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The Comedy Album

by Kleenex Girl Wonder

supported by
Chris Ucis
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Chris Ucis I just love you like a favorite pair of socks on the coldest day of the Millennium. xx
Fake Stanton
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Fake Stanton these songs get into your blood. quickly. I've played this record for so many friends and foes. They're all friends now
Sonny the Monster
Sonny the Monster thumbnail
Sonny the Monster There's so much variety to this album, and the songwriting is consistently top-tier as well. There was a time a couple years ago where I listened to this album almost every day for a month straight. Easily one of the top albums of the decade. Favorite track: Alone Indefinitely.
Jeff Aldrich
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Jeff Aldrich One of the best lyricists of all time.
Andrew S
Andrew S thumbnail
Andrew S WHY? I NEED TO TELL YOU WHY?
Justin Bendell
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Justin Bendell Best KGW since the Ponyoak halcyon daze. Pain makes beauty.
more...
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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    "The Comedy Album" is the 13th and most epic Kleenex Girl Wonder record.

    26 songs, covering a variety of genres, styles, and production methods, written and recorded over the course of two years, and now available on two slabs of strikingly coloured vinyl (some 'Comedy Blue,' some 'Bazooka Joke Pink').

    Featuring guest production from Max Tundra, Saskrotch, and The Hood Internet, plus the usual suspects of Graham Smith, Matt LeMay and Thayer McClanahan.

    Includes unlimited streaming of The Comedy Album via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 25 Kleenex Girl Wonder releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Poor Thing!, Losel Vila, Let it buffer. Forever, BLP, Ponyoak 20th Anniversary Edition, Past Blasts, cocolopez, White Lacuna, and 17 more. , and , .

    Excludes supporter-only releases.

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      $163.79 USD or more (35% OFF)

     

