Lyrics
[text-only lyrics] [lyric illustrations gallery]
Illustrated Lyrics
Lyric illustrations from Roll as a Hexagon, also available as a printed book.
Text-Only Lyrics
Track Index
01 Bristol
02 Tea Song
03 Broken Town
04 Scent of April
05 Night til Morn
06 Beetle Shell
07 We Had Our Time
08 Star Shaped
09 Mycelium
10 Days Like Today
11 Vignette
12 Old Enough to Know Better
SIDE 1
Bristol
2011
We sat in Bristol
You said you thought I had synaesthesia
The sky was crystal
We let people assume that we were lovers
It was easier
And I see Tuesdays as green
You’d say they were blue though you’d not considered their hue before
I don’t speculate too much
On what might have been had you seen them as green
But I hold this summer scene
In a snowglobe behind the wardrobe door
My Wednesday warms like the leaves on the late August trees
With their soaked summer chlorophyll dreaming
But I’m not really a synaesthete
Must be the heat
And the carriage wheels screaming
Our minds exerted
Inventing card games with used-up train tickets
As we diverted
Through the valleys and consonants
And crickets
Soft slow summer delays
What’s a smile and the accidental brush of our hands worth?
You missed your station and I missed you
When you alighted one stop later at Tamworth
Helen Bell – vocal, synths, viola
[text-only index] [illustrations gallery]
Tea Song
2011
Running out among the jackdaws in the unrepentant mist
Until the city sounds as distant as your transient kiss
Through deadlines and river mud
And open-ended dreams with no momentum
And shoelaces undoing
Shrugging off February
In the hope that some kind of spring is brewing
And by turns
Each of us would fill a cup
Draw a circle through the spiralling tea
With our chances and collisions and our fears stirred in
By turns
Sometimes you turn to me
I know that you won’t love me
You say you can’t love anyone
And I will love too much
As I already love too many
Handing out my precarious heart
To all of my beloved melancholics
And you, just as each of them,
Could crumple it like paper
With your name still freshly inked on it
There is room for more than two cups in the pot
And I intend to pour out six at once and drink them all hot
And you intend to keep all of yours warm
Just for one and one
I guess it saves on cleaning up
And though we don’t buy each other’s paradigms, perhaps
I’ll half-delude myself a while that our convictions overlap
Though we both know that really we’re just filling in the gaps
But meanwhile, why not pour another cup?
I got up this morning, since you’ve given me those back
Made the tea and lifted letters from the mat
There’s a postcard from Persephone
The Acheron by night, it says she’s packing
She’ll be back for us to see soon
I’ll keep shrugging off this desolation
Rowing through the flood using just a teaspoon
Helen Bell – vocal, clavinet, viola, violin, bass guitar
Tom Drinkwater - drums
[text-only index] [illustrations gallery]
Broken Town
2001
I can't stay in this broken town
That rests beside a sullen sea
Standing in the dull, sad rain
This town is killing me
It's not the kind of breathless rain
For laughing in and running through
But quiet and grey in empty streets
With nothing left to do.
This town is like a broken heart
That once was bright and young and strong
And when an old love burnt it out
It tried to carry on
But now there's no-one left to buy
The shops are closing day by day
They’re boarding up a broken town
With nothing more to say.
If you were in this broken town
You'd fade into the aching grey
Like all the years of dried up tears
That still get in my way
This town can never be the same
And nor can I and nor can you
The cracks run far below the ground
There's nothing we can do.
If we could mend this broken town
We'd have to let the walls fall down
Strip the buildings to their bones
So we could see the strongest stones
On them we could build a wall
Could build a new town up again
But would the strongest stones survive
Or crack beneath the strain?
I can't stay in this broken town
And watch it crumble to the sea
As every rock that breaks away
Just takes a part of me
If I stay here I’ll turn to stone
So I will leave this broken town
And find a place where we might build
Anew on solid ground.
Helen Bell – vocal, synths, electric piano, recorders, bass guitar, accordion
[text-only index] [illustrations gallery]
Scent of April
2011
Scent of April
Sound of Friday
Out in the street the wine is rising with the moon
We are cultivating thickets of words
Grown up inside this room.
I want to walk with you beyond the bypass
Walk far enough to get away from ourselves
If we walk far enough
In the dark we might dissolve
The night will paint over in black
Those loops we cannot close
The river will flow in
The river will flow in and fill the holes
But you know we'll have to walk back sometime
To where the streetlights graze our skin
Back
Painted over in black
Where do we begin?
