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Leavetaking

by Elway

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1.
She’s dying to know if it was the faith that failed her Does Jesus Christ chomp at his bit to be her only captor? And when she prays it sounds like a mad girl’s love song Toppling god from the sky with the wind of a whisper So where were you when your flock was out here wailing? Hacked up and burnt to the bone with the free will you gave them? She lays down to sleep and dreams of a ghostly figure Putting his cigarette out on her wrist and she’s screaming She woke up with a panic in her head A cross hung on the wall over her bed She knew all she has left to do is run So with the last long ray of setting sun She will be gone
2.
Salton Sea 01:59
I lay around this stillborn Sunday The nameless graceless wreck you leave in me I stood silent at your waking theater Deluded and grotesque, I hemorrhage history But I won’t be visited again By the ghosts of things that never came to be I won’t let my heart settle in To the fallow soil that sprawls out from the fringes of the swaying Salton Sea We let their hurried beat busy our bones But our tempo-tempered hearts are always idle We drink the water from their fountain But this place could never be the things that we both need And I want the things that I can’t have And I need to find a new way out And I will crawl out from the wreckage of my past And we’ll fall head first and weary of the place we’ve hung our hats for all these years Wait for the night, we’ll disappear
3.
Prophetstown 02:39
It’s a sordid sort of feeling when you learn to live from spite It’s a desperate kind of living when you’re burning up the nights Getting sick of all the drinking, getting sicker every day Because I can’t say the things I really want to say I remember when Chicago seemed a million miles away I was chained by quiet longing on that Independence Day A month across the country built on all I learned from you I sang those thoughts away just like I always do It’s been an age, it’s been an era, it’s been a lifetime But I remember every step I’ll cross my heart when we cross paths across the country Please just remember, I’m not the one who left And I never will All the aches and shits and quivers hurdle in with morning light And a somber sense of longing steals my breath and grips my spine I can feel the salty ocean suck the moisture from my skin And I know staying here will surely do us in And I walked on down to that lonely shoal Where my best hopes go to die I thought I will keep you in my pen Until the ink wells all go dry And I’ll keep it like a secret every day
4.
The orderlies shuffle across black and white marble They’re bustling reminders that no one can slow down the days The white coats and black boards, they conspire behind locked doors They don’t want to tell you how long until it eats me away I wish you would wake me when I’m violently shaking Tossing and turning through dreams where I die giving up I wish it had been you that I’d given my heart to Instead of just wasting these moments by biting my tongue And I’ve been having dreams of black and white infirmaries With the palest walls that always stand in silence If I thought that you could hear, I’d whisper in your ear All the things I couldn’t come around to writing I’ve been constantly stepping with these unwanted weapons Like the things that I think and I feel will destroy everything So I’ll hold a flame to the things I won’t tell you And sift through the ashes for some kind of reason to sing And I’ll bleed right out of these wounds I gave myself And I’ll live out, live out this life with nobody’s help
5.
I’ve been lost in fear and loathing on a bathroom tile floor Holding fistfuls of my blood, barely together And for a moment it had seemed like to die was just to dream And to live after tonight would be a nightmare And in the mirror I could see an older man stare back at me With drinks and crushed up pills like some failed science He seemed to say without a voice that his future was a choice And the truth will all at once become apparent Won’t you be the liberator to this overactive brain? Because I’ve been struggling to feel out what these thoughts mean I’m a stumbling narcoleptic, fingers grasped to hearts of glass And in a bed of shards I’ll fall right into good dreams Where life would stand so still And for a moment we are free Restless souls flown from the sea One day I will Steal the traction from the ether Walk right into everything I want to be And when my bones are laid into the ground some day I hope to hell I had the guts to tell you everything And when my bones are laid into the ground some day I hope to hell that you and I'd seen everything Because I’ve been lovesick lost and lonely on the wrong side of the world In a decade strong of suffering in silence And when this town paints me a cynic, I guess that’s just what I’ll be Because there’s no greater hope left in this idle city
6.
We were bought head first into the unbearable light Like ships that would set sail out from the San Francisco night It was my fortune we’d collide at sea And like the ghost, you’d rescue me You can call me Wolf if you please And we’ll watch the fog roll in And you’ll bury me at sea Thoughts of you still chase me like a shadow So I hide in lightless corners and drink my way into the shallows And one day when I wash ashore Our love can come and go once more Seems that’s what nights like these are for I wish that I could feel your faith Like a softly sanded shore where the salty ocean breaks One day I’ll sleep among these waves And no undying soul will ever leave this lonely place Maybe someday you could come and find me When you’ve got nothing to believe Maybe one day we could be together Down at the bottom of the sea
7.
Christopher 02:55