1.
Parody Music 03:09
Could it be? A break in the gloom? A frame for the bruise you left or the wounds you cleft with your shoes under the pretense of taking steps to improve? So I'll believe it when you make the 10 o'clock news. I'm only messing with you, but all the same if you find my societal impact isn't aligned with all this violent syntax, you can decline to describe what exactly it is and we can wrap up this chat and get back to the grid. But remind me: where oh where does the time go? Why does it matter at all given I'm so creepy and battered? I need you to grab those sepia-toned photographs of the past, or maybe read me a bad poem, or just rub my back. Stroke my thigh like I'm a regular guy, just some asshole who couldn't change your life if he tried. Look, I've got nothing to hide – did you have something in mind? Could it be? Could it be you're scared? C'est ma vie – c'est la vie en merde! Clarity shouldn't need be declared. Therapy can't reach the unprepared, but sweet parody…! It shouldn't take all night to capture the gist in a joke, cram your things in a bag and drift onto the road. You can get a studio below the Domino's or you could maybe immolate yourself in Cicero. At a US Maple show – no, Alkaline Trio – you could never take a joke. I don't even wanna know. When the pentothal flows, I bet you're out of control. Listen, I think you're dope but I'm a thousand years old. I could be; could I be so bold: how are we? How am I solo? Comedy is not a microscope, and I don't wanna seem like such a misanthrope, but get off of me! It doesn't take all kinds of minds to unpack this exercise in excrescence; you'll be fine with a mime and a stand-up comedian. Listen, I think you're nice, and I'm a stand up guy. So come on, hands up if you wanna take a chance on a lie. Honey, I think you're WILD, and I'm a stand-up comedian.
2.
She had a torso like the chassis of a Datsun, but her vernacular was awesome. Her hair was Franzia, her eyeballs were like saucers, but her mind was like at least as dark as Chaucer's. And I lost her ‘cause where I hung my head was my home. There's scared, and there's dead, and there's old and alone. But these days flair is all the rage; it's all millefiori and colonnades. Love can lift you up, but it's not enough to get you what you want. It's rough, I grant you. I wish that I had you But I had to give you up... Like Stephen Malkmus hates Spiral Stairs but no one really wants to take it there. I read in a newspaper life ain't fair. Also, everyone needs a dollar. And we've been through all this a thousand times: ditch the euphemistic aphorisms and lousy rhymes, do something worthwhile, and be proud. I wonder why the wackiest prank is being honest. And you can laugh as you watch us tearing up the village green. We'll set up shop in your subconscious and fill your heads with dreams the likes of which you'll never see! Love can lift you up, but it's like a drug – you can never get enough of that buzz. It's dumb, but the alternative is nothing or too much. So I guess I'll give you up to a roulette wheel and a fool that can deal with the cruel unfeeling facade, twice shod in your stiletto heels and your steel-belted wheels so you can ride for real or just walk right into my heart, knife twisting my arm – slight miss, but you're warm – I'm digging your charms: all glistening lipstick, stickers and yarn. All mysteries solved. I'm listening... Love can lift you up like a crutch, so you can hover above the chaos you came from. Love can lift you up, but it's tough to judge something as ubiquitous as the sun. Love can lift you up, yes, but are you prepared to plunge to the earth for someone? You're nuts. I get you. That's not the issue. Is all I can give you enough?
3.
Guy walks into Agartha... Says “Where are the stars, for starters? It's kinda like Sparta, but darker. I'm looking for a Dorothy Parker – long dark hair and eyes like Chris Marker. Last I saw her she was working for a startup, doing PR, a little front-end markup – these renaissance women are dying to be martyrs!” So we decided: the world is constantly divided. Privately, I sided with you, but I'm an island. I hope you become one too. Oh, boo-hoo – what, too soon? Guy leaves a bar like “Fuck you, moon. You never stick around or even tell me what to do.” Moon waxes, lyrically: “Fuck you too.” A Irish rabbi and a British priest were laughing as they riffed on the Middle East and now it's my job to read the cleric in. This shit is so goddamn embarrassing! An international exchange to trade prayers for sins! And who wins in an unfair comparison? If you can't walk in his shoes, how will you wear his skin? Hmm? Care to make your stupid joke again? I don't like it, but that's okay. I'll just cry or laugh, I won't whine or complain, because it might just seem absurd or abstruse, but every tight fifteen has a germ of truth. Oh wow, that's wild! Somebody write it down: “Guy turns around like ‘Fuck you, clown.’” Words flow like swirls of opium smoke from my mouth. Hurling stones at a big glass dome I'm told is Billy Joel's house. From Dawson's Creek to Krochmalna Street to the castles of Krakow: Blackout! / Back to the Beach The King's Speech / “Twin Peaks” “Party Up” / “How's it Going Down” / “Down” “Pon De Replay” / Dil Chahta Hai Broadway the Hard Way / Fame / “Sloop John B” Peelander Z / Freeway Amanda Palmer / Staind
4.
