We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Bring me the Finest World Map Shower Curtain in all the Land

by The Rentiers

supported by
nusuth
nusuth thumbnail
nusuth bout the only thing I don't like about this is the description hinting this band is already done Favorite track: Black Irish Goodbye.
/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $7 USD  or more

     

  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 3 The Rentiers releases available on Bandcamp and save 50%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Cruising Altitude, Get More Loot and Move to a Boot!, and Bring me the Finest World Map Shower Curtain in all the Land. , and , .

    Purchasable with gift card

      $5.50 USD or more (50% OFF)

     

1.
You’ve gotta know when to regulate Know when to dominate Know when to demonstrate Know when to compensate When to de-escalate You’ve gotta know when to hold it down Know when to get out of town You’ve gotta know when to knock it down Know when to turn around When to put boots on the ground You’ve gotta know when to understand You’ve gotta know when to lend a hand Know when the ship’s unmanned Know where it’s gonna land Know when to break up the band This is the year that we’re gonna hang out or die trying Hang out or die trying Hang out or die trying This is the year that we’re gonna hang out or die trying Annalise married up Craig drives a pickup truck Matt’s a Republican Arnie is way too thin He looks like a skeleton Meghan’s a state senator Jen raises alligators Kara, she died in India I didn’t make it to the funeral This is the year that we’re gonna hang out or die trying Hang out or die trying Hang out or die trying This is the year that we’re gonna hang out or die trying Do you remember the Masons hall? I think it’s got enough room for us all I set up a backline Flyered the Main Line Stocked up on box wine Now it’s almost 9 o’clock And no one is showing up But damnit, we’re doing this Because I am an optimist I am an optimist This is the year that we’re gonna hang out or die trying Hang out or die trying Hang out or die trying This is the year that we’re gonna hang out or die trying Hang out or die trying Hang out or die trying This is the year that we’re gonna hang out This is the thing that that song was about That song that we heard when we were 20 years old That predicted how this was all gonna turn out This is the year that we’re gonna hang out or die trying Hang out or die trying Hang out or die trying This is the year that we’re gonna hang out or die trying
2.
Jessica and Dan and a cat named Bolt Thrower Living in a house with the heat turned off Next year they'll have the wood stove working Right now they're just sleeping with the dryer on And every day is like January And every night is like a Thursday night They don't wanna go out They probably shouldn't go out But they might Jessica and Dan in a cargo van With a dropped transmission They set out for Oakland They made it to Bridgeport A homeless tabby they found creeping around A Sunoco parking lot Jess named it Bolt Thrower Right on the spot But when the springtime comes Everything will be cool When the springtime comes They'll have paid back Dan's brother When the springtime comes They'll both be working full-time At the Norristown Zoo And every day this winter's like a couple of days And every week is like two or three weeks Nobody knows that they've peaked until after they've peaked Jessica and Dan have a cat named Bolt Thrower They use paper towels as coffee filters Walking to work in the morning, arm in arm The radio in the break room plays "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo" Dan hates the song, of course, but he still thinks of his mom In the backyard at the old house With her boyfriend at the time Drinking Genesee Cream Ale Quietly singing along Jessica and Dan and a cat named Bolt Thrower Putting one foot in front of the other
3.
Arms 03:13
Don’t make it harder than it needs to be Just throw your arms up in the air Don’t make it horrible Don’t make it sorrowful Don’t give into despair Just say “I don’t really care about material things When I’m hungry I eat and when I’m tired I sleep” And when I’ve had enough of something I just walk away I just leave it on the ground and walk away. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be Just watch the sun rise on the Delaware and think of me Still there will never be people like the ones that would be At a party in West Poplar in 2003 They all said “We don’t really care about material things When we’re hungry we eat and we’re tired we sleep” And when they’d had enough of something they just walked away They just left it on the ground and walked away. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be Just throw your arms up in the air It doesn’t have to be such a catastrophe You don’t have to be scared For whatever reason people tend to die at night They put out the light and then they put out the light We’re all going to the same place Some of us get there faster Not everyone goes down without a fight Don't make it harder than it needs to be
4.
We Don't Cry 02:34
