The Mountain Goats
Pez Dorado (The Jordan Lake Sessions Volume 3)
[Verse 1]
Echoes from a nursery rhyme
Hide in plain sight all this time
Here you come splashing in your summer clothes
You and your pale pink toes
Just there where the shadow falls
There we follow one and all
Can't resist the creeping dark
Ready to make our mark
[Chorus]
Little red fish beneath the surface of the water
Testing the break point in case we get lucky
[Verse 2]
Ancient blood is patient blood
We were here before the flood
Waiting for our time to shine
Sparks in a silver mine
Shorebirds deal death all day long
We are weak but they are strong
Lose some friends along the way
Then in you come one day
[Chorus]
Little red fish beneath the surface of the water
Hungry for years, senses sharpened by the hunger
Testing the break point in case we get lucky
[Instrumental Interlude]
Yeah
[Verse 3]
Take your time, we've got all day
Days beyond that, come what may (yeah)
If you get home tell all your friends
The spawning tide never ends
Say what you felt when you found us here
Here where the waters run crystal clear
One summer day in your summer clothes
The day you saw several ghosts
[Chorus]
Little red fish beneath the surface of the water
Scales in the sun, stars in a shot glass
Testing the break point in case we get lucky
Testing the break point in case we get lucky
Just in case
[Instrumental Outro]
Yeah
[Spoken Outro]
I'm... there's always a song, every album, one or two - not every album, I believe there's some where that's not true - where Peter Hughes has a special feeling for. I treasure these songs. I'm always like, y'know, part of the fun dynamic of writing an album is thinking, oh Wurster will be able to chew this one up, or whatever. The ones I feel Peter will connect to and feel like I actually dug a little and found a, y'know, Peter has an ear for what I call fine feeling, where it's not spelling it out, it's rendering something, like a pastel or watercolor and then you have to sort of look at it long enough to get what's going on. I feel like that's sort of Peter's zone, right? This is my read on you. Uh, you know, like the go-betweens, like not spelling it out planely. Speaking planely, but not spelling it out planely, right? So, this is one of those, right? And plus, Peter had like this amazing experience with an aquarium once in Australia where he went for a walk really tired and stood before some fish and like got really emotional. And you, we've all been there. I was thinking that as I was writing it. And so, when he got the demos, he went, oh I really like this song, and I was pleased. And we tracked it, I was actually had my doubts, because it's so even, I don't yell or anything and I'm always worried about the ones where I don't raise my voice much. But then it came out so nice and I was like, ah, this is gonna be great live. But then the plague happened, you know, and then we didn't get to go play it live, so that was really great. That's the end of that story
We're the Mountain Goats and this next song is called "Picture of My Dress"