Wait wait wait – tell me who's on base? Anyway, I'm a genius at games and I'm seeing your face on the news, on the case. What do you stand to gain? What's your take – a foolish debate between two middle-aged corn flakes? One's born every day, in the states – I don't have data on the global rate – but I hate your attitude. Your platitudes make me constantly mad at you, but maybe I'm crazy! Down Periscope is nothing like the Navy. Oh, I wasted whole days slavin' over radio. Oh-oh, that's not slavery, no, no, no. It's just a shame that we both owe boatloads. The feds are forcing us to sing like we're at Cold Stone plus my course-load at the Sorbonne is making me disproportionately mean and horrible. C'est vrais! But hey, whatcha gonna do, today, To negate the lunacy of all the hate you spew at me? Maybe fake jewelry? Blasé tomfoolery? Andre 3000, Bee Thousand or John Fogerty? There's no way to deceive such a sweet human being, or perceive what you see, or achieve what you dream. See, me? I'm like a likeable belief. I like to liken it to lichen: it's a weed and it grows outside of me. Primally, violence tries to define me – fine with me. But I might keep on leaning on the demonspawns who grind my teeth. A sign of peace; a white Egyptian cotton sheet on a wire. The choir says “Never expire, retire. You're stuck in the muck and the mire of desire. Take snuff to stay tough in the widening gyre. Liars for hire: die in a fire.” Please God don't give Janis Joplin a Mercedes; I'd feel a lot safer for the denizens of Hades. Oh, ho ho. Such a pedestrian joke! Well, no – the system's broke when a bold bro can get cornrows and sling porno puns at awards shows. Meanwhile, character actors and old pros dissipate into the ether as foretold. So you should hoard gold, dig up a hole in the forest and store it before it gets stolen by poor folks. And give me your phone – there's an app for that hat-in-hand rigamarole. And of course you know the porousness of certain borders you grope like a horuspex hoping to hone in on something so horrible no one should know, even if it's just a corny old joke.
5.
Gematria 01:39
I saw a showerhead that looked like an old telephone handset, and a gold bassinette filled with anisette liqueur. So that's what I get for the shreds and the threats and the breathy quartets? We filled a flowerbed with sugar and learned to forget the unknown. Sunk a few headstones. Got some new headphones and a Geo Metro and watched the Chia Pets grow. Honey, you need to let go. Three below, three series of Peep Show in one stroke, only surfacing for whiskey and coke. And we spoke of the wide open hopelessness we've come to know. Heaved and foamed, thumbed our noses at ghosts. “Honey, islands of smoke have spawned thousands of dopes. Murders of crows descend even as we gather stones and sticks for the cold quick encroaching on our precious sunlight – we'll sit through the whole thing. Now, on our own, we may flounder or float. We doubt we'll get out but we'll beat the doors down if they close,” she notes to an audience of no one. She chokes on her ice cream. Her time's up – the show's done.
6.
Magistermind 02:46
You left it on the screen, and then I wondered what it means. So sue me! Oh you used me like that mildewy Jacuzzi. Just another squeaky clean squeaky wheel, okay. Still guzzle that grease like it's rosé. Oh, blow me. What do you know about being lonely? Who do you know that can get cocaine? You left me off the chain. And when you ask me what has changed I can't explain. It's not technical or profane. It's probably just chemicals in my brain. Listen: nothing was the same for those left living – Comfort, pain it's all just different. A million vivid LCDs let me as through a mirror peek in your memory, sentimentally. This level of telepathy is never healthy. If you'd shut up your amygdala, you could be great at being ignorant! Oh, hug me. You can trust me. Life is juvenile and ugly when it must be. So let me off the hook. Just let me be to be an open book in a minor key. I hope you took my rookery as such, and look, what could it be but love? See: all too good things too shall pass. You'll never feel whole if you go half-ass. So, gild the lily, blanche the rose. Can't change the past, or your plans, or clothes, believe me. History repeats, like a scratched CD of Gertrude Stein's diaries. But in half the time it takes to crack wise a magistermind would divine a bad sign and stifle. Easy to say at the end of a rifle. Easy to say at the end of the night. So let me off the line.
7.
At home. Alone. A heel. And somehow, you're supposed to feel my pain. At least you don't have to be in my brain. and see the thoughts I can’t explain: A joke, a laugh, a smile. They're all just tics, just give it a while – Refrain. At least you don't have to hear me complain. At least you don't have to do anything. Say anything. Mean anything. I mean everything's too heavy, it's way heavy. It's been heavenly – no Heavenly – before. And I need it more than ever, see? the door was opening – 'til wine did what it will when you were high on Walter Hill and wouldn't come down. But somehow you got through to me and me to you, or probably – it's tough to tell now how long each of us held out... oh well, the kitten's grown into a man, because I didn't hold your hand and whisper “No need to be exact when you're invoking a natural fact.” And what I lacked in actual tact I paid tenfold in tactical laughs. I'd trade every last Chick tract on sex and greed in my cyan front bum bag to read Slant 6 interviews with you all night. It's just never right whenever we just write. It's kinda like riding a bike: 10 years on, you'll forget everything and wish you could die. So you took your first spill down the face of Walter Hill and he just chuckled. But I, for one, foresaw trouble. And when you wept like an open sore, who knew what you were hoping for, but it wasn't nothing. And now you're suffering, clucking your tongue and clutching your tremendous knees, like tree trunks – Jesus! Take a breather, PLEASE, and cool out. I bet you think it's really cool how in the blink of a blind eye you can switch from bohemian to smooth, serene savage. Convenient! You can tell the truth and not mean it. It's genius! But if I gave a hundred dollar bill to Bruce McDonald or Walter Hill, what would I get? A masterpiece or merely upset?
8.