You can have a little bit You can have some of it You can have half of it, you can have all of it If you need it You can have anything You can have everything You can have the good things, you can have the bad things You can have the crazy things Everybody’s walking around saying one thing and doing another We don’t cry, we don’t cry, we don’t cry, we don’t cry We just fight until we win or we fight until we die We don’t lie, we don’t lie, we don’t lie, we don’t lie Unless we have to If we try, if we try, if we try, if we try To carve out a little place in the world for you and I Then when we die, when we die, when we die, when we die, when we die Well that’s the part I haven’t figured out yet We can play it as a mystery We can play it as a comedy Let it descend into parody Either way apparently It ends up as a tragedy Everybody’s walking around saying one thing and doing another And everybody’s playing it close to the vest, looking out for themselves Everybody’s walking around saying one thing and thinking another And everybody’s walking around looking sideways at everyone else
5.
In the early 2000s you were living alone In a very strange city, In a very strange country Less interested then in what might have been Than what might be in the early 2000s In the early 2000s you were over punk But still suspicious of quote-unquote indie stuff So you settled on mod, it was good enough Good enough for the early 2000s And what comes next is never quite what you'd expect In the early 2000s you were listening in On Arabic, French and Italian The Manu Chao song that drew everyone in To the room in the early 2000s In the early 2000s things kept blowing up Much more so than you remembered, growing up It made your problems seem small, not like problems at all Getting real in the early 2000s And what comes next is never quite what you'd expect In the early 2000s something subtle had changed Some small part of the world had been rearranged You couldn't quite place it, but something seemed strange Kind of strange in the early 2000s In the early 2000s you were all alone Everyone from your old life was moving on But you'd been away just a little too long To ever ever really fit in at home
6.
Whatever keeps you out of the academy, man Just grab it and hold onto it with both hands It doesn't have to make sense It doesn't have to be good We're doing black metal yoga in our neighborhood Whatever keeps you out of a cubicle, girl Just hold onto it like it's the end of the world It doesn't have to be cool It doesn't have to be green Black metal yoga's a legitimate scene I spent 2009 through 2012 locked up in a Martian mining colony jail I had nothing to read I slept on a bench About 50 miles south of the Marianas Trench Me and Philip K. Dick and Father Divine Doing sun salutations, just passing the time The dishwashers were Finns The cooks were Norwegian We heard Bathory songs blaring out of the kitchen The miners went on strike and attacked the police So the governor gave us all early release I arrived back on Earth Wearing fingerless gloves Preaching black metal yoga And a message of love Black metal yoga and a message of love Black metal yoga and a message of love You don't have to be cruel You don't have to be tough Just black metal yoga and a message of love Whatever gets you out of the hospital my friend Just grab it hold
7.
Drunks and stoners living together Drunks and stoners making it work Time will tell whose problems are bigger Times will tell whose memory is worse Drunks and stoners talking in circles Drunks and stoners getting confused Packing their bags from the Garden of Eden Making their way to the Temple of Doom Drunks and stoners, drunks and stoners Drunks and stoners, hippies and punks Drunks and stoners, drunks and stoners Drunks hate stoners and stoners hate drunks Drunks and stoners trying to work it out Drunks and stoners just making it worse Two different ways of navigating the darkness Two different ways of ending up in a hearse Drunks and stoners trying to hold it together Drunks and stoners getting out of control Drunks and stoners despising each other This way of doing things is taking its toll Drunks and stoners, drunks and stoners Drunks and stoners, hippies and punks Drunks and stoners, drunks and stoners Drunks hate stoners and stoners hate drunks I don't want to play by the rules anymore Or suffer the company of fools anymore I don't want to play by the rules anymore Or suffer the company of fools Or suffer the company of fools
8.
She played a lawsuit SG She ran it through a Randall Commander The locals seemed to like her and they spared her all the usual slanders She used to book shows at a bar off of the 134 That didn't have a stage so the bands would just set up on the floor She had a head for business She never let owner scam her She played a lawsuit SG She ran it through a Randall Commander Kim tended bar on Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights She'd leave her son, David, doing homework in the booth on the right As you've probably guessed, that kid was way too young to be in a bar When the bands started up, she'd say "David, take a nap in the car" But David loved the music like a navigator loves the stars If you read between the lines, they will always tell you where you are He'd say "Hush now Kim, the band's beginning to play" She played a lawsuit SG She ran it through a Randall Commander She liked a good time though she simply wasn't going to pander The band was called Rash They chose it arbitrarily Sitting in a gas station parking lot in the IE They played six shows Five were in the bar I described The sixth was in Fullerton, opening for D.I. As an adult, David can come off as a nebbishy guy But he's got this hidden edge He's got this strange anarchic side And when he feels weak, he can't sleep, in a hotel bed A couple of those Rash songs still play in his head He took it all in, even if he didn't really understand her She played a lawsuit SG She ran it through a Randall Commander
