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Play For Today

by Ultrasound

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    Ultrasound
    Play For Today FIERCE PANDA
    Epic pop and prog from the reformed five-piece
    Thirteen years between first and second album is lax by anyone’s standards but then Newcastle-born Ultrasound have never been your typical band. An art-school outfit in the Roxy Music mode and with unashamed neo-prog proclivities, they signed to Suede’s label during the post-Britpop feeding frenzy, released a minor classic and then split under pressure in 1999. Thankfully Play For Today picks up where debut Everything Picture left off - with the thunderous baroque n’ roll anthem of opener Welfare State. Epic and heartfelt are Ultrasound’s strengths and few do it better, whether on the snarling, swinging post-glam of Goodbye Baby, Amen or the emotive use of a colliery brass band on Between Two Rivers. “I’ve only ever written music for the future,” singer Andrew ‘Tiny’ Wood said recently. Perhaps Ultrasound’s time has finally come.
    8/10
    Ben Myers

    Includes unlimited streaming of Play For Today via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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1.
We come in pieces of 5 Our press release says we’re jive But we are the ones The sons of Mums Who worked their fingers in half So everybody could starve to make this possible ‘Cos no-one ever cared about us And this song is the clarion call And if it means we have to reform We crashed and burned but we returned To claim our stakes From the day that we’re born To the day that we die We are safe in the arms of the welfare state And that’s great So everybody Sing for your life ‘Cos the surgical knife Will cut you down to the size Of a single high rise in the sky We’ve been away for a while But we were never in style We are the ones etc And we’re so sorry that we’re late But we are for the welfare state And the unemployment rate Just grows and grows From the day etc So everybody etc We’ve been so long in the tooth But now we’re longing for you We curse and swear ‘cos we’re free Like millionaires on a spree This is the home of the slave Decrepit, dull and depraved We smoke like fags in the bath We’re only having a laugh We stand in changing rooms Now everything is possible and All we really care for is love We are the filthy flyblown fools We are the haunted frightened ghouls We have no homes we have no souls We are the greasy unwashed scum We are the paupers on the run We’ve never done a day’s work in our lives We sit and watch the world on Jeremy Kyle We all just dream Of the day etc Now everybody etc
2.
Oh broken super hero Something in you leads you to the darker side A church of chrome and neon Cyborgs dancing beneath a cataclysmic sky In the Beautiful Sadness Enchanted we fall Into beautiful sadness Dying like swans Deliverance comes Takes its things and leaves With Rock and roll still ringing in my ears She sings softly Let’s fade together you and me Where the lonely shadows sleep I lost my love but I did not lose my dignity In the beautiful Sadness etc Home sweet heartbreak In the beautiful sadness etc.
3.
Twins 05:38
I’m leaving This helter-skelter calls And I’m free falling I’m cutting all the cords that keep you stalling On rivers of blood I keep on crawling I’ll see you on the other side I’m a cast of a man gone to sea I’m a haunted reminder of youth And I never wash my hands I like to take a reminder of you when I leave Leave the winter frozen far behind you Here, take my Daddy’s guns and let fly Shoot shoot shoot straight up into the sky Shoot shoot shoot the scorched earth Those feelings Are they real or just glass ceilings? Recording the gloom in your room talking Telling you things that you knew one day Would never really come true And it’s over before it’s begun And the bullets have dried in the sun And the camera’s haunted tunes Sing a song to remind me of you when I leave
4.
Nonsense 03:54
Who put all that nonsense in your head? All those things you tell yourself Have no rhyme or reason Who put all that nonsense in your head? All those stupid things you say That you don’t believe in do you? If you’re truthful I don’t believe you do I’m useless and I’m ugly No one understands No one really wants me I’m far too old to make it now Who put all that nonsense in your head? All those voices of dissent All those savage demons Who put all that nonsense in your head? Now you’re wishing that you’re dead You be careful what you wish for We are nothing more than that that we create Is it sympathy you’re after? Pity that you crave I could hold the mirror for you But what we’ll see is not the same Who put all those walls around your heart? How I’d love to break them down But they keep re-building Who put all those barbed wire fences down? In the prison of the self Are you in there somewhere Dreaming of your freedom?
5.
Between two rivers there's a Calvary A rolling mill that drains the hills And did those hobnailed boots on ancient clay Walk in endless rain and skies of grey Hear the ghosts of mouldy soldiers Marching through the rain To find their homes again Past the churches of the Methodists To rest their lonely bones On cenotaphs of stone This is the land I love Although it sounds so asinine This is the air I breathe The only stones I've ever known Are the paving stones of home Born between the Mersey and the Dee All human life is here We live and grow and die And when I stand upon the cold white shores I'll raise my hand and wave bye-bye Between two rivers made of rain Made in England is their claim From blood and bones and pain And political campaigns
6.