My inauthentic self crawled back into its shell. Couldn't tell you how the critics felt, but it's still selling pretty well! The past just pales. But drop by some time, blow a few rails. Maybe I'll whip out the cat-o-nine-tails. Blood'll trump skin because one must fail. What? A three-word cri de coeur: Wow. Much history. Still needs such work. Suppose some succeed and others suck dirt. Keep your ghosts out of my machine, motherfucker. Well, it's overwhelming – the psychic haze is hardly helping. Some telepath! Fill a glass and tell me. The silence is sick, fat, and unhealthy. Never mind me, jeez, I'm just venting – punk's not dead, GG's just resting. The intellectual elite is still digesting the Internet, and actually, we have a few questions. Sunrise Manor, Sunset Strip. Golden hour glamour, unblemished. If you had a claw-hammer, the judges’d be split. Look into the camera and tell me what you miss. For me, my problem is I got too much collateral to gamble with. I probably shoulda stuck to making sandwiches; the auslanders love my outlandishness. Reno. Locals casino. PowerPoint crashed so I'll freeball the keynote. These folks don't even believe in TV shows. Sweat beads thick as Fimo – let the dream go. A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose gold ring gonna change you? No. There's no such thing as behavior, believe – analysis is king, big data is queen. By my count, too many viscounts: 16, if you include Mystery and Walt Disney. Narcissus in a Sisyphean dream: blinded the second he catches his reflection in the stream.
9.
Fuck the New Yorker and Sasha Frere-Jones. I dug up a few of Austin Osman Spare's bones, made some incantations, now I'm walking with a ghost. You'd think this was the end of days but we're not even close. So baby, fuck the New Yorker; what do they know? They haven't seen your grimoire or your Broadway show. They just sit in 4 Times Square, smoking weed and making jokes. Meanwhile, you're resigned to writing rhymes for Wizards of the Coast… So if you don't give 'em any credence, I won't. Some may think that they're elitist; I don't. It's just like Jeez, this happens every fucking week – I can't count the hours I've lost to Alex Ross instead of sleep. So Fuck James Thurber & Donald Barthelme. The dadgum bygone past is just that: so far away. Now it's all about the art collection of Anfernee Hardaway. Jazz and Standards, Shouts and Murmurs, nothing left to say. Yeah, Fuck the New Yorker! I'd rather watch TV. Pay a few cents to breeze through adverts targeted at me. Cor, those Shell and Ghurka placements must cost several tens of g's! Never mind the kind of scratch you need to pay John Ashbery's V.O. fee… Things have changed; we're through the looking glass. I'm late for my brain-cleansing and cooking class. Plus that piece on Bahrain, it really whooped my ass. I haven't even touched the Sunday Times; I need something good and fast, so Fuck the New Yorker Fuck the New Yorker Fuck the New Yorker That's how it goes. Fuck the New Yorker Fuck the New Yorker Fuck the New Yorker Fuck the New Yorker Fuck the New Yorker Fuck the New Yorker Fuck the New Yorker Fuck the New Yorker Fuck the New Yorker Fuck the New Yorker Fuck the New Yorker and Sasha Frere-Jones.
10.
Nighty Night: the Musical! You be Cath, I'll be Jill Tyrell. We'll film it all in a studio. It'll be cool, no, you should be Terry and Glen Bulb too. Remember where we used to go? I can't. Shows we watched, news we broke – just the scraps, subsumed, improved or removed. Every little thing means nothing to me or you. But do you wanna be a high school sweetheart all your life? With all its isolating connotations grating on your patience? It's not right; you've waited all night for a nice combination of observation and insight with a list of likes and dislikes. But all this augury gives me agita. Sing us a song, silly, not a sonata. We eat, we breathe, we sleep, we dream... but we can't see the forest for leaves without trees. Here I am, get used to it. I'll let you think it through a bit. Matter of fact, and I am gonna let you finish, but you're clueless, foolish and useless And I am the coolest dude in the universe, yet you'd have me prove it, pretending that you don't hurt me like you always do. And it's true, at first, but soon it gets worse – mark your calendars! These feelings will seem so obsolete when you're pleading on your knees for an hour's reprieve. So if you believe in the healing power of dishonesty, breach the membrane. You need to escape. Leave all the grieving to me. And we’ll keep our secrets under lock and key 'til we unleash our unclean needs and blunders sloppily. There's got to be some democracy in this oddball odyssey. You've seen the brief and the summary, now, read the press release! How do you intend to always know what's best for me? How come you can't ever show that you're impressed with me? How do you expect me to hold out hope independently? How can we ever be free if we can't be alone indefinitely? And definitely, the words flow effortlessly when the specter of death feeds you lines from offscreen. Now see, the difference between you and me is you're lost when the world comes apart at the seams, and it's seams that make us suit up each day – to boot up our mainframes, review our mistakes and make use of the phrases we're given to say: “Among our milieu,” “amidst a melee.” And it's true what they claim: you don't learn, you can't change. It's no worse than old age, don't get carried away. With the wind at your back and the sun in your face you'll do great. You just wait.
11.
Great White 02:03
What you took for a grapevine turned out, in the end, to be a straight line. Calm down, anything you want to say is fine. Wow. You may be wrong, and I may be right. Now, Moby Dick was your Great White. Well, how'd that go for you? Alright? Careful where you go drawing fault lines. I have stared into the void; it's a salt mine. Bow at the altar of the Crimpshrine. Let the locusts poke at your insides. Whoa – I never knew there could be blood like this. Can somebody catch me up on what I missed? What we have here is a goddamn shame. I mean I love you, but you're not that great. I mean I – fuck it, I could never explain. Blame it on the blues, it's the great white way. Caught a good glimpse of your tail lights, just never found an excuse to say “Hi.” Hi. I'm just here to watch the paint dry. Why? I couldn't say, it just feels right. Riiiiiight. Once bidden, twice shrived – take a liking to a lycanthrope, you're bound to get a bite. Who am I to howl at the sunrise? You had one job, one time. And I'm just a joke of a jester, yessir, yesterday I was swept away by the pressure. I guess I'll always be a little professor – that doesn't mean I'm not touched by the gesture. But what witch put wind to your sails? Fumble for the words but your metaphors fail... It's like you're trapped in a closet with a snake in the dark, or maybe it's a shower and a great white shark.
