it’s going to matter.”
You can’t apologize your way into people’s hearts ... You have to go full force.

Many people wanna make money, make love,
make friends, make peace with death —
But most mainly want to win the game they came to win
they want to come out ahead.
But you, you're a rock, with a heart like a socket I can plug into at will.
And will you guess when I come around next.
I hope your open sign is blinking still.

Leaden trumpets spit the soot of power they say
"I'm on your side when nobody is, cause nobody is.
Come sit right here and sleep while I slip poison in your ear"

I like the material, which makes it easy to sort of delve into it, and then also I was too tired to be nervous. I was just happy. The anxiety, the anxious energy was not there, because I was too exhausted.

Honey can you reach the spots that need oiling and fixing.
H E L P Help Me.

Just like an amnesiac, trying to get my senses back.
Oh where did they go.

I traded my plot of land for a plane to anywhere
Oh where did you go.
And I can't see the future but I know it's watching me.
All my old friends aren't so friendly
And all my old haunts are now haunting me.

I'm a debut artist, I'm not established — nobody would write about it if they didn't like it. So I'm waiting for the next album for the backlash.

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.