Up on a mountain over the plains Christopher sat with his hands to his face This urn is her casket, this ash her remains It doesn’t feel right just to throw it away So he kept it with him everywhere that he strayed With long narrow shadows he shouldered the weight If I keep her with me, then I’ll keep her safe He choked down the words that he wanted to say Wish I could run from the place that poisons my passion away Wish I never wrote her anything Let this be the last song I sing Grooves in his shoulders, the urn still in his clasp Christopher struggled against the river so fast Imaginary messiahs like the world on his back Pushed him under the current where he drowned with the ash There’s no moral to your story Yeah they’re lying again my friend There’s no moral to your story, my friend Say goodbye to the place that poisons your passion away If you write a lost love anything Don’t let it be the last song you sing
8.
Eyes open to the vacuous black In the dark of a windowless bedroom The blurry unknown date and the smile across my face Are singing out loud like a siren The sun shrank and scattered The daylight fades away each time the same None of this matters If these few nights could stay I’d carry your words to my grave Redemption in a long morning road A mirror to the past in gray and yellow The love I harbored died; now I collect the open sky I’m a calloused heart resurrected The night we reached the sky Still stays with me like the smile that I’d find When we kissed and I felt like I tasted the air for the first time I thought I could melt away A specter in the bareness of the day Like the fortune that this gambler would trade For one moment on a quiet winter Sunday
9.
Montreal 02:14
Windshield reflections of rattling dashboards Trinkets from truckstops in places we don’t know Montreal skyline is stunning in the spring Makes me remember there’s something worth keeping And when the bars close I’ll bring it all home back to you Unopened stamp books and unaddressed post cards Wish I was better at finishing what I start A life on the run is so much more forgiving Than places and people that I left for living But down this highway I will still wait on for you And when I’ve seen this world I won’t wander anymore Still it’s nothing without you So darling if you’re home, would you mind picking up the phone? Because I’ve got something to say
10.
Ariel 03:32
Ariel, you know there’re some things I’m not sorry for But when I’m drinking myself down a hole, it’s you I’m thinking of When the winter shrouds this boring town I will trudge through snow wishing you were around Ariel, to curse the snowflakes with me as they fall Ariel, I hope you’re somewhere where the weather’s warm I’ve been walking down these icy roads; someday I’ll disappear When the snow pulls down on my bending boughs I will dream of a place where you’re safe and sound Ariel, and I’ll hope to hell you’ll find it Ariel, I hope this finds you smiling And if I could believe for a moment that these words mean anything I’d sing until the world fell dead asleep Ariel, I thought that if you stayed gone long enough I wouldn’t think of getting tangled up with you ever again But the past has a way of making you stay And those sour grapes seem so much sweeter to me Ariel, when your memory still haunts me When I think about those days It looks like that famous picture of the VJ day parade And through a haze of ticker tape I can see you clad in white with that smile on your face Just another memory I’ll lose to time You’re just another memory I’ll lose to time
11.
The future seemed dimmer and unbearably cold The nights we learned there’s a meanness in this world And it will find you I still recall the yellow flowers you held My room in the basement and the nights it rained like hell Until the morning Now there is a light that sharply divides This great expanse of space and time With you on your side and me on mine If this should be the last song I sing I’d like to tell you just one thing How I loved you desperately I’ll rattle the screws loose on this hospital bed Sickly and stirring from the things I should have said When I said nothing I should have known you would have listened to me You’d save me from drowning in the secrets that I keep You could have saved me Now there is a light that sharply divides This great expanse of space and time With you on your side and me on mine If this should be the last song I sing I’d like to tell you just one thing I loved you; I still love you desperately
12.
The summer waltzes off in pirouettes of fiery red The whole world turns over our heads Wish I could be the one who keeps the cold from coming on But it gets colder every dawn If we could walk so far We could save our hearts If we could just get out Then I could lay me on down This city beckons me to recreate the perfect time When your wanderlust met mine There is nobody here to keep us dull and standing still We will bend the stars to our will And I want to see those parallel lines that never meet Like our dreams all unbroken under our feet And I want to see those city lights come over me With you sleeping sound in the front seat Run away, run away while the sun’s down Right away, right away get everything in the van Gone away, gone away for the winter Run away, run away we’ve got to run while we can

about

Much has happened since Elway's first record: That dork John Elway tried suing them over his dumb last name; the even bigger dorks at MRR deemed them not punk enough for their magazine; and they got to play shows with cool bands like Against Me!, NOFX, Dead To Me, BTMI, etc. Not bad for a buncha cruelty-free, dumpster-divin', god-hating dirtballs from the hippie haven that is Colorado.

Recorded at Atlas in Chicago (Menzingers, Alkaline Trio, Smoke or Fire), "Leavetaking" is the product of (no shit) 22 cases of Busch Light and some long, long nights. With a great debut and even greater EP in their wake, the table is set for Elway to step up and be the next shit-hot band on Red Scare, and we're sure this is the album to do it.

credits

released June 25, 2013

Recorded in February of 2013 at Atlas Studios, Chicago.
Recorded, mixed, and produced by Matt Allison and Justin Yates.
Mastered by Collin Jordan at The Boiler Room, Chicago.

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Elway Fort Collins, Colorado

Elway started back in 2007 as a drunken mess called 10-4 Eleanor. They released a few records under the old moniker before changing their name in 2010 after signing with Red Scare Industries. 3 LPs, 2 EPs, 500+ shows in 23 countries later, they are still a drunken mess. ... more

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