12.
Well, you said it. There it is. I was not prepared for this. No more oversharing, the focus of sober vision sparing no detail or flaw or flare. In every aspect: overbearing. By way of comparison: my shame and embarrassment about the things I cherish rendered in a tone most garish. My house, my job, my marriage to the antidepressant heiress. Now she's supine on a spandrel and I'm a colonnade. The hoi polloi wanted a scandal, well, they got one, eh? It's not my fault I look like a mandrill by mistake. Tie a ribbon, light a candle. Who am I kiddin'? Just don't stand still. The rush of the river over riveted applause. It's one thing to say it, but you DID it. Oh my god. Oh my god! What the hell is going on? Dark eyes always failing me, total Photoshop. Hell no it's not a metaphor, it's just a joke, don't stop. I get no respect at all; luckily, that's not what I want. I prefer the company of people who mean nothing to me and I to them. Am I to then postpone my shy retirement? I'm running out of spiderwebs. They should have sent a scientist to the moon and back and back to the moon for the hell of it. Got a room of one's own, but there's no room to move due to elephants. Jumping to justify everything but my inelegance. You're so sullen when you're celibate – you should celebrate. You're insulting my intelligence – you're doing just great! But don't say it's just an expression when I'm staring you in the face. Gimme your antidepressants – come on, I just need a taste. Gimme your antidepressants Gimme your antidepressants Gimme your antidepressants Gimme your antidepressants GIVE ME YOUR ANTIDEPRESSANTS Gimme your antidepressants Gimme your antidepressants. C'mon!
13.
C.B.S. 05:06
Light bulbs never leak. Taut tautologies can't beat a time machine. Life is but a dream we're likely to repeat in soporific reveries 'til we deplete our energy. Gross anatomy is mostly strategy. It's a relief – bas! Listen to the streets talk: polemics in limousines, dim-lit dinner scenes, and all the silly little things we wish we still believed. What does it mean? God sure does love a machine. You're just a liege, allegedly allegiant to a legislative fallacy! Ban the beguine, beleaguered bourgeoisie, pick your parapets and parakeets. Aren't you embarrassed yet? Pray one more rare cassette might set the scene. That's fair, that's ferrous sweat plus the blood and tears of a marionette's regime. Night club, nice teeth. I wasn't who you thought I was; I also wasn't me. Maybe that's 'cause life fuckin' sucks like a leech when it's not violating me, leaving behind spirochetes full of Weil's syndrome and Lyme disease. Vitiligo, vertigo, verdegris – it's all hot air to me! You're right to eye me warily, oh yea, for sure, and verily. Hello muddah, hello fodder for therapy! I wish you were there when we went wassailing. It really felt like an accomplishment! Well, wasn't it? Tee-hee... Yes! But I think I have CBS. These days I fear I see reality less than reality TV. But that can be our secret. We can act like everything is clear as crystal clarinets blaring Greensleeves in a silo. I know. I'll take care of it. I also know I haven't yet, though, because schisms exist to wring shapes out of schist. If they didn't we wouldn't know which shits to give. Compose, compromise, never over-promise and your will to survive will be unlimited.
14.
Kismet Cute 02:38
It's just you and your whole attitude. It all comes back like a boomerang or more like deja vu because the truth is I'm an impudent fool – at best, a slick useless tool, but the exception proves the rule. It's cool, it's just me. I've always been unhealthy to an unhealthy degree – not so much in the body, primarily mentally. Yet most of my waking hours pass by uneventfully – but not all of them, evidently. You should see the lack of lustre I perceive, it's grimy grim and grey. Which is why it's no surprise a tiny bit of me dies each day, and utterly astonishing I'm fine just feeling great. Oh, what a freaking shame. Kismet cute – Michigan avenue, with Paul Smith on a loop singin' Roller Disco Dreams. And it seems I'm fond of keeping myself on too short a leash and sort of beating everything to death, like horses, tramps and thieves. And so I leave the question struggling in the air like autumn weeds or clumps of hair and rotting teeth in a ravine... Oh misery! It can certainly make you see certain things differently. But every hallucination isn't visual trickery. We've all got Pepper's Ghosts and shivs up our prodigious sleeves. But you listen to me! Oh history: it really is a total bitch, misogynistically. And if Ken Burns can't turn this shit into a miniseries, at least I'm blissfully aware of where I wish to be. But don't believe in me. I'm misusing an illusion. It's just you and my illusion, it's not me. I'm confusing my confessions with my future life progressions; I can't read. I'm losing my perspective to my loosening perceptions. I can't see. It's a universal message the universe suggests, it's not just me.
15.
Be to Be 02:21
Intermittent clouds occlude my vision now. I didn't gather me rosebuds when I could have; I wouldn't have anyhow. I lived it up, and I'll never live it down. The windows painted shut – the quick prosaic thrusts – I guess I made it up, I never made it out. In a house the color of pink bismuth I felt intimate; you sensed distance. We fell into it quick as a whip. Lickety split. Our azimuths aligned at one terrific zenith. And though we've riffed upon nadirs gone by as though they were cliffs, as we approach another precipice, I must wonder which way down – into humanity's deep south? Or into the gaping maw of a sweet pink mouth? Let there be no redoubt. Not even a hand-painted sign reading “VIOLENT DISEASE – KEEP OUT!!!” What's another threshold? Everybody gets old. Many stories get told, but this one creeps me out. What do you mean when you say you mean business? I'm thinking incantations and incense. I'll prick my finger, you make a fist. It's simple as shit: it serves no Earthly purpose just to simply exist. So let me know when you and life work out your differences, and let me show you motherfuckers just what impotence is: Lay down. Lay down. Just want to be to be so we just lay down. Lay down. Not to be mean, I mean, but please just lay down. Lay down. Just want to be to be so we should lay down. Lay down. Not to be mean, or not to be.
