Robert Pollard's new (and soon to be subsequent) release "Elephant Jokes" hit stores yesterday, and features guest guitar tracks by none other than The Library is on Fire's Steve Five!

If you listen closely to "Hippsville (where the frisbees fly forever)", you will hear a little gnome squealing on a Hagstrom guitar. That little gnome was the astral projection of Steve Five!

So run out and buy a copy before its too late! The Time is NOW!

new corner (for wassily kandinsky)

triangle* wants to turn the corner
caress the walls behind the painting
discovering all new colors

painting it bright!

we’ll watch the city burn so slowly
imagine things behind the (t.v. set) framing
denying all the new horrors

in a dream
in the night
is something scrambled, sublime

painting it bright!
watching it rise!

come on, let’s do the “turn the corner”!
creating something bright to remember
we’ll squeeze the blood from all those cymbals!
and i wanna turn a new corner
sea, the fire flash from your i’s,
see the water burn from those letters,

painting it bright!
watching it rise!

*see kandinsky’s “concerning the spiritual in art”

the library is underwater

it was a good book while it lasted
i knew it wouldn’t last much longer
there were some parts we just could not read
there were some parts that needed to be stronger

now it’s aflame
like it never happened

a shame we never got to know you
and we know it won’t last much longer
we’ll be the chapters you cannot read
who think we can go on forever

now it’s aflame
like it never happened
and what you say
it never happened

i’ll let the pages burn so blasted
i’ll write and write and sing, my strangers
keep drowning in the ink on the page
the library is underwater

pink rock (in the front yard)

she buried the flame
while she was painting her way out
did not want the same
as she would blind me with those

charms in her eyes, they were bright
but could not hide what i knew
it’s a sign of the times, it’s a
floating away brown balloon,
like those scars you can’t hide
and they won’t be going any time soon.

i destroyed the tape
unraveled the oxide on the ground
the rust ribbons stained
i could not turn off all the

storms in the sky, they were leaving
such a drastic tattoo,
so i went straight for the eye,
there was nothing else i knew how
to do, but even i don’t know why
it slammed like an onyx wall
with no way through

now everybody loves a scandal
some people really want to watch you fall
to see you flying off the handle
to watch you stumble as you drop the ball
but none of them could hold a candle,
no one could take the flame i felt from those

stars in her eyes, they were bright
but could not hide what i knew.

after all

all as the seasons passed so slow, she came in winter
snowfalls and saying, “i know who you are”
the grass beneath the ice was waiting to be summer
so softly still her eyes would sway beneath the stars

after all its not easy to find help
to find your way
you could even blame yourself
keep those things that you can’t tell

the spring would blossom all too fast
the day was draining, it seemed to say
“i don’t know who you are”
the lake beneath the storm was waiting to freeze over
the fire behind her eyes burned slower to a char.

after all, it’s not easy to find help
to take the pain,
you could even blame yourself
take those things from off the shelf

the summer slipped so slowly past
a moment waiting with nothing
new to find, a failure on the floor,
a friend who left behind every single reason
to make you lose your mind and wonder
who you are

after all its not easy to find help
to find your way
to lose the hand that you been dealt
forget the way you always felt

the fall would falter all too fast
the day was fading, to hide behind
the night and watch it from afar
to hide behind the night and watch
the angels leaving, they’d wave goodbye
and say, “we know who you are.”

the foolish fire*

i got you right where you want me
to haunt the nights you don’t got me
i got in tight where you got me

and i’ll be the lover of your foolish fire

you got me right where you want me
you got in tight where you got me

and I’ll be the mother of your stupid desires
i’ll be the lightning from your foolish fire

(i’m a careless girl and you’re mine.
i’m a careless girl and you’re all mine.)

and i’ll be the mother of your stupid desires
i’ll be the lightning from your foolish fire
you’re so tired.

(i’m a careless girl and you’re all mine.)

