Get all 13 emperor penguin releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Gentlemen Thieves, Sunday Carvery, Corporation Pop!, Barbed Wire and Brass E.P., Palaces and Slums EP, Taken For A Ride E.P., Talk To Me, Soak Up The Gravy, and 5 more.
1. |
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The men of fashion gather in the bars
Drinking absinthe with the avant garde
Red of cheek and black of hair
Waving their revolvers in the air
Hello Picasso, Hello Picasso, Hello, Hello
I saw you in the windmills of Montmartre
Making others suffer for your art
Love affairs and suicides
Everything bohemia provides
Hello Picasso, Hello Picasso,
Hello, hello
G-G-G-Gauguin left the city for Tahiti now
He’s smoochin’ with a South Pacific sweetie, now
Where love is free
Love, love, love,
And it's green, greener than your eyes
And it's sweet, much to my surprise
Alcohol will numb the pain
While the wormwood rots your brain
And it's sweet
And it's green
When I see you
When I see you passing by
Hanging out with Gertrude Stein, I cry
Hello Picasso
Ca va Degas
Monet, Manet
Bonsoir Renoir, au revoir!
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2. |
Go Guitargonauts
03:04
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Speeding through space, in search of tunes
That need the twang of a million moons
Green sapphire plectra, poised to attack
Fenders aflame, Gibsons to stun,
a pentatonic miracle from the Rickenbac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ker
Cosmic riders on a pedal board that so-o-o-o-ars...
Go go go Guitargonauts, whammy bar bending, augmenteds descending
screaming through your darkest thoughts,
plucking the pleasure from every measure
Hand picked from across the bands of time
Warriors battling musical crime
Strings bent through Warp Factor 9,
listen to the sirens from the Telecast-as-as-as-as-ter
Cosmic riders on a pedal board that so-o-o-o-ars...
Go go go Guitargonauts, whammy bar bending, augmenteds descending
screaming through your darkest thoughts,
plucking the pleasure from every measure
Slash Gordon, Kid Hendrix, Captain Clapton,
The Red Ronson,
Queen Bass and The Fantastic Fuzz -
BEWARE THE VIRULENT MOOG
Go go go Guitargonauts,
when someone’s in trouble we’ll come at the double
creating space-age perfect chords,
through countless millenia they’ll never forget ya
Guitargonauts are Go!
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3. |
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Saint Thomas Aquinas
Can't help me now.
My virtue's a virus
That's going around
MY power is perfect
My nature is free
I don't know what's come over me.
She was in armour
I was a shield
Nothing could harm her
I wouldn't yield
She was a fortress
Surrounded by sea
I don't know what's come over me
And there's a strange sensation
A queasy agitation
and now you're near
It's very clear
the nature of my malady
I used to believe in the natural laws
Discovered by reason
Disproven by flaws
Frailty's human
On that we agree
I don't know what's come over me
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4. |
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She was the one on my screen
Popping up every minute
She was the one in my dreams
For a moment in time
She’s at the heart of the scene
If it’s on then she’s in it.
I thought that love was never ending
I thought that we would carry on
I found that Katie’s only trending
In a moment she was gone.
Time flashes past every hour
Every minute and second
Time goes so fast every day
See another one fly
Nobody’s got staying power
When mortality beckons
I thought that love was never ending
I thought that we would carry on
I found that Katie’s only trending
In a moment she was gone.
In a moment she was gone.
Someone else will come along.
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5. |
Hole in Your Soul
04:53
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Keep your blood cool in the mud pool
Give yourself to yourself, don’t be somebody’s fool
Stay in the dark and the weeds,
don’t stray where the stickleback leads
You don’t need what they need, use the ooze
Wrapped in the batter, behind over matter
Rolled in the crust like a toad in the hole
Dive in the deep end, dig out a new friend
Together you’ll weather the hole in your soul
Be a true friend, earn what you spend
Give your time til it hurts, it pays dividends
Tell me you know what I mean, pump up your kindness machine
Give your existence a hug, then spread it around
Scream to go faster, join in the laughter
Make sure there is no hole in your soul
Go kiss a Grandma, that’s what they’re there for
Give generously and do as you’re told
Cry like a baby, soak up the gravy
You’ve got to burn the coal in your soul
Give way to wonder, get out from under
You’ve got to earn the whole of your soul
WORK HARD, BE NICE, LOVE LIFE, LA LA LA LA
Open the latches, undo the catches
Can’t win a match unless you score a goal
Don’t let disaster damage the plaster
That is surrounding the whole of your soul
Celebrate babies, stop and smell daisies
You have to patch up the hole in your soul
Abandon your armour, examine your karma
Avoid the dirt when you’re digging for gold
Shout to the rafters in the hereafter
Build a cage round the hole in your soul
Amplify truth and locate the proof of
The universe breathing inside your soul
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6. |
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Feel free to slap me, it’s all I deserve.
After all the times I let you down you must think I've got a nerve.
And if we’re being honest, I’m the type you should swerve.
The last dice are thrown - I’ve cashed in everything that I own.
So I went and I bought you a brand new yesterday
To replace the one I ruined for you the day before today.
And I’ll make sure it’s better in every single way.
What do you say?
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7. |
Flaming June
04:21
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On a panel in a cupboard in a hidden room
In a mansion, a forgotten family heirloom
The lustre of the loss adjusters can’t dispel the gloom
She slumbers in a swoon
Flaming June
He’s coming in
She’s going out
She gives a shout
She’s like a lion.
He’s like a lamb
Can’t understand
Bird in the hand
He can’t stop crying
As they sat down to breakfast one day
The butler served divorce on a tray
Forgotten in a Battersea flat
He keeps the asking price in his hat
Flaming June
Sleeps ‘til noon
Calls the tune
Flaming June
Uniformed staff
Crystal carafes
No riff raff
Nothing could be finer.