16.
Was it everything you hoped it'd be? The things that people won't do openly are astounding! And that Daily Post you read – Oh I know, honey, don't think I don't but I don't wanna talk about it. You know the ropes, you know how we run around like the ground recedes from our reach when we're sleeping. All the words unspoken speak encyclopedic volumes about all you've done to me, but I'm not much for reading. So I'll follow if you're leading. There's no sense in repeating the things I'm saying even if I'm staying. And we both know I am leaving. Let's focus on my breathing and my poor heart, still beating, needlessly, ceaselessly... What's the dosage? What's the potency? You need to learn to pay attention to the world spinning around you and your precious prognoses; you'll prognosticate and cogitate yourself to death without someone to ground you. So do we go to sleep? Or retreat, if only a few feet so that we may overreach? No. We hold our own and scream into our mobile phones, or keep it to ourselves, you know, this isn't fucking poetry. So if you're catching what I'm throwing you'll find comfort in knowing all the things I didn't do wouldn't have made a difference. You take the good, you take the bad – anyway, you could, if it came to that. And that’s the thing with unwritten rules: if there isn't proof, it isn't true. And you called that one, didn't you? Took an ad out in the business news: “A tour de force of ridicule! Pitiful! Visceral! Vividly unliveable!” Let me know how the tickets do; no matter how thick the thicket grew, you always knew who to stick it to.
17.
Cold Open 02:48
Noblesse oblige. I confess: I believe! I'm a pest, I'm a beast. YOU'RE upset?! Well, I'm not me. In my head, there's a shrieking alien, and he's been keeping all his technology secret, but now we'll unleash the best outburst you've ever seen! Fireballs bright as tangerines and wide as the panoramic screens on which we cast our shattered dreams and shadows and thick puffs of steam! Oh, that old yarn again? I mean... These Internet-bought theses reek of unrefined humanity. Like me and Johnny McAfee flying on MDPV, crying on CNBC, Mendocino to Belize. Livestreamed mad uniques ‘til the g-d geodata leaked. Sheesh! Don't take no genius to see; these people'll believe anything! So bring your shit to bear. In the woods, trees fall all day, who cares. What's an ice cube to La Souffriere? Oh, spare me your stupid pellucid stares! Look: it takes two to rhumba, just one to fuck up, but two to fuck everything up, so buck up, bud. Dance til you crumple, sing ‘til you cough blood! It seems that we have different definitions of tough love! You're maybe a hard PG; I'm TV MA LSV! Unsuitable for anybody, inscrutably antagonizing everyone who decries my amplified cramps as unproductive fantasizing. It sucks, I know, but that's my thing: whetting appetites, then jackknifing. So pass my light bulb crank pipe, dingus. Half my life I been asinine, see? I classify my tics as High English, but most of the time I'm just rhapsodizing. I'm the type to recite the right rhyme: a Mike Tyson biopic fellatio soliloquy. But in the light of a guttering campfire, a blubbering landmine, the B in R&B. So next time you wanna disrespect mine, I’ll be fine in my gallon bucket of Red Vines. Oh my, you look ravaging tonight. You forget how fucking ravenous I get in the shine of your bauxite eyes like a pipeline right through the night sky. It wouldn't be my first white lie or tight bind. Right, cry, like I can empathize. Live from New York, it's Saturday Night Live.
18.
Ohhhhh they're sleeping in the streets! They‘re kicking off the sheets – what a cruel, cruel slumber! Whoaa they keep sneaking up on me with the inscrutability of a sea cucumber! Believe you me, I'm a resident of Queens, so my sentiments won't mean that much to you, but between the sea and the feverish heat of my dreams, you'll see. There's a magic in me and it grows with everything I eat – the artisanal meat and the cream and the duck fat too! And I know I should grant you amnesty for your sanctimonious speech, but I can't, you're just such bad news. Go. No one needs you, least of all me. I couldn't be arsed to read you even when you were free with your teakettle whine and your Emmental cheese... Let it breathe. It's irrelevant. Can it be that I love New York Magazine? No roads where you're going, no ghosts when you're dead. But there's hope in just knowing it'll go to your head when the quotes are all glowing, the holes are all drilled, and the rows you are hoeing are hoe-rower-field. Yo, bro, you're getting too old to be drawing Game of Thrones in the margins of your notes. Listen, just to let you know, mister, trust is what you owe. Our projection doesn't show how much dust is in the bowl. SoHo when it's snowing. The Cloisters in the sun. YOLO, and no, you're never too old to die young. Hobos in their clothing, and you in your coat! A lowlander gloating: “You're missing the boat.” Just blow town, throw me down to the wolves! Howl like an owl, beat the ground with your hooves. If it moves, give it space and its due. If it's due, fidget, pace, make a face, and admit it's true: “I LOVE NEW YORK Magazine.” I LOVE NEW YORK Magazine. I LOVE NEW YORK Magazine. Fuck it, I love New York Magazine.
19.
No Joke 01:47
20.
Plight 03:39