*from the latin ‘ignes fatui’, an illumination caused by marsh gases in the night which would fatally misguide lost travelers into swamps.

ashtray

you don’t wanna wake up thinking
you’ve done something you shouldn’t have done
that someday maybe i’d let the eyes closed smiles begin
but lately lately you’ve got a sickness under your skin
and maybe maybe it’s too late to bring to an end

sure what you tried on fit so sweetly
in the now, dancing to that wonderful sound
but this town, you filled it up like an ashtray
like some clown, thought she would have you coming around again…

and you don’t wanna wake up stinking of
something you know you shouldn’t have done
some Sunday morning that leads you to some ultimate sin
i think we both know everything must come to an end
i think we both know that

sure what you tried on fit so sweetly
in the now, dancing to that wonderful sound
but this town you filled it up like an ashtray
knocked down, she don’t want you coming around again…

see them shooting holes at each other’s panicked souls
in the dark, darts aiming at each other’s hearts and
they’re so off the mark, masking all that could have
been in store, bull’s eye – but nothing like the target
they asked for

that town you played it out like the airwaves
broke down, fleeing from some horrible sound
but this town you filled it up like an ashtray
were denounced, she don’t want you coming around again…

she don’t want you coming around again.

anything but concrete and grey

i see the boxcars and the trains all running down the tracks
the seconds slip through into minutes never coming back
and all those people that i knew who slipped right through the cracks
just left me bitter and confused but all nostalgiac
but no one ever got as close to me as you did
i do not think no one has ever dreamed so lucid

but you used it all to pretend, and i lost it all

just let me win
let the tempests and the bedpost fires fall again
let the greenest grass bloom forth and let the fragrance in
let the sweetest water roll right off my tongue again
unleash the lions and the tigers and the bears within
just do it for me one more time so i can take it in,
now do it for me one more time…because

you lose it all in the end.

another day starts growing dim
another life starts setting in
burning bright but you don’t quite
know where to begin
you don’t know where because…

you lose it all in the end.
you lose it all…

charlie bear

you sought those weak emphatic lips
then you held on so tight at two to two
it’s true they’ll make you
it’s true they’ll make you

king of the zoo in all your quips
it’s so unstable that from lies to true
it’s blue they’ll make you
slave to a crew that never fits

it’s true they’ll make you
it’s blue they’ll make you

you sought those weak emphatic lips
king of the zoo in all your quips
the yellow tables turn from green to blue
it’s blue they’ll make you

it’s true they’ll make you
it’s blue they’ll make you

dream of patti smith #4 and #5

i had a dream of patti smith upon the shore
and woke up drunk at night outside the tavern door
i heard the church bells chiming from the tavern green
though i was young i knew the one thing it could mean

that it was only a dream

i shivered from the cold wind of those city streets
and tore my jacket on some subway rodent’s teeth
i doused my body in the blood of rock’n’roll
saw from the stage salvation in her shining soul

it was only a dream
it was only a dream

i had a dream of patti smith upon the shore
and woke up drunk at night outside the tavern door
i doused my body in the blood of rock’n’roll
saw from the stage salvation in her shining soul…
and gnossos* lost his cool, so soon to quit the scene
took a wrong turn riding down to see james dean
i saw a vision of st. francis** speak to me
shot off his blue eyes live on national tv

but it was only a dream
it was only a dream
it was only a dream

dream #5

scene: a field in northern iran


*papodopoulos
**of assisi, also loosely refers to kurdt cobain and richard brautigan

tomorrow is a day i might not see

when we met on the steps of that crowded college hall
it was so inept, it was something like the fall
and maybe i was wrong, to think we could get along
oh it felt so wrong
it was such a sad song

i had a dream that day of a distant universe
not where we were still together,
just where we weren’t so cursed.
of a place where i was fine, where i hadn’t
tread that fine line of to be or not to be.