9.
If I'm being honest, well I have to admit that Brooklyn's been good to me. I know I said unfavorable things about it Please accept my apology Come on, show a little mercy to me If we're being real I guess that I should acknowledge That Brooklyn's done alright by me Its doors swung wide whenever I'd drop by And it never asked nothing from me And at times took me seriously I once wrote on the wall at the back of Muchmore's "Philadelphia's full, maybe try Baltimore" But that wasn't right That wasn't fair now I see Because Brooklyn's been good to me If I'm being honest, well, Philly's a mess And I'm not getting out alive Still I cringe at the thought, I freely confess Of Philadelphia, NY Zip code 19125 But that's not Brooklyn's fault, or mine If I'm being honest, Boston's boring as hell And the people who live there know that very well If I'm being honest well, Pittsburgh's much more Much more than it ever gets credit for Still, New Orleans is the best damn city in the world, I believe But Brooklyn's been good to me. If I'm being honest Then I have to admit that Brooklyn's been good to me I know I've said unfavorable things about it Please accept my apology Come on, show a little mercy please Goodnight Brooklyn Love, Me
10.
If I can get my act together If you can get your act together If I can get my act together If we can get our acts together My friends Jen and Matt have a couple of cats And 60 days sober as a matter of fact And they just signed a lease on a five-bedroom house in Baltimore Matt's folks used to beat on him every day And Matt said "I'm never ever gonna be that way" And they just signed a lease on a five bedroom house in Baltimore And if we get our acts together They said that we can have the whole third floor My friends Jen and Weez had a couple of keys To drive up to Atlanta from New Orleans And they said I could ride along and pitch in on the driving The cops in Alabama took one look at me And they knew right away that I was the weak link And it only took them about an hour and a half to break me I've never told that story to anybody Jen did a year but it was only in county And I have no idea what happened to Weez I picked Jen up on the day she got out And she was just as high as the day she went in I dropped her in Ohio at some weird house And her and Matt met the very same night And one week later they checked into a clinic together They just signed a lease on a five bedroom house in Baltimore And if we get our acts together They said that we can have the whole third floor
11.
Somebody wrote “DON'T GO TO COLLEGE” on the wall in the green room You saw it when you were cleaning up after the headlining act Maybe you just shouldn’t go to college Maybe you just shouldn’t go to college Maybe you just shouldn’t go to college in the fall or at all A bonfire, mostly townies, in the woods before the Fourth of July He was quiet, slightly older, slightly damaged In all the ways that you liked at the time You said “Maybe I just shouldn’t go to college" Maybe I just shouldn’t go to college Maybe I just shouldn’t go to college Maybe I just shouldn’t go to college in the fall or at all You’ve got to choose something You’ve got to choose something But no matter what you choose you’re gonna lose, you’re gonna lose No matter what you choose you’re gonna lose, you’re gonna lose No matter what you choose you’re gonna lose, you’re gonna lose You’re gonna lose Maybe you just shouldn’t go to college Maybe you just shouldn’t go to college Maybe you just shouldn’t go to college in the fall or at all You’ll be out the door and on the bus tomorrow morning before daybreak With as many clothes as you can fit in your brother’s old army rucksack You'll be widely understood as a catastrophe But your grandmother would have understood completely She had scars from an industrial sewing machine all over her hands
12.
You've got that darkness inside of you That darkness inside of you And I can tell because I've got it too I can tell because I've got it too Your father was the manor lord Your mother scrubbed the kitchen floors Her death was ruled an accident But the servants knew just what that meant You've got that darkness inside of you That darkness inside of you And I can tell because I've got it too I can tell because I've got it too When you were old enough you ran like hell And I was on the run myself From the La Familia cartel When we met on Cozumel You've got that darkness inside of you That darkness inside of you And I can tell because I've got it too I can tell because I've got it too Swapping passports in Belize Now we're hiking through the Pyrenees We're dressed up like the household staff We'll be trampling out the grapes of wrath We're in it for the long con We'll be giving them their Vietnam Now we're driving on the Autobahn We're driving on the Autobahn It's very scary stuff
13.