Too much Bacardi started speaking dumb – never stopped, really – where'd you get fajitas from? They have margaritas?! What?! Friday night, Mohegan Sun... we all get lonely. So why don't we keep in touch? What does the literature teach us? Plus, now I'm on Norwegian drugs. No more TV, lychees, crime, sex drive or violence. This came down from the higher ups – they said “You'll grow tired of trying, son.” Well guess what bub: I BEEN strivin' ever since I was but a glimmer in my grandad's cornea. So would you please be kind enough to give me money and find me funny and blindly, unconditionally like my stuff? The drama of the gifted child: in the middle bits it gets wild. If you want to act infantile, just smile. Drink a phial of virgin's blood. We'll make sure the journey's worth your while. You're within the system now. The curse of the lifted brow. Cash Rules Everything Around Me Cream – now in soothing gel! No need to be cowardly; absolution corrupts powerfully, and the words you always shout at me, although unique, profound, and sweet, are just calques of your subconscious dialect's desires to get out its dreams. But I'm so glad you found your chi. That's cool as hell. No no no, dude, honestly – it really means a lot to me! Somewhere out there, there's got to be a doctor who can spot the defect in my corpus callosum, please! The dilemma of the engineer: to give up everything you held so dear to be at best a single elegant gear with a clerestory window to the world that you turned on its elephant's ear. The trauma of persistent fear. The plight of the insincere.
21.
W.S. 02:53
I don't know. What to say or where to go from here. It's clear; the roads are closed, the train takes twenty years to show up, and why do I shrink every time I grow up? Why do I drink? Every time I throw up. I joked and poked ya till you woke up. La cosa nostra slowly broke up. Look closer. Gain composure. I know if I was your cynosure, I'd break frame with a fucking flamethrower. I take the blame. You win. Game over. We all – In the end, we all die young. The hot & cold, the calm & high-strung. Doesn't matter who you are or where you come from. What's a man gotta do to starve in this paradise of food, folks, and fun? We all die young... Yeah, no, sure, fine: “Your clothes hurt.” Bye. Gimme five for the “will keep self alive.” Lemme drive – Penicillin and a penny for your eye. End up killin' time instead of what you meant to, but it's nice. Really? Why? Tell a story, silly; cry. “Selfish editors and foolish foley artists fill the sky will he, nil he, and to die? Perchance to dawdle like a millipede and caterwaul in misery at all this life has given me.” I guess reading William Self just made him want to kill himself. And I can't blame him. And I can't tell if it's sad, or true, or just as well. We all – In the end, we all die young. And we're all too old, too, and too fucked up to ever nut the fuck up or even buck the fuck up. In interviews you say you're “on the come up.” Come on, shut up. Let me tell you what's up: the sky. It's dyed blue. Why? Dude, you suck. I tried to imply life is short, you're just dumb. We all, in the end, we all die young…
22.
Unrequitable 02:59
You had me at goodbye! I'm sorry I was crying, but I figured I should try. Heard rave reviews of dying too, but I don't wanna die! That's a lie; I been lying all the time. Maybe I'm just unrequitable. I guess this is a sign I'm a crow. A wingless carrier pigeon in an inch or two of snow. The flares impair your vision and the winds and trumpets blow. Is it so hard to believe that this is so hard? Is it me? It's been me so far, but these days I never know. Wave away the prying eyes. Make mistakes, don't try to hide your imperfections. Maybe they'd internalize the palimpsests they purify if we were to let them. But don't think for a second you can't vocalize an objection without being vilified. This crummy reception – can you repeat what you said like you meant it, dim the lights and chill the wine? In the interest of killing time for your whole life. You never met a promise that you couldn't amplify. And if we're being honest, well, the we's not you and I! Witness: crime. Remote film footage at 5. In an incandescent interview, you hint you have a mic in your lapel – oh L.O.L., you cavalavalier! And then you tell the audience about the speaker in your ear. It's just as well. It's common sense. Nothing is as it appears: no one loves you, no one cares, death's no comfort, life's not fair. So to preserve our certainty, we sniff out perps and perjury like thirsty bloodhounds. My worthless circuitry got burned by your first surge and we completely shut down. But you shut your mouth, the last little bit of love wormed out from the middle of your third eye. Don't think too much. Dumb it down. The ground is where the best crumbs are found. Goodnight!
23.
Whaddya know about bloodshed? Never even gotten your thumbs red. Never admit when you're upset, just suppress. Let none suggest you're not crushing it! But that's bullshit! All these balloons are full of it. All these buffoons are well-equipped to inhale a dick for all I care and I don't care one bit. But once bitten, twice shy. Listen to some Great White and you'll understand why. Two innocent lies + one ignorant smile = more idiots die. Spin, wheel of time, spin! Thread the needle eye when you see the island. Let the tiger swim. Hey chief, you're giving me grief and I'll take it. Please, just leave me – how can you say that you're stable when everyone thinks you're an a-hole? Let's lay our cards on the table: straight, full house, or flush, I see you and raise you clouds of dust. In an instant, the pain resolves like a pin prick. Your face dissolves in the distance... still, this fix is in: you have to inhale a few dicks to win. You think you're impervious? Tell me, I'm just curious: you ever took a Turing test? I know you're doing things that matter: curing cancer and dating an exotic dancer. But ditch the pervy termagant. Rent a slab at Burning Man and a black conversion van. Throw some blurry photographs in a garment bag – listen, jack, fuck the 99%! They're all holograms. Don't trust them! The horsemen have muted their trumpets! The apocalypse was a success! There's only one way to get justice and that's SUCK DICK!
24.
Ha Ha Ha 03:51