but i must have been high to think i could
make you understand, instead of a blind eye
i got a glad hand, and you just couldn’t let it be
you had to prove you were harder than me
that you could take care and i was not fit to be there…

and it hurt, and it hit me so hard
you know there’s been people around my head
and they left me so scarred
to the points where i was weak
those were the ones that they were seeking
you said you were seeing someone else

and now i’m out on the lam
And i have flown out of the fold
with no place to land and nobody’s hand
to hold, and anymore i just don’t care
You don’t expect no one to be there at all
when you’re against the wall

or out in the dirt where it’s another cloudy day
and everything i kept somehow got lost along the way
but the memories of you, and in my head they all
turned blue
and it was so wrong, it was such a sad song

that i had to sing, that i had to scream out loud
and though it has nothing to do with you, oh
you’d be so proud.
cuz you’re not even worth this song
no you’re not even worth this song
oh you were so wrong, how you said so long

since you won’t forgive me, oh,
for my evil ways, i’ll blow you a kiss
and i promise a brand new day
and at least i have been set free
even if tomorrow is a day i might not see
oh, i might not see.

you gonna find out sooner or later

i had a dream when i was young,
at the top of the stairs and everyone i knew was at the bottom
there was a man there and he sung
it’s over it’s over it’s over

and you gonna find out sooner or later
you gonna find out where you stand
you gonna find out sooner or later
these kinds of things go hand in hand

i watched a brother die so young
and in his wild dreams were fishes in the wild waters
but something charmed his face and sung
“it’s over it’s over it’s over”

and you gonna find out sooner or later
you gonna find out where you stand
you gonna find out sooner or later
these kinds of things go hand in hand.

Watch in HD here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s448z3zO7LA

or the regular version:

hello.  The Library Is On Fire now has a Facebook page too.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Library-Is-On-Fire/30102472646?ref=ts


((rock))

Every band's got a story, and most sound like this: "We grew up in this town, blah blah blah, heard a copy of the Velvet Underground blah blah, picked up my first guitar, blah, until we finally found our drummer and blah blah, once opened for The Wedding Present in Columbus."

That's fine, but The Library is on Fire has a different kind of story. I mean, sure, elements are the same - Steve Five was given the name "Steve Five" for one, a holdover from his first band Yellow Five in which he was a teen brat headliner with a fake ID and a penchant for catchy hooks, roaming the seedy underbelly of Akron or the hippie college town of Kent, Ohio, in 1996. His friends' bands (some of which would later move on to form the Black Keys and proto-indie metal Party of Helicopters) were mostly college students. Steve was the town scamp, still growing up to squeeze the tits of the freckle-faced blondes who worked the local A&W drive-thru. He wrote and played, and paid attention.

In 1999 I left Kent and moved to New York City. By then Steve had formed his next band, Gold Circles, who emerged as arguably the best of the scene. I had heard they got signed and put out a record when we were still sending each other vinyl 7-inches in the mail. A couple of years went by and Steve had enrolled in Kent State University in earnest, studying English, playing in a new band called Chinese Logos with longtime collaborator Cory Race, and a kind of mythic Cobain-like heart-breaker poet, Tyler Gaston. Chinese Logos, heavily complimented by the best bands that year, notably Liars, Yeah Yeah Yeah's and TV on the Radio, were just getting started.

Then in 2004, Steve suddenly moved to Brooklyn. We met for lunch and he looked to be the same boy I'd met 10 years previous, but smaller, beaten down, sad and chain-smoking as if to hasten his own death. It was then he told me the reason for the move. Tyler had been killed somewhat mysteriously on Kent's train tracks just a month before. Still in shock, he'd come to New York to start a band. That didn't happen, but life in the city did - a string of bad jobs, false starts, drunken one-night-stands, and one doomed gut-wrenching breakup later, Steve was back in Ohio and in the hospital, apprehensive and at rock-bottom, but ready to face the grief he'd been avoiding for two years. Finally, he began to write.