Bang…there goes another time bomb Stuck inside the minefield of these words They fall like fairground targets Centred on the page they might explode Was it something I said? Sorry, but sometimes words are not enough Never never enough And now it’s over to you Life is like a game of chess, a bore Nothing more And so what can you do When there’s nothing to believe in any more We’re very poor Boom…inside these lines a war zone As one man fights the same man writes these words They spark like fatal fireworks Tracers touch the paper blue for you I’m having another heart attack Sorry, it’s so pathetic, it’s a lie It’s not a crime And now it’s over to you Pull the pin and throw it over there Everybody beware And so what can you do Words can kill with no free will, the Lord’s Prayer The nom de guerre On this page these words will stop us going wrong In this book one look and we can all belong lifelong Singing a religious song Christ and his insane disciples Resting in the vestibule of Faith and hope and blind devotion You’ll never get to heaven without reason, doubt and Darwin Amen Takes us all further from the words Will take us nearer to the bloody truth, or George Herman Ruth And now it’s over to you Preach a sermon that only we can hear and make it clear And so it’s over to you Make it something we all can understand Nothing grand
7.
Hearing the call of the wild world Winding its way Through the cracks in the pavements That we laid All of the brambles that strangle Trees taken hold In visions of Eden overgrown Crawling up through the gloaming From primordial seas Pompeii mosaics are found within reach Nothing we’re building will last No, nothing we’ve done will survive The push of nostalgia That yearning for home The pull of the chorus The ebb and the flow All possible futures we’ll never know It ends where it ends It goes how it goes History whispers like rust in the sun So much confusion So much left undone Nothing etc In cellophane circles see the plankton dance Their dividing chances Fine romances I don’t want to have to be fit to survive Wanking off on to those with a similar sex drive So splurting they come into you Stripped of their dignity, fucking in unison We want a bacon roll Birth control and cruise control We want an easy life No more struggle, no more striving, reaching…Nothing etc
8.
I've been running for a thousand years I don't know how far we've come Across a vast expense of universe To leave behind a dying sun The tracks of time stretch through eternity Where did we come off the rails? You sent me postcards from the kitchen sink And I read them every day It's a long way home Such a long way home It's a long way home Won't you keep the fire the fire burning When I'm gone Won't you keep the fire burning Till I get home Why, the sky looks beautiful tonight Flamingo pink and powder blue Evoking deep and distant memories Always coming back to you
9.
Glitter Box 04:38
One word from these cold lips And the truth will scare Death waits like a dead weight In the clear night air And did we almost lose our way Behind the grey stone leaders Or did we merely grab that beat It seems like we always lose our way Let down round town and crying Plunged through a tide of blood lust Those colonisers bed and Beat me Treat me like a lonely girl Drill me Then kill me I swear I’ll never tell We almost died along the way Appearing on a game show Could be the greatest thing we did Our hands can sketch the stars but These hands can crush your manhood You’ve never had it so good Be careful you might fall in Love the bones of ancient London Let fossarians remind them Here we represent the NUM And we were hunted by our friends and neighbours Fences daubed with cruel intentions We pick the scabs while scratching at the scars And we’ve been haunted by malefic masons Raining down on river basins Rhododendrons lapping at their feet And those without the means, the cash converters Wait for news outside the flats where Paedophiles and killers wait for us, you’ll find me Out there in the night air I’m walking home Keys clutched Pleading don’t touch You know this bird can kill
10.
Sovereign 06:54
Stains grow upon a sovereign soul It spreads down and out And covers flesh and bones and Brings life to the fecund few Under my skin and under your skin We smell Bad Lands and Rotting sweat glands And so the strangers come and when they leave They leave you alone Tramline tears tear tracing paper laces Down your face Purge your sins Lowly stick thin things We are unclean All this mess and blood and grime and snail slime makes life Puritans wash clean their filthy rotten souls Nothing grows God is love Love is dirt unclean Let me out Hear me shout unclean And if I fall Please let me fall Between your legs Beneath your beds while you lie I will whisper this chant while I finger your rosary Celibate dreams Never enough This salacious old mind Is aching to find Purity In a world left behind It’s so unjust The great unwashed Will drip the drops of their dreams in the soil and the streams In the hope that they’ll grow In the hearts and the minds Of all mankind With sovereign souls just like mine There is no good There is no bad Everything’s true It’s all allowed But I’m just a man Dripping with sin With legions of lesions Ripping my skin A sovereign soul With a sovereign heart Finding all the repetitive strains of familiar refrains In the songs full of life This malady Is taking me over again Like heat from a flame It’s in the dirt Inside your skirt It squirts and it spurts like a vein all the sticky remains of your love This is what makes us

credits

released May 1, 2020

Andrew Wood - Vocals
Vanessa Best - Bass and vocals
Richard Green - Guitar and vocals
Andy Peace - Drums
Bob Birch - Organ

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Ultrasound London, UK

Ultrasound are an English indie rock band. With roots in the British underground psychedelic and experimental rock scenes of the 1980s and early 1990s, the band emerged in 1997 and soon gained attention for their "operatic prog-glam ambitions" and "violent reworking of the idiosyncratic compositions of Captain Beefheart and the staged ambisexual pop idioms of the likes of David Bowie ... more

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