I saved the best for last. Now I'm in a full-body cast, singing “la la ha ha ha u mad!” That'll teach you losers to lollygag! Oh, it hurts sometimes, but not too bad. It works sometimes, but not like that. Sold it all for a wedding band. Ended up in a wedding band, playing tabs with a hard-on and a heavy hand. Oh, I wish you hadn't met me when you met me, man! I wish a million things had never really happened that have. I guess I'd rather be slow poisoned than be stabbed in the back. You laugh - ha ha ha! Do the math - ha! Maybe you just don't know how to add. Get back to the basics: there's a time and place for a race to the grave, but you're too scared to be afraid. It's a trap! Ha ha ha! Played a prank in a hockey mask. Now I'm at the bank in a body bag and I hope you get this message and call me back. I was listening to Zomby and I'm awfully sad, and I been missing everything I always thought we had, and I been listing every single overwrought demand one could have! I could have been a bureaucrat. Now I'm singing barbershop in laundromats, and I think of the past and it's all just black. ‘Til I drink a Labatts and it all comes back. It is what it is. It's as simple as that. We did what we did, someday we're gonna laugh – “ha ha ha!” Remember how you'd react – Ha! Yeah, like I was under attack! Ha! Years of lucid nightmares compacted like trash 'til they blew up in Times Square when a camera flashed – Two flags, one checkered, one red. Two mouths in a bed, one puckered, one stretched. One shepherd unconcerned with any consequences; one elephant it's impossible not to mention. One twisted inflection can break the surface tension; one kiss obliterates all nagging apprehension. Two rounds to the death, too proud to forget. 2 Chainz around your neck, two brains up in your head. Two states: unenlightened and overexcited. Too late: it's right behind me and I'm holding my breath. Time was I'd murder crowds on total autopilot, but my buzz is dying down; I'm met with utter silence.
25.
I put a picture of my dick on Facebook, and then I slipped into a hole when they took my profile down. Even though everybody knows by now: I’m just a shallow narcissist and I don't close my mouth when I breathe. That's why they unfriend me. That's why I lay upon my bathroom floor for more than ten weeks, self-medicating with menthol cigarettes and Hennessey. I swear these 50 fexofenadine will be the death of me! But it's true: it's not fair, it's not cool, it's not right. You're listening to Belle and Sebastian in the middle of the night! Meanwhile, I'm in the best shape of my life. So do you like me now? Going hard in the paint to retrieve a rebound. When it started to rain, the mascara streamed down my face. Now it's only a clown that's leaving, someday, for some reason, somehow... I put my music gear into self-storage, and got a separate one to sleep in in Norridge. I figured it out: I'll build a time machine like Primer, then go turn it around. My future couldn't get much dimmer, but my past is like a cloud of radium, the size of a stadium. Who's got time for brandywine and laudanum and ladyfriends? Nobody, as it turns out, but still the déclasseé pretend that they are way more homo sapiens than homo sapiens. And it's cool, it's fine, it's house rules. It's alright. I'm missing out on so much action; this play within a play is just a lie about a lie. It's kinda like when I say I'm in the best shape of my life in People Magazine. It doesn't work as a yardstick ‘cause people haven't seen the shape I was at birth, and all the ones that came between the ones I love and me. Now it seems I am strongest when invisible to everybody but see, I'm in the best shape of my life.
26.
She looked like Lena Dunham… …but nobody could tell. They just don't know her work that well outside of London. So all references fail. She's just another white female – but it's Lena Dunham! What, they can't subtitle her show? I mean it's hardly hyperlocal, though Lena Dunham desires not to be universal. Someone should let her editors know. Heyo! “I built an empire out of blood and sweat and life's little disconnects, and I ain't finished yet. I've dealt with my fair share of ignorance So what's the difference? I mean, in a bigger sense, I could be a shitty neighbor or a brilliant fence, like Lena Dunham. I thought I had a story to tell. Now I think maybe I don't. But also, ‘Hey, what the hell? What's life but suffering? I guess she just looks like anyone else. I mean, I kind of look like her myself – who, Lena Dunham?! Oh God I actually totally do! And wait a minute, why am I totally nude like Lena Dunham?! I feel like this could be misconstrued. I should probably read a few interviews with Lena Dunham and learn about her cultural baggage. I mean, I'm not a fucking savage! To wit: “I watched the liquid dribble down my chest, feeling powerless, wondering ‘God, what next, another thousand hours of profound regret? Perhaps a breakdown on set, or just a pound of flesh for the dogs or the press? Or just a long slog to my death? There must be somethin'... ...if I had a mind like an elephant, maybe I could fly like a god-damned pelican. Like, “Hey, I'm just being playfully irreverent kinda like the time i went on Letterman on mescaline and dexedrine! So I look a little like a lesbian. So I read a little too much into instant messages. So I have a voice and an agenda and I'm not afraid to leverage them. So I'm belletristic and ephemerally relevant – everybody knows: no one cares which way the wind blows until it fucks them. And in the end, the love you steal has no connection to what you feel, like Lena Dunham.

about

"The Comedy Album" is the 13th and most epic Kleenex Girl Wonder record.

26 songs, covering a variety of genres, styles, and production methods, written and recorded over the course of two years, and now available on two slabs of strikingly coloured vinyl (choose from Comedy Blue or Bazooka Joke Pink variants).

Featuring guest production from Max Tundra, Saskrotch, and The Hood Internet, plus the usual suspects of Graham Smith, Matt LeMay and Thayer McClanahan.

credits

released October 28, 2016

All songs by Graham Smith.
Produced by Graham Smith, Matt LeMay, Thayer McClanahan, Max Tundra (3), Saskrotch (17), & The Hood Internet (21).
Mastered by Carl Saff in Chicago.

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Kleenex Girl Wonder New York, New York

A prolific songwriter, a cracking tight independent indie rock band for live entertainment, and a fine art parody magazine about what computers think about human thoughts about their fine art

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