In Ohio, people tend not to come back from the brink – they decide to die and they do. But Steve didn't. I remember being shocked the first time I heard TLIOF. It was the sound of the pain that comes from being left behind, and the rage that ensures you'll move forward. It sounds gay, but music is the only drug worth overdosing on, and Cory, Steve, and Antoine found some kind of magic in their loss.

The album "Cassette," seemingly produced overnight by Guided by Voices' Todd Tobias, turned things around the summer of '07. As it happens, I fell in love while listening to it – a doomed, horrible, unrequited love – but love all the same. Its songs clean, tight, melodic, earnest, fevered and sweaty, the embodiment of everything I'd felt for this person, echoed in the stupefying excellence of Cory Race's manic drumming. Complete with the lyrics to mirror our doomed affair, "Instead of a blind eye / I got a glad hand". These are lyrics that make you feel like you're being watched, that make each song a self-fulfilling prophecy.

By the time Cassette was complete, and Steve had moved back to the City to complete graduate work at The New School, Cory and Antoine decided to stay behind. much like New York City itself, the new lineup, with Pete Sustarsic on drums and Mark Shue on bass, has become a union of new and expanding ideas, brought together by a mutual love of their contemporaries and friends, their burgeoning crowds of fans, and of Brooklyn and its endless, earnest output of rad.

Erin Hosier
Manager
The Library is on Fire

A Cloak For Any Occasion: A Night Celebrating The Opening of The New Museum of Contemporary Art, in the Heart of the Bowery

Saturday, December 1st
C.S.V. Cultural Center
107 Suffolk Street

Through drunks and verse, bums and dope, the music, the night, The Bowery has always remained its own church.  A skid row built on blood, ritual, community, and sacrifice. It is a religion that embraces change as much as the unholy and takes as much as it gives.

Event Schedule:

4:00 pm    Donatien Veisman

4:30 pm     Ryan Pfluger Slideshow accompanied by 2 hour portrait performance

5:15 pm    David Raymond
       
6:00 pm    Scott Matthew

7:00 pm    Aude de Pasquier Grall

8:00 pm    A Cloak For Any Occasion
            James J. Williams III -  8:00
            Ach(ten)-    8:15
            John O'hara    8:45
            Fragile        9:00
            The Library is on Fire       9:45

10:30 pm    Whore's Mascara

William Fulke (1563), A Goodly Gallerye: William Fulke's Book of Meteors. pp.10-13.

Of lights that goe before men, and follow them abroad in the fields, by the night season.

There is also a kind of light, yt is seene in the night season, and seemeth to goe before men, or to follow them, leading them out of their way onto waters, and other dangerous places. It is also very often seene in the night, of them that saile in the Sea and sometime will cleave to ye mast of the shippe, or other high partes, sometime glide round about the shippe, and either rest in one part till it goe out, or else bee quenched in the water. This impression seene on the land, is called in Latine, Ignis fatuus, foolish fire, that hurteth not, but onely feareth fooles. That which is seene on the Sea, if it bee but one, is named Helena, if it bee two, it is called Castor and Pollux.

