Get all 5 Fourth releases available on Bandcamp and save 75%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN NOVELTY, Australia Post Modern, Corporate Memphis Will Be Laid To Waste, This Open Plan Office Ain't Big Enough For The Two Of Us, and Fourth.
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I wonder how much bigger Shenzhen coulda been
If Deng Xiaoping drank Monster Energy
The Kowloon walled city would have welcomed me
I’d woulda had run best dumpling joint Guangdong’d ever seen
The mistake i made was using Face ID
now Siri knows I lost the genetic lottery
And if I fuck up my life and drive myself to wits end
My AI will only Ever see me as a friend
Where does life end and original thought start?
My whole childhood I thought I was the next Mozart
But if he was so smart, better than his friends?
How come I’m still alive, and he’s in the grave dead?
The consent given to genius is fickle like the sun
One day it warms you, then burns you for fun
And if you criticise, you get met with everyone
Telling you it’s just nature, nothing can be done
Yet we give them our wallets, our newspapers, our screens
Trust them to save us, fulfill all our dreams
The hands for piano are now hands on computer keys
Which log all our thoughts, and rewrite our scenes
And so you play the fool, grasping at straws
Convincing yourself it’s the fault of the poor
But you too have an iPhone, just like them all
I’d have more respect if you just came clean
And admitted it was about money and chasing a dream
That’s got nothing to do with policing my tone
That you only care about giving your children a home
And who am I to blame if you want comfort over strife
Mao didn’t fight to hear things go bump in the night
But you sold us all to the Silicon freaks
Who bring you this music on an app so sleek
I hope intersection of genius and misanthropy won’t last
I yearn for a time when art can be just art
And the performer would vanish after touching the keys
Amadeus Ex Machina, a wind amongst the breeze
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My girlfriend? Asian
My stories? Bold and brazen
My second language? Broken
My politics? Contrary and outspoken
My music? Over-compressed
My doctors opinion? Over-depressed
My sperm count? On one hand
My workplace? Loves Ayn Rand
My aspiration? Consumption
My greatest fear? Is reproduction
My coffee? Made at home
My cooking? Tastes like stone
And my pets? Apartment-tolerant
My neighbours? Indeterminate origin
My existