You can find the lyrics to your favourite Sound of The Ladies song here, should you wish to cover it at your granny’s wedding.

I’ll add more lyrics as I get around to it, but I am a slow typist – in the meantime, you can contact me if you’d like to know the lyrics to a particular song…

Bank Burns Down

Centralia, PA

D-E-A-D

One of those girls

Swimming Skills

The ’40s never died

The Clouds at the Top of the Sky

Up! Went my dreams

Wash the sleep from my eyes, for one day I’ll have to awake

We went to the bottom of the ocean

Bank Burns Down

What do we do when the bank burns down

All of our money carried up in a cloud?

What do we do when the sterling smoke

Covers all our babies’ clothes?

When the air’s so thick and ashen

We can’t see to stoke the fire

We’ll take our many feet

To the Grand Old City Bank

And tramp around the embers

And take our warmth from that

What do we do when the sunrise comes

In the middle of the afternoon

And it starts raining cats and dogs

And all the people that we knew?

When waterfalls appear to fill the bowl where once the city stood

Sweeping up the mothers and the children from the neighbourhood

We’ll do what we have always done

We’ll hold on by our nails

Like poppies in fresh furrowed ground

And then recount the tale

What do we do when the tv stutters?

What do we do when the candle gutters?

What do we do when the premier utters words of looming fall?

We’ll do what we have always done

Take our comfort in the one

Thing that gives us comfort

In this carnival

What do we do when the soil has settled?

What do we do when it all gets better?

Will we only have the weather in common to complain about?

What will we do when we hear our voice?

Will we recognise the noise

Or clamp our hands in horror over our distended mouths?

Centralia, PA

You stood so close

You could catch her breath

But left it hanging in your stare

She pressed her palm down firmly

Pushing on your best friend hat

You said you didn’t want to

That you didn’t want her

I doubt I’d go as far

As to say that

So obsessed with your own secrets

You spun out eccentrically

From the other dancers

A wave of humiliation breaking

Why, did you expect a different answer?

From the fire on the outskirts to

A tower of ash ascending

The burning coal which blew a hole

Where your home had been

The mine would not stop burning

Time to take that final step

If I were to stay here

I’d be swallowed by this thing

So the carnival left town

Cast off and carried away by this catastrophe

Our hopes were dirty footprints heading to Centralia

So I led the way, and the shadows followed me

You stood so close

You could catch her breath

A tower of ash ascending

She pressed her palm down firmly

Where your home had been

You said you didn’t want to

Take that final step

I doubt I’d go as far

I’d be swallowed by this thing

So obsessed with your own secrets

Cast off and carried away by this catastrophe

A wave of humiliation breaking

So I led the way, and the shadows followed me

D-E-A-D

No matter where you go, it’s never far away

Let us picnic in the park – we’ll spread our blanket of smiles

And all the people who are passing by our spread today

They might confuse you for my sweetheart

Why can’t I share a picnic with a friend?

In this weather, surely, that should be ok?

I love… that dress you wear

This is how I chicken out of what I have to say

Your hair is falling light and long and lost, it suits you well

It’s like you had it when we met at Jo’s party back in ‘99

I was really nervous but I don’t think you could tell

You told me later you know then that we’d be friends for quite some time

You moved down two years ago

I wish I could see you every day

I love… this city’s open spaces

Oh no, don’t go- that isn’t all I had to say

Back in the real world, I just look slightly vacant

The moment has elapsed and now you have to go

You can’t read my expression as you kneel down to kiss my cheek

But inside my eyes are zeros, my mouth a silent “no”

Inside my mind’s a swollen zero, my eyes a silent “no”

One of those girls

Everybody’s had one of those girls

Everybody worth knowing, it’s true

To the soundtrack of Siamese Dream

Or whatever the young folks are listening to

It’s the cut and the cotton

Just a touch and it blossoms

It isn’t a rosebud it’s a little carnation

So you’re pouring it out ‘cos your heart is still working

Back then you opened your eyes when you walked into damnation

And everybody’s had one of those boys

Everybody worth knowing, for sure

When you met him he gave you the world

And when he left, he took so much more

The blood and the passion

Fading to grey

As the back end of your love affair is pulling away

That’s one journey you won’t make again

You’ve been thrown off the rails by this lachrymose train

And everybody’s shed tears over someone

Someone too foolish to see what you’re worth

Don’t you know that’s where rivers come from

And the water that covers two thirds of the earth

And everybody’s been somebody’s sweetheart

For some that they know

And some that they don’t

And for a little while they were totally loved, they were somebody’s world

Everybody’s been one of those boys

Everybody’s been one of those girls

Swimming Skills

I sat in silence

‘Till you cam and called me

I don’t want to say

A cliché but it’s true

There’s a world of distance

And there’s a world of difference

Between the world, and me and you

So hold on, hold on

We can form an island

Our buoyancy will carry more weight than just we few

But I need your legs to push and paddle

I don’t have the swimming skills that you do

Shirt fit roughly on my sleeves and shoulders

Scraped away the sweat from my stomach and my spine

So I felt so clumsy in my muscles and my skin

From my top down to my tails, where do I fit in?