We could've tie-dyed the sky in reply to a lie But we're not gonna try anymore We got cut up and scuffed and roughed up and left on the moors Make up or brake up or shake up, pull stakes up? Just wake up, just don't even try All that you get in the end's a black Irish goodbye. Black Irish goodbye Black Irish goodbye All that you get in the end's a black Irish goodbye An Irish goodbye's when you sense that it's time And you quietly slip out the back A black Irish goodbye's just like that but you never come back Because silence is sacred and silence is strong and it's steeped in it's own kind of proof If you're doubting the power of silence Well here is the proof: Black Irish goodbye Black Irish goodbye All that you get in the end are black Irish goodbyes God woke up one morning alone in the garden And called out two names to the sky A lonely and cavernous echo was the only reply Their names were Adam and Eve, I believe And both of them started to cry It was the first penance, the first black Irish goodbye Black Irish goodbye Black Irish goodbye All that you get in the end's a black Irish goodbye
14.
All these stories of failure They keep us warm like old blankets Or sweaters out of a freebox At 4 in the morning When the fire is dying When the fire is dying All these stories of failure Of guys who said “Fuck it.” Of girls who said “Who gives a shit?” And walked away with their dignity Walked away with integrity Yeah, I kind of call bullshit on that Or at least some of it All these stories of Adam You know I saw him last weekend At the Huntington El stop And he asked me for money And I was like “Are you kidding dude?” Do you even know who you’re talking to? Remember, I used to do this too Shit, once or twice I even did it with you But he just kind of looked through me So I got on the subway All these stories of people People like me and you You know that I kind of like you I get the sense that you like me too Tell me, what are we gonna do? Tell me, what are we gonna do? With these stories of failure
15.
You found a marbleized notebook in the garage Of fan fiction about Nicki Minaj And a mixtape labeled “Songs About Margaret Thatcher (And Ronald Reagan)" And a wedding ring with an amethyst Inscribed “Here is a list of things that exist” And a picture of your grandmother with Edith Piaf After the war And all of sits atop a a wooden chest And inside of that there's a soot-stained vest That belonged to some guy who lived and died Like it was no big deal I can’t concentrate Waves It comes and goes in waves Sometimes it goes away Sometimes it stays I can’t concentrate Keep the small rules, break the big ones Keep the small rules, the small rules are the easy ones For the people who will tell you how to live The small rules are the only ones they care about or understand I can’t concentrate
16.
In the morning, in the evening, I can picture Margaret Stackhouse I can picture Margaret Stackhouse and she’s reading and she’s thinking Of monoliths and obelisks and skylines full of minarets A bricolage of languages, assemblages of meaning And she’s reading in the morning, and in the evening In the morning, in the evening, I can picture Stanley Kubrick I can picture Stanley Kubrick drinking coffee on a soundstage And he’s sifting through some paperwork and finding it distasteful Then he happens on a letter, it is postmarked from New Jersey And he reads it, in the morning, in the evening In the morning, in the evening, I can picture Margaret Stackhouse I can picture Margaret Stackhouse on a narrow bamboo bridge between The empty spaces in between the platitudes of history She hears the rumblings of mythology In the morning, in the evening, in the morning, in the evening I can picture, I can picture Margaret Stackhouse In the morning, in the evening, I can picture Margaret Stackhouse I can picture Margaret Stackhouse in the morning, in the evening
17.
Those jackboots are made for marching And I’m afraid that’s what they’ll do One of these days they’re gonna march the length of Woodland Avenue To a half empty bodega that is staffed by an old man Whose most deeply held belief is that Life never gives you more than you can handle Where are all the votive candles? Repainted and refurbished now, the house we used to rent We tried soundproofing the basement but we barely made a dent The nights were pricked by sirens and the days went on forever And we never called the cops When the substation was torn apart by vandals We lit our rooms with votive candles Life never gives you more than you can handle Where are all the votive candles? They never stopped the violence or reversed the wear and tear But the mariachi’s silent now like it was never there We marched in just like fire ants and burned out just like fireflies And the flux goes on forever But life never gives you more than you can handle Where are all the votive candles? If life ever gives you more than you can handle Look at all the votive candles

about

Here is (almost) everything ever recorded by the Rentiers, the short-lived East Coast DIY pseupergroup fronted by Joel Tannenbaum (Plow United, Ex Friends, The Snow Fairies, The Skywriters)

credits

released January 13, 2017

Recorded, mixed and mastered in PA, NY, NJ and NC, 2014-2016.
Awesome art by Shannon Dorsey.

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

The Rentiers Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Music for lifers.

contact / help

Contact The Rentiers

Streaming and
Download help

Report this album or account

If you like The Rentiers, you may also like: