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Freshman EP

by Casey Bolles

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1.
Potential 02:13
I built myself up from broken parts / but an autoclave is a good place to start / the more that I write, the more I feel like a fraud / playing with fire, not praying to a god. // They say hell is a place where the devil makes / something you love into something you hate, / but I have grown happy in ruts of repetitive shame. // But I've got good bones // I tore myself down into broken parts, / this well-oiled machine was a good place to start; / pep-talks wasted in prep school, / that ego-stroking cesspool // left me with spit-shine on these new shoes, / I never wore them right so I sing my blues: / security is expensive, / I’m on a conveyer belt to a life I don't want to live: // “Bootstraps," "the American dream," // well I've spent enough time with gravel in my knees / to know these streets aren't gold / they're asphalt and concrete. // Your suffering is not unique, trade comfort for sweat and trade blood in for ink / I've got good bones, good bones. //Aesthetically, I cannot compete / My muscles have near atrophied / But I've got good bones.
2.
When I awoke / in a cold sweat, / I opened my eyes in hopes last year was all in my head. // Well, of course, it wasn't. / I stared at a ceiling who hates me / because indecision feeds complacency // When I awoke / I did not know where I'd been sleeping / But I had an inkling it was not the bed I’d wanted. // High-rise or basement, / you take your pick. / I want to be six feet underground with flowers on the surface // Because I'm so fucking tired / Of waking up tired / With that throbbing pain in my head // I know I'm speaking vaguely, / but lately, / Those are the only terms in which I can speak adequately // Now, I know that / I don't have the guts // To go home, / and face what I have not done: // Golden opportunities / are sitting right in front of me // Still I hold my hands behind my back: / an excuse to not take the good and bad I deserve to get. // I found peace in a parking lot. / I think I'll tell everyone I was hanging out with my friends. / Then in the morning, I'll drive home like nothing ever happened. / I found peace in a parking lot.
3.
My friend Will spends his time snorting different shit / and he laughs as I burn all my bridges for kicks, / he says external connections are more important / than the ones inside his head. // Now he's lingering outside his apartment building, / smoking and coughing and laughing and talking and smiling. // Now I'm sitting outside with a girl I spend / too much time thinking about / And she's staring at the ground with a sadness / I know all too well // I tell her, "Cherish what genuine relationships you do have / while you have them." // She won't look me in the eyes / as she says, "Take your own advice, / You're a goddamn hypocrite." // She was bottled up, now she's breaking down, / Sitting on a park bench, trying not to be so loud // I will spray paint this cardboard all the colors that I like, / I will spray paint my face until the fumes get me high, / so I cannot think, and I cannot breathe, / and I will not see no one's supporting me // Because I cannot exist in a vacuum, / and not just for the lack of air. / I have got nobody to talk to. / She says, "Don't look at me, I don't fucking care." // But I was bottled up, now I'm breaking down, / For god's sake, I'm in public / I'll try not to be so loud. // And at night, she wages wars inside her head. / She is a beast of burden. / I am a handful of a person. / I compare myself to all my friends and then beg, "Why can't I just love them?"
4.
Tattoo 02:58
She has a tattoo that reminds her / she is lucky to be breathing. / She has a tattoo that reminds her / of the things she tells herself she loves. / I don't believe she feels lucky / I don't believe she loves anything // She doesn't love anything. // She doesn't leave the confines of her bedroom / still she doesn't sleep like she used to. / She has these dreams she cannot explain / and for the nights she is too far gone to remember her own name. / She has these tattoos / She has these tattoos // I can fucking smell you / from the across the room. / Your stupid perfume / made me wanna puke / And I took refuge in the bathroom // I look in the mirror. / Does my hair look okay? / Can I keep a straight face? / I cannot keep a straight face.
5.
What do you do / when everything that's ever haunted you / is in your head? / "It's all in your head." // What do you do / when that Prozac you take / is not enough to make all those / awful thoughts go away? // You could go to your parents' home / and you could move back in, / but then the kids from high school / win. // You could kill yourself / But you are scared to die / and besides, you'd never settle on a method of suicide. // You say, "Don't touch me, / get your hand off my leg, / you're making me sick, / I want to go home." // But your house / is not a place you want to be, / you say you do not love your / family. // Can we still hang out? / Can we drive around / like we used to? But this time, I promise, / I will not try to kiss you.
6.
Your vessel lay naked / in my bedroom / but I was too nervous / to touch you. // You gave me your body / in my bed, / now you owe me the wounded stem / in the back of your neck. // Now I'm waiting tables in New York / and you're back in Buffalo. / You've got all your friends / but you're sleeping alone // I hope you're sleeping alone. / I've been sleeping alone. // You gave me your body / in the back of my car. / And you don't owe me anything / Especially not your art.
7.
The ghosts from the past twenty years are here to stay like the smoke in my lungs or the thoughts in her brain // And like tectonic plates, we’re shifting slowly // We are chemicals, forging relationships between things that are otherwise unrelated // And like glaciers, we’re shifting slowly. // Like nothing in this world, I thought I might be stationary. Or like a flower, maybe even growing // But like a mountain, I am eroding // I thought like a person, almost just like a person, almost exactly like a person, thought I might be living // But like a star of a binary system, I am swirling around someone or something // And like the continents, just like the continents, we’re shifting slowly apart.

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released June 8, 2015

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Pure Noise Records Nashville, Tennessee

Independent record label since 2009.

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