Death Cab for Cutie - Asphalt Meadows Album Lyrics

Listen to the ringing in your ears
The scrambled voices of your fears
Whispering, whispering
Listen to the sound of your heartbeat
Growing louder, gaining speed
You're breathin' out, breathin' in

In these nights
I don't know how I survive

Pacing across the room while she's asleep
Tears raining down her cheeks
Trying to hold, trying to hold on
Praying, even though you don't believe
Just in case they are received
By anyone, anyone

These nights, I don't know how I survive
(These nights, I don't know how I survive)
These nights, I don't know how I survive
(These nights, I don't know how I survive)
These nights, I don't know how I survive
(These nights, I don't know how I survive)
These nights, I don't know how I survive
(These nights, I don't know how I survive)

No, I don't know how I survive
(I don't know how I survive)
No, I don't know how I survive
(I don't know how I survive)

Listen to the ringing in your ears
The scrambled voices of your fears
Whispering, whispering

It's been a battle just to wake and greet the day
Then they all disappear like sugar in my coffee (sugar in my coffee)
A hint of sweetness but the bitterness remains
The acidity devouring my body (devouring my body)

But I am learning to let go
Of everything I tried to hold
Too long 'cause they all explode like roman candles

I used to feel everything like a flame
Now it's a struggle just to feel anything (to feel anything)
I watch the world from a window on a hill
Everyone moving as I'm standing still (I'm standing still)

But I am learning to let go
Of everything I tried to hold
Too long 'cause they all explode like roman candles

Ah woo, ah woo
Ah woo, ah woo

But I am learning to let go
Of everything I tried to hold
Too long 'cause they all explode
Like roman candles, like roman candles

Your kiss was a lonely prayer
When you slipped it into my mouth
I closed my eyes and held it in
And then I exhaled it out
The glow of the downtown lights
Casting shadows across your face
As if all the buildings knew
I could only know half of you

And I was a snake under your flowers
I just wanted to disappear
Into the understory of your beauty
Never to reappear
But there's a name writ on your cast
Above the bruised and broken bones
That tells everybody that you meet
To whom the damage is owed

We are a wave of white noise
Beneath the city sleeping
I saw the train doors closing
I felt your sorrow deepen
Here in the asphalt meadows
There's only one thing that grows
Finding the light through the concrete
Getting trampled under our feet

You said all your bridges and roads
They all lead to an airport
Planes drifting off into the sky
Always depart, but never seem to arrive
And there in the early hour
Lying naked in your unmade bed
I was thinking of how to tell you
What my ticket read

Your kiss was a lonely prayer
A single candle slowly burning down
But the light, your light was beautiful
Than it's here and now

We are a wave of white noise
Beneath the city sleeping
I saw the train doors closing
I felt your sorrow deepen
Here in the asphalt meadows
There's only one thing that grows
Finding the light through the concrete
Getting trampled under our feet

We rode a wave of white noise
Beneath the city sleeping
I saw the train doors closing
I felt your sorrow deepen
Here in the asphalt meadows
There's only one thing that grows
Finding the light through the concrete
Getting trampled under our feet

Getting trampled under our feet
Getting trampled under our feet
Getting trampled under our feet

Rand McNally atlas, cheap coffee stain
Now, I wouldn't know how to use one
With my life at stake
You were waiting on a payphone
At a truck stop in Houston
Trying to call your mother
'Cause she's a worrier
Handful of twenties in your overcoat
Always rolled into a pillow
On some stranger's floor
And you tell these stories with happy endings
Only when interrupted before they're over

But I won't let the light fade
I won't let the light fade
Chasing these roads into dawn
I won't let the light fade
I won't let the light fade
Falling asleep in their arms

It seemed these highways were never-ending
Circling odds and evens, the numbers ascending
Searching through static in the Wyoming plains
We danced to both kinds of music, as the old joke claims
And I wanted for nothing, I couldn't rent
We lived on whiskey and Twizzlers
And youth's discontent
With this Rand McNally atlas dog-eared and frayed
Like Old Testament verses
That make sense sense in this decade

Don't let the light fade
I won't let the light fade
Chasing these roads into dawn
I won't let the light fade
I won't let the light fade
Falling asleep in their arms
I won't let the light fade
I won't let the light fade
Chasing these roads into dawn

Now I'm holding on, holding on

I won't let the light fade
I won't let the light fade
I won't let the light fade
I won't let the light fade
I won't let the light fade
I won't let the light fade

In every movie I watch from the 50s
There's only one thought that swirls
Around my head now
And that's that everyone there on the screen
Yeah, everyone there on the screen
Well, they're all dead now
They're all dead now

And it ain't easy living above
And I can't help but keep falling in love
With bones and ashes
With bones and ashes
And when the color is too bold and bright
I'm daydreaming in black and white
Until it passes
Until it passes

I wanna know the measure
From here to forever
And I wanna feel the pressure
Of God or whatever

Oh, these days it's so hard to relax
You gotta hold a gun to my back
To make me smile
To make me smile
And the only way I seem to cope
Is by trying to hold onto hope
If just for a while
If just for a while

I wanna know the measure
From here to forever
And I wanna feel the pressure
Of God or whatever
Now it seems more than ever
There's no hands on the levers
And I wanna feel the pressure
Of God or whatever

Only rollers keep rolling
While the searchers keep scrolling

I wanna know the measure
From here to forever
And I wanna feel the pressure
Of God or whatever
Now it seems more than ever
There's no hands on the levers
And I wanna feel the pressure
Of God or whatever
Or whatever

