A couple of truly exquisite lyricists are Jonathan Meiburg and Will Sheff of the sadcore band Shearwater. Here are some songs from their debut "The Dissolving Room":
Little Locket
He's got a little locket picture of the maids' commission. With bees blowing through the bushes, he makes the first incision, and these dolls race through the garden. A chef on boneless roses opens the bandages, and this empty house discloses what the guest's dreams are hiding, as he rests above the arbor with little flowers crying for all their heads he's harbored. And the then midnight market stalls fill with up chloroform, the face within his locket mouths "take off your uniform." They kiss him before parting, then melt into his pockets. He's trampling through the garden and he's got a little locket.
The Left Side
A pretty one-eyed girl from the state of Maine can't see the church: it's on the left side of her brain. But it's clothed in browning leaves and it wants to take her in, and there's a Parson's robe inside that wants to feel her skin. And the sleeves of warm, black cloth are hungry for her wrists, and the pages of the Holy Book are hungry for her kiss. She'll go home all alone on the right hand of the interstate and the church upon the hill it will sit in crumbling leaves and it will wait for her, wait to be together. But she won't want it, ever. It's like a dream I had: this girl I went to see (and I can't sing her name, she might be listening to me), in a room of missing tiles we felt ourselves entwine, and she bit my tongue and shouted as I crawled into her mind. It was full of singing mouths and apples in the air, a soft, warm little room that was surrounded by her hair. And, alone, when we awoke, we stretched our legs and spoke to the people we were sleeping with in voices not our own, in the cool of our beds with the words just dissipating in the empty air ahead, and this other world just waiting until we're dead.
Sung into the Street
Good morning to the frozen street: I'm like a dresser full of leaves, my eyes as dry as dust. There is a curtain in my mouth, it opens and a song comes out. I've sung the loneliest words into your listening stones. Moss curled and songs have twirled their tunes around your bones. Good morning Uncle with your pen, the furniture was born again at night while you slept in. The room it wrapped around your body, double pillows held your head. I watched your shrinking skin, and all the lines that fill your face in were falling into space. There is a light that is so dim and a hand that pulls you in when you can't swim anymore. The freezing water fills your lungs, the weight of waves surrounds your skin, and the outside comes all the way in. Your heart is held inside this box and we've got to turn it off, so please don't be afraid. The love you gave us will go on, we'll hold your memory when you're gone, your self just can't be saved. So shut your eyes and I'll switch off your heart. Watch the sick room fall apart. Watch this machine's counter restart. Uncle, if I could hold your open, never-broken heart, I would have held it from the start.
Long Ride, Part II.
Amy Jeanne, you're in my dream. Your eyes they seem like stars and all this seems like scaffolding to lift up who you are. The hospital, the long ride home, your hands as new as snow. You lie asleep in the backseat and I can feel you glow.