So hold on, hold on

We can form a mountain

Form a mountain range

To protect this little town

But I need your arms to help me clamber

I don’t have the climbing skills when you’re not around

I knelt down slowly underneath my desktop

I remembered I was tying up my shoe

But I had my eyes closed and my lips were moving

I was praying

I don’t know who to

So hold on, hold on

We can form an island

Our buoyancy will carry more weight than just we few

But I need your legs to push and paddle

I don’t have the swimming skills that you do

The ’40s never died

It looks like a city, but it’s just the usual suspects

Dragging everybody ‘round

Running in a circle to look more like a crowd

Cousins, aunts and uncles lining up by the parade ground

We’re sat on the top step of a stoop

At the start of the slums and the shanty towns

The landlord is here shouting everybody down

Bring your brothers and your sisters and we’ll pack this place out

Jukebox joints and G.I. jive

It’s a wonder anybody thinks the ‘40s ever died

Here and now, I’ll say it

“There’s not a single competition not arbitrary or pointless”

I’m the best at running 27m with my left foot in a shoe one size too large

I’m the best at loving

I’m the best at guessing

I’m the best at singing

I’m the best at the guitar

I grew a beard to protect myself

From the unwanted attention of beautiful women

So far it’s shown only adequate success

But I’m hoping for improvement as I trim it less and less

Hail to the pedestrian! Martyr to their feet!

Ploughing their tedious furrow

They’re never face struggles such as these

They’ll never know such sorrow

It looks like a city, but it’s just the usual suspects

Dragging everybody ‘round

Running in a circle to look more like a crowd

Cousins, aunts and uncles lining up by the parade ground

Jukebox joints and G.I. jive

It’s a wonder anybody thinks the ‘40s ever died

(Well, it looks like a city, but it’s just the usual suspects)

Jukebox joints and G.I. jive

It’s a wonder anybody thinks the ‘40s ever died

The Clouds at the Top of the Sky

They clustered ’round in fours

Hands full of mud and straw

Pushing it together

To make those great big walls

An armful of sand

Slips upon the table

And your skin is rough and broken so a little blood will fall

A little blood will fall into the bricks

Lord you know I’m right

I’ll be tickling your chin

Close enough to see what you look like

“Give up your foolish dream”

That’s what my father said

I told him I’m the builder

I am not the architect

In the middle of the night, sometimes

I’m thrust rudely into awareness

A tall, gray doorway opens to the stars

At the foot of my bed

I’m afraid to catch my head

On the clouds at the top of the sky

People are so malleable

When you know the power of words

“Malleus” is “hammer”

So that’s how I get heard

Maria’s girl fell down, and I don’t think she’s getting up

She only made two feet today

Do you think that it’s enough?

Do you think?

Don’t you want to scrape the paint on the globe that spans the sky?

Don’t you want to see what lies beyond before you die?

I can only grieve for the hopes that lie as dead

I am not the author, friends, these are just the words I read

These are just the words I read

Click here for the chords/music for this song

Up! Went my dreams

ou came in my window

You midnight accost

You rattled and rumbled, roared

“One day you’ll lose her”

It shook from my lungs a bubble of purest sorrow

And up! went my dreams, up and were lost!

You filled up my ears

With your molasses

Paraffin, saltpeter and phoenix’s ashes

And a match struck out one -

One struck to my cost

And up! went my dreams, up and were lost!

At two I awoke

Eyes wide as the river

Everything jewelled in an icicle sliver

And I saw you there, lying sleeping and still

And I closed the window to take off the chill

Our warmth turned to steam the last of the frost

And up! went my fears, up and were lost!

Wash the sleep from my eyes, for one day I’ll have to awake

You don’t have to look very hard to find people

Who’ll tell you how you should be living

So I’ll add my voice to the dischordant chorus

Like chimney-smoke proudly uprising:

Life is a dream from which we’ll all one day awake

In a manner most likely abrupt

And profoundly surprising

So wash the sleep from my eyes, for one day I’ll have to awake

And I think of those people who cut their own throats accidentally

Catching their razors on moles or recalcitrant stubble

They missed the chance to die older and lonelier eventually

And to think there are those who say life’s but a pitiless struggle

So wash the sleep from my eyes, for one day I’ll have to awake

This dream of a world wars, applauds mediocrity

Lies and brutality

Flight from reality

Poets and people who speak rationality provide me a sliver of hope

But you rain down your ribbons and furbelows

On your dumbfounded progeny

Who, if they wonder, lament the glacier holding them

By their powder blue toes

So wash the sleep from my eyes, for one day I’ll have to awake

We went to the Bottom of the Ocean

E A

We went to the bottom of the ocean

We went to the bottom of the ocean

E Bm

We went to the bottom of the ocean

A Am

To dredge the sand for the plankton

D A

Which is the cure

F# B

for male erectile dysfunction

And they gave me a tiny submarine

They gave me a tiny submarine

They gave me a tiny submarine

With a plough on the front – it looked just like Thunderbird 4

Only not as good

E Bm

And if I’m lucky then I’ll die inside this artificial mollusc

A Am

With ten thousand pounds in the bank

E Bm

And if I’m lucky I won’t see the cracks that are snaking through the glass

A Am

Like an underwater spider’s web, they’ll be covered by the peak of my

D A F# B

Recently acquired submarine captain’s hat

And if I’m lucky then my widow will be twice as proud of me

Than if my life had carried on the way it was panning out to be

Cabin-boy, Captain, Commodore, and finally the man

Sending greedy sailors down in aluminium cans

To be swallowed by a giant squid

Swallowed by the dread abyss

Swallowed up in deepest blue

An insect in a child’s hands

E F F# G

And eulogizing empty, once again my words would say

[same chords as first verse]

He died at the bottom of the ocean

He died at the bottom of the ocean

He died at the bottom of the ocean

Dredging the sand for the plankton

Which is the cure for male erectile dysfunction