Quiet autumn
Starry leaf-fall
Out by the tide I watched you turning like a sail
We are cautious with these values of ours
Aching raw without their veils
I want to walk with you beyond the bypass
Walk far enough that we might meet ourselves
If we walk far enough
In the dark we might evolve
And we will grow into the black
And open out the sky
The river will erode
The river will erode the last small lies
But you know we'll have to walk back sometime
To where the streetlights graze our skin
Back
Walking out of the black
Here we begin
Helen Bell – vocal, electric piano, synth, violin
Tom Drinkwater – bass guitar
[text-only index] [illustrations gallery]
Night til Morn
2011
Pinned onto your walls were abstracts of old wisdom
Copied out and stuck there by your hand
Like an ink and paper exoskeleton
That I tried, but could not reach beyond
The way I thought I used to.
Boxed up in the city with your books and saucepans
Listlessly in love with one so far away
You called me over, ceilidh calling
There’s a dance hall calling us to play
The way we always used to.
Those old nights when we were driving out the beat
Minds entangled, gin-soaked, tongue-tied, shy to speak
But I let my sound slide into yours
And an ache was catching in my throat with every chord
But the buttons and the bellows and the wood and the winding
Demand no bond
Demand no bond of words.
Nothing I could prove, still everything to lose
But what we may have lost is still unnamed
For our mouths have never sealed a promise
That might run the risk of being torn
But if I lost you I know it's only to
All the things you always said you sought
Tied a tag on this belated promise
And it says I know you can't be bought
Just stay warm
From night til morn
So you count the days, then join her where she waits
Meanwhile here's a tune to spark the dusk
By cider-moon and shadowed garden
We uncovered what was overgrown
Caught your old harmonic glossing through my fingers
Caught your eye and caught your sound in mine
And I'll never tell of this if you won't
For this is ours and ours alone
Those old nights when we were driving out the beat
Minds entangled, gin-soaked, tongue-tied, shy to speak
But I let my sound slide into yours
And an ache was catching in my throat with every chord
But the buttons and the bellows and the wood and the winding
Demand no bond
Demand no bond of words.
Helen Bell – vocal, clavinet, viola, accordion
Tom Drinkwater – drums, bass guitar
[text-only index] [illustrations gallery]
Beetle Shell
2009
There is a cobalt beetle shell mirror
Where my eyes grow young
Where dragonflies rattle around my brain
And I can’t tell if I’ve been stung
The air hangs yellow round the horses
The sloes grow ripe lethargically
And threads of blue fade in like vapour trails
Falling behind you as you speed from me
And you’d say cobalt beetle shell mirrors
Are not for weeping in
But for the sandstone and the sun
Such things for keeping in
Still my lungs howled hollow round the mountain
Old ragged leaves blew in to tamp my breath
But threads of green push in like willow shoots
Itching and heightening back to hungriness
Helen Bell – vocal, pianet, synth, recorder
[text-only index] [illustrations gallery]
We Had Our Time
2012
I tried to reach you; did you try to reach me?
Did you think that I might teach you as I thought you might teach me?
You taught me of my minority
When I cast my love wide and my faultlines bare
And of getting up early to catch the hope
Before the afternoon’s despair
We had our time
And it chimed and it rang
And it never quite rhymed
But we sang anyway
We had our time
And it chimed and it rang
And it never quite rhymed
But at least we sang
I tried to find you; did you try to find me?
Were you afraid that I might blind you? I guess you blinded me
But I snapped off the light from this projection bright
An after-image glazed my sight
But when it cleared you reappeared
And you still looked all right
Maybe some songs are better left unsung
But that would mean lessons left unlearned
I’d rather be heart-splintered and wiser than left to fade unresolved
Beneath the waning, bat-bitten moon as all the leaves turn brown.
When your easy, illegible eyes turn steely and mocking
Now I know it’s when you’re locking yourself down
I tried to know you but you wouldn’t know me
And I can’t grow you into some other tree
But you taught me to seek the minority
Who would cast their love wide and their faultlines bare
And of getting up early to catch the hope
Before the afternoon’s despair.
Helen Bell – vocal, piano, organ, recorders
Tom Drinkwater - drums
[text-only index] [illustrations gallery]
SIDE 2
Star Shaped
2015
I never meant that I wanted to leave you
Only that I was going there
These skylines are etched all over my eyes
I need to rinse them in cool blue air
We say all the things round the edges of questions
Whose answers we'd rather not know
Do you hear me not-saying 'I'll miss you'
As loudly as you are not-saying 'Don't go'?