There was a man who used to live by the ocean
But he never set foot in the sea
It made him nervous that the water was always in motion
And he feared the creatures who swam beneath

And when I asked him how he'd ended up there
Above a world he would never know
He said he'd driven all the way across America
And when he got to the edge, there was nowhere left to go

Nowhere left to go, nowhere left to go
Nowhere left to go, nowhere left to go

He said that nothing lives long, only the earth and the mountains
As he quoted black kettle's death song
The words drifting off into the emptiness
Of this great land where we've never belonged

And while the frontiers are ever-expanding
Our living rooms fall into disarray
And no one seems interested in fixing what they've broken
They just sweep the pieces into the bushes and slip away

Slowly slip away, slowly slip away
Slowly slip away, slowly slip away

And now he and I watch the foxglove grow through the clear cut
Where a forest once grew high and wild
For what is a funeral without flowers
And ten thousand tombstones reaching for the sky?

Reaching for the sky, reaching for the sky
Reaching for the sky, reaching for the sky

Take a picture to remember this by
You'll never hold all the details in your mind
Fillin' your head with superfluous facts
Pushin' out what you're never getting back

And all that's left is a version of the truth
A recollection that is often misconstrued
Sergeant Pepper with the faces of friends
But the names all elude you in the end

Kiss me just this one last time
Tell me that you once were mine

Take a picture to remember me by
To show everybody who you left behind
The near miss that almost shot you out the blue
And I was a city you were only passing through

And all that's left is a version of events
Favorably framed for the sake of self-defense
We barely notice as the pages disappear
Floating off into another year

Kiss me just this one last time
Tell me that you once were mine
Kiss me just this one last time
Show me that your love was mine

Kiss me just this one last time
Tell me that you once were mine
Kiss me just this one last time
Show me that your love was mine

You were by my side on the frontline
Do you remember? Do you remember?

Two casualties of the punk wars
Buried in leather, in leather

But these days I miss strangers more than I
More than I miss my friends
And the waves of conversations breakin'
On the shores of my head again

Furnishments dumpstered, a grand score
You didn't need money, not money
Everything you owned a hatchback
Battered and musty, and musty

But these days I miss strangers more than I
More than I miss my friends
In dive-bars filled with hopeless drunks sinking
Deeper into their sins
I'm tryin' to be here now, but I'm only asking when?

Reach out
Reach out
Reach out (to what is choking you, to what is choking you)
Reach out (to what is choking you, to what is choking you)
Reach out

But these days I miss strangers more than I
More than I miss my friends
And the waves of conversations breakin'
On the shores of my head again
But these days I miss strangers more than I
More than I miss my friends
I'm tryin' to be here now, but I'm only asking when?
Yeah, I'm tryin' to be here now, but I'm only asking when?
I'm tryin' to be here now, but I'm only asking when?

Wheat like waves
The Canadian plains were an ocean wide
Flowing to the sky with prefab sprout
Echoing out of your '90s Accord
With the mismatched doors

Away from the wives for just a few days
Traveling 'cross the divide, my delusions ablaze
But a homesteader's life at forty-five
Was just a fleeting dream
There's no way I'd survive
The winters in Saskatchewan are so cold

You talked of your kid
How frightened you'd been when she almost died
With tears in your eyes
But I could not pretend
To comprehend the depths of that kind of love
As a childless man

There's so little time, so many miles to drive
Before the endless sleep eventually arrives
But I never would've thought that life was so long
That we'd be growing old with stories untold

You were kindled by the dials on the dashboard
Your tattoos like the stamps upon your passport
Speeding like we thought we were escaping
From everything we feared that we were breaking
By trying to hold them in our hands

You were kindled by the dials on the dashboard
Your tattoos like the stamps upon your passport
Speeding like we thought we were escaping
From everything we feared that we were breaking
By trying to hold them in our hands

Fragments from the decade
Are splayed out on your floor
Like hundreds of locked doors
There's a story that you're trying to find
But the pieces don't fit together in your mind

Your mother was a drunkard
Your father was not a saint
Your sister lacked restraint
And in photos you were always staring through the lens
To some distant place you would rather have been

Days are lonely and long
Walking in place where you don't belong
Here on paved native lands
Time disappears from the palms of your hands

Fragments from the decade are dancing in the fire
Like marionettes on wires
And if you stare too long they almost seem alive
Too beautiful and helpless to survive

Days are lonely and long
Walking in place where you don't belong
Here on paved native lands
Time disappears from the palms of your hands

(Time disappears from the palms of your hands)
(Time disappears from the palms of your hands)

I've given up on aspiration
And I've given up on ever being cool
Gave up the drugs that made me restless
And all the alcohol that made me cruel

But I'll never give up, never give up
I'll never give up on you
Never give up, never give up
I'll never give up on you

Never give up, never give up
I'll never give up on you
Never give up, never give up
I'll never give up on you

I've given up on confrontation
And I've given up on every politician too
And I've given up on affectations
The dilettante they all consume

But I'll never give up, never give up
I'll never give up on you
Never give up, never give up
I'll never give up on you

Never give up, never give up
I'll never give up on you
Never give up, never give up
I'll never give up on you

Never give up, never give up
I'll never give up on you
Never give up, never give up
I'll never give up on you

Never give up, never give up
I'll never give up on you
Never give up, never give up
I'll never give up on you

Never give up, never give up
Never give up, never give up
Never give up, never give up
Never give up, never give up