Gone to the dogs
She popped her clogs -
Stuff catalogued.
Monogrammed china.
Thank god it isn’t me, say the neighbours
She hated sympathetic strangers
He didn’t mean to start an adventure
She locked herself away from the censure.
I don’t know much about art but I know what I like
Nothing abstract that a child could have done
The portrait of a lady with not a lot on
No-one comes to call on all
the endless afternoons
She slumbers in a swoon
Flaming June
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8. |
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He gave her up for forty days,
but soon reverted to his ways
Sometimes he comes but never stays,
It wasn’t meant to be
And through the rain-streaked window pane,
she watched him drive away again
She knew the answer there and then,
there’s more to life than me
You were the one, with cinnamon and tarragon
You can’t decide, if any kind of promise will provide
With hairspray set in harmony,
you want all the world to see
But you only have ‘til half past three,
you’ll be the death of me
As you move from place to place,
the lines get clearer on your face
Standing still at second base,
prepare to strike for home
And through the rain-streaked window pain,
I watch you walk away again
It’s never easy to explain,
the damage that you’ve done
You were the one, with vinegar and valium
You can’t decide,
if any kind of compromise is right.
With hairspray set in harmony,
you want all the world to see
But you only have ‘til half past three,
you’ll be the death of me
You’ll be the death of me
With every last and laboured breath
I know that you will be the death of me
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9. |
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I left a life in London
For service by the sea
I found a job as a classics teacher
With the boys of the Lower Five B
Persistent perpetrators
Malignant agitators
We lick your frigid fingers
All your frigid life
We give your teddy to the Oxfam shop
Coca-Cola to your waiting wife
Paradise for the blessed
But nothing nice for the emotionally repressed
Modus Vivendi
When do we start to live?
They’re not so friendly
And something’s got to give.
Everywhere that I go
Aggeridge, Blisterine
Unman, Wittering and Zigo
Everyone that I know
Bungabine, Cloistermouth
Unman, Wittering and Zigo
The college bells are ringing, ringing in my ears
The angel voices singing, I can hardly hear
Orris, Root and Lipstrob, follow very near.
Ankerton and Borby can make you disappear.
The whole world is ending
Brittle bodies peel
We demand the impossible
We insist that the dream is real
We overthrow the bastards
We have become the masters now.
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10. |
Memoria Magdalena
03:51
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It’s not there, apart from one single photograph where
I swear that I see myself there - running in late again
White and fair, design an unusual and minimal prayer
To childhood and all that’s found there
I reach right back ‘til I’m five
here’s where this place can survive
Memoria Magdalena
Could’nt care, for what was outside our own atmosphere
Inside was where it was clear - it felt like another home
Beyond the veil, a secret quadrangle’s treasures appear
Flora to draw in our stare, was everywhere
I reach right back ‘til I’m five
here’s where this place comes alive
Memoria Magdalena
Take me back to hide
Amongst that grace
I reach right back ‘til I’m five
here’s where this place can survive
Memoria Magdalena, I hear your voice.
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11. |
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Stranger
Danger
Be careful on the road
Think once
Think twice
Follow the country code
Nightmares you’ll find
In your tiny mind
Public information
That you scorned
You’ve been warned
Paedos
In speedos
Wait in your swimming pool
It’s scary
Be wary
Follow the golden rule
If you’re home alone
You’re in the danger zone
Public information
Comes for free
On TV
That branch won’t take your weight
Says the reaper by the lake
Went to play by railway tracks
Now he’s never coming back
You can’t escape your fate
You will asphyxiate
In an abandoned fridge
Under a railway bridge
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12. |
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Another Saturday
Another game to play
The one you underestimated
Drinking by the river wall
You start to see it all
Twelve hours of daylight won't be wasted.
And from that moment on
You found the puzzle gone
In Marlowe's tavern where you reckoned
Because you know it's true
Her eyes were speedwell blue
The future changes in a second
And, oh, wasn't it so nice to get away
And wind up driving north
to watch the sun as it went down
And though it might take twenty years or more to say
You closed your eyes and wished that it would stay
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13. |
A Person From Porlock
03:31
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There is a house of pleasure with a Dragon in the Hall
On sixteen miles of fertile land enclosed within a wall
Adrift in clouds of opium reflected in a stream
A man from Porlock came to call and wiped away your dream
Mr Schubert’s symphony we call it number eight
Was dealt a heavy beating by the fickle hand of fate
A break in concentration and the nasty French Disease
What would number forty seven say to number three?
You can’t always finish what you started
You can’t always make it to the end
A stone gets thrown into the pool and on reflection who can see the fool?
Like all tomorrow’s parties this one’s speeding to an end
You talked for half an hour and you thought you’d made a friend
The enemy of promise is a beast of chase and game
Drinking from a pleasant fountain, failed to catch her name
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14. |
Burning Man
04:59
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Raced his way to rich man passing beggar man and thief
On the day she left his hair turned platinum with grief
Twice around the harbour, once around the dock
Blue diamonds in his pocket that keep all the doors unlocked
Here comes the burning man, and he can see for miles
Asking you to school him with a strap across his back
Slide between the hotel sheets dressed in your plastic mac
Nice work if you can get it, if I may be so rude
Your mother might be proud of you but you always end up screwed
Here comes the burning man, and he can see for miles
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emperor penguin UK
Savage Frenzy Productions is proud to present those peerless purveyors of powerful pop: EMPEROR PENGUIN.
Nigel: guitar,
bass, vocals
JT: guitar, bass, vocals, harmonica, ebow
Rich: drums
Neil: guitar, vocals, keyboards, computer stuff
... more
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