The foolish fire, is an Exhalation kindled by meanes of violent moving, when by cold of the night, in the lowest region of the ayre, it is beaten downe, and then commonly, if it be light, seeketh to ascend upward, and is sent downe agayne; so it banceth up and downe: Els if it move not up and downe, it is a great lumpe of glewish or oyly matter, that by moving of the heat in it selfe, is enflamed of it selfe, as moyst hay will be kindled of it selfe. In hote and fennie Countries, these lightes are often seene, and where as is aboundance of such unctuous and fat matter, as about Churchyards, where through the corruption of the bodies there buried, the earth is full of such substance: wherefore in Churchyards, or places of common buriall, oftentimes are such lights seene, which ignorant and superstitious fooles have thought to bee soules tormented the fire of Purgatorie. Indeed the devill hath used these lightes (although they be naturally caused) as strong delusions, to captive the mindes of men, with feare of the Popes Purgatorie, whereby hee did open injury to the bloud of Christ, which onely purgeth us from all our sins, and delivereth us from all torments, both temporal and eternall according to the saying of the wiseman, The soules of the righteous are in the bands of God, and nor torment toucheth them. But to returne to the lights, in which, there are yet two things to bee considered. First, why they lead men out of their way. And secondly, why they seeme to follow men and goe before them. The cause why they lead men out of the way, is, that men, while they take heed to such lights, and are also sore afraid, they forget their way, and then being once but a little out of their way, they wander they wot not wither, to waters, pittes, and other very dangerous places. Which, when at length they hap the way home, will tell a great tale, how they have beene led about by a spirit in the likenesse of fire. Now the cause why they seeme to goe before men, or to follow them, some men have said to bee the moving of the aire, by the going of the man, which aire moved, should drive them forward, if they were before, and draw them after, if they were behind. But this is no reason at all, that the fire, which is oftentimes three or foure miles distant from the man that walketh, should bee mooved to and fro by that aire which is moved through his walking, but rather the moving of the aire and the mans eyes, causeth the fire to seeme as though it moved: as the Moone to children seemeth, if they are before it, to run after them: if shee bee before them, to run before them, that they cannot overtake her, though shee seeme to be verie neere them. Wherefore these lights rather seeme to move, than that they be moved indeed.

The Library Is on Fire
by René Char
                                  to George Braque

    From the mouth of the cannon, it snows. Hell was in our heads. At the same moment, spring is at our fingertips. To stride again permitted, the earth in love, grasses overflowing.

    The spirit too, like all else, has quaked.
    The eagle is in the future.

    Every action that commits the soul, even though unawares, will have as its epilogue a repenting or a sorrow. One has to consent to that.

    How did writing come to me? Like bird's down on my window-pane in winter. At once there arose in the fireplace a battle of embers which has not, even now, come to an end.

    Silky cities of the daily look, inserted among other cities, with streets mapped out by us alone, under the wing of lightnings that respond to our solitude.

    Everything in us should be purely a joyful feast, when something that we did not foresee, that we do not light, that will speak our heart, simply by its own means, is fulfilled.

    Let us continue to take our soundings, to speak with an even voice, in grouped words, we shall end by silencing all these dogs, by getting them to melt into the grass, where they will watch us with a smoky eye while the wind rubs out their back.

    L'éclair me dure.

    Only my fellow human being, woman or man friend, can wake me from my torpor, let loose poetry, hurl me against the limits of the old desert, for me to triumph over it. No-one else. Not skies, nor favored country, nor things that set one quivering.
    Torch, I waltz with him only.

    One can't begin a poem without some scrap of error about oneself and the world, without some straw of innocence at the first words.

    In the poem every word, or nearly, must be used in its original meaning. Some detach themselves and become plurivalent. There are amnesic ones. The constellation of the Solitary is taught.

    Poetry will rob me of my death.

    Why pulverised poem? Because at the term of its voyage toward the land, after the prenatal darkness and the terrestrial hardness, the end of the poem is light, a being's contribution to life.

    The poet does not hoard what he discovers; having transcribed it, he soon loses it. In that resides his novelty, his infinity, his danger.

    My skill is prow skill.

    One is born with men, one dies unconsoled among the gods.

    The earth that recieves the grain is sad. The grain that will risk so much is happy.

    There is a curse that resembles no other. It blinks in a lazy way, has an agreeable nature, puts on a reassuring face. But what resilience, once it has done with feinting, what a rush straight to the target! Probably, since the shadow in which it puts up its scaffolding is malignant and the region is a dead secret, it will elude any name, will always escape in good time. It outlines, upon the sky veil of a few who are clear-sighted, some rather scaring parables.

    Books without movement. Yet books find their way lithely into our days, let fly a lamentation there, begin dances.

    How find words for my liberty, my surprise, at the end of so many détours? There is no bottom, there is no ceiling.

    Sometimes the silhouette of a colt, of a child in the distance, comes scouting toward my forehead and jumps the rail of my care. Then under the trees the fountain speaks again.