I am from one thousand nights in the yellow glow
Ringing with loves and papered with laughter
Starlight and pavements to carry me home
Into their one thousand mornings after
But I am from under the arc of the curlew
And shouting at mountains that call a refrain
And silence that stands like a pool in the darkness
And pine forests taking the edge off the rain
I want to turn star-shaped and large
And fold up all kinds of you into my arms
Roll as a hexagon down to the beach
Float as a coracle over the sea
And while I'm away, hold you close and invisible
Like the bones of a song
Dismantling notions of home being nowhere
But quietly gone
There are no questions or promises
Our feet are our own, and the paths that we walk
Each inscribe a peculiar curve
I keep an ember, quietly
Inside a small jar of what might be
A glow that will show when our rangy trajectories
Spiral around to converge
I am from ships that arrive in the morning
Loneliness lulled by the sound of the tracks
And missing my stop where I don't speak the language
Feeling the twinges of want-to-go-back
And I am from back when I didn't quite know you
When I was all edges and trying too hard
And meeting by chance when I needed some kindness
And all of this starting to catch me off-guard
I want to turn star-shaped and large
And fold up all kinds of you into my arms
Roll as a hexagon down to the beach
Float as a coracle over the sea
And while I'm away, hold you close and invisible
Like the bones of a song
Dismantling notions of home being nowhere
But quietly gone
Helen Bell – vocal, electric pianos, violin, viola, bass guitar
[text-only index] [illustrations gallery]
Mycelium
2017
Inside the bubble the world is ending over and over and over on a screen
While outside the morning after still looks the same as it’s recently been
The light still falls golden over the south
The words still fall tired and loving from your mouth
And we can soothe each other over the end of another day
And everything will not be okay
And in a year or five we’ll see the upshot of what went down today
And there will be pseudo-news insisting something else is to blame
The light falls crisp and blue on the hills
On hands in hands, and the air is still
And soon the moon will loom over dusk’s soft grey
And everything will not be okay
We must pass around our small hopes to nibble on
It’s the only way to avoid the void
Might we become threads of mycelium?
Transporting quiet nutrients below the noise
Below the structures so vast and wrong
Our small dark corners were never safe and warm
But push a tendril within a hairline crack
Everything will not be okay
But still we’ll try to grow some of this back
Helen Bell – vocal, synths, violin, recorder
[text-only index] [illustrations gallery]
Days Like Today
2016
On days like today
I don't find any words
There are plenty of them out there
But none of those are mine
And none of those are yours
The words you need to hear from me cannot be
On days like today
All poetry and otherwise
Runs dry
There are verbal procedures
For days like today
The right words to say
In the worst of times
And I can't hold you across an ocean
So I have told you those same old inadequate lines
But what I wish is that the cities to the coastlines would fall silent
For a moment
For you
As if none of it all would ever sound any more
Then start up again together in a furious roar
That might cushion your cries as you let them outside
A unity howl for your rage to ride
But most of all I wish that I could make this stop
Most of all I wish that I could make this not.
Helen Bell – vocal, electric piano, synths, viola, recorder, accordion
'jackdaws fleeing after fireworks' by freesound.org.uk/people/uair01
'Curlew' by freesound.org.uk/people/Benboncan
'Static' by freesound.org.uk/people/AlienXXX
[text-only index] [illustrations gallery]
Vignette
2012
Last chance icecream van punches holes in November's decay
But we revel in the drizzle, and try to remember the way
Back to those smoke-filled chimeras that screech through our heads
At night, when our bodies lie prone in our beds
Now that the dark and the rain are upon us
We clutch at their threads
They transport me from odious polish and shine
The shame of this privilege so easily mine
But all of this gold, we exchange it for plastic
And daily disposable highs
While the dreams and ideals of the possible
Are steamed flat by the market's designs
Helen Bell – vocal, violins, piano, field recording (St. Sampson’s Square, York)
[text-only index] [illustrations gallery]
Old Enough to Know Better
2017
This room holds ghosts
The ghosts of what we didn't do that night
Watch them moving through the echo of an anecdote
I might not be here
Standing with you tonight
If we had back then
Watch them moving through until we are ready to begin
Do you trace the threads of what might have been
From the safety of now?
We're old enough to know better by now
We're old enough to know better now
Better now
Aren't we?
Now we're old enough to know better by now
We're old enough to know better now
Better now
Aren't we?
And I wonder about all those
With whom it all went wrong
Just because we collided when we were too young
When their losses and their curses
Slip quietly through
My sense of relief that none of them were you
And which of my whispers were their butterfly wingbeats?
How many days have I lived by their long-forgotten, incomplete
Unintended throwaway details?
Singing ‘May we never prosper and may we always fail’
This room holds ghosts
The ghosts of what we didn't do that night
Watch them moving through the echo of an anecdote
I've cautiously grown to flourish in your company
Though we mostly take our melancholia separately
But we're old enough to know better after all this time
You show me yours, and I'll show you mine
We're old enough to know better now,
Better now
Aren't we?
Old enough to know better now
Better now
Aren't we?
Now we're old enough to know better by now
We're old enough to know better now
Better now
Aren't we?