    We long to remain unknown to the curiosity of the women who love us. We love them.

    Light has age. Night has none. But what was the instant of this intact spring?

    Not to have several deaths, suspended and as though snowed up. To have only one, of good sand. And without resurrection.

    Let us stop close by those people who can cut themselves off from their resources, even if for them there is little or no leeway. Waiting digs in them a vertiginous insomnia. Beauty covers them with a hat of flowers.

    Birds who entrust your slenderness, your perilous sleep to a shock of reed, when the cold has come, how like you we are!

    I admire the hands that fill and, for matching, for joining, the finger that refuses a thimble.

    I notice sometimes that the current of our existence is hard to distinguish, because we are not only subject to its arbitrariness, but the easy movement of the arms and legs that would make us go where we would be glad to go, on the coveted bank, to meet loves whose differences would enrich us - this movement remains unachieved, quickly declining to an image, like a scent curled up on our thought.

    Desire, desire aware, we gain advantage from our darkness only by having the use of certain sovereignties matched with invisible flames, with invisible chains, which, revealing themselves, step by step, make us glitter.

    Beauty makes her sublime bed all alone, builds her fame singularly among men, at their side yet apart.

    Let us sow reeds and cultivate the vine on the hillslopes, finging the wounds of our spirit. Cruel fingers, prudent hands, this humorous place is propitious.

    The man who invents, unlike the one who discovers, adds to things, brings to human beings nothing but masks, middle ways, iron gruel.
   
    Life at last whole, not that I wrench from your depth the sweetness of your living truth!
   
    Stay near the cloud. Watch beside the tool. Every sowing is hated.

    The good-will of men on strident mornings! In the swarming of the delirious air I rise up, I shut myself in, an undevoured insect, hunted and hunting.

    Facing these waters, hard-shaped, into which there pass in burst bunches all the flowers of the green mountain, the Hours marry gods.

Cool sun, whose creeping vine I am.

Transcribed by Steve Five, Translation amalgamation of Johnathan Griffin, Susanne Dubroff, and Steve Five

So Cleveland Scene did a write-up on us. Apparently so didthe Free Times. I don't know why I'm posting this but here is an article I did about five or six years ago.

So....video's done, record's mastered, pizza party executed. Now we're gearing up to play with Don Caballero. FUCK. They are good. We must practice so we don't look like total jokers.

Thanks to the cute girl at the Pizza Party last night who said she really liked the funky breakdown part of the third song we played. That song is called "pink rock (in the front yard)" and is on our new album, which will be out soon, and by soon I mean two months or so. The song is about a metaphor my friend Andrew came up with when I was really bummed out about a girl. He likened my sadness from the breakup to a pink rock in the front yard that just showed up one day. Don't know exactly how it got there, and don't know really what to do about it, but it's there. It's like, one of our favorite songs to play. We really want you to hear it. And cute girl from last night, we'll get it posted on our page as soon as possible.

We played at Edison's in Tremont on Thursday. Now that was HOTT. They know how to treat a band. I mean, they know how to treat a band. Got payed, pitchers of beer all night, much love to Da/vid and VERY KNEES and CHUM and EDISON'S and the lovely and extremely talented Roxanne! She did a cover of Beck's "cyanide breathmint" that was fatally breathtaking, as well as that one song two songs before it. great melodies. Chum was a wash of sound in the room, I get the feeling they are able to pull off a live MBV type of sound even better than MBV ever did. Seriously, Chum has great guitar and bass tones and good melodies. And The Very Knees are a force to be reckoned with. BRIGHT BRIGHT BRIGHT! Like the look in a newborn baby's eyes and neon lights reflecting flourescent skies...man, did they spike my drink with extacy??? Yes, they were that good.

Sheesh. OK. Thanks to all the bands we're friends with for being so damn cool. We love you! Eliminate the ninnies and the twits! Duty now for the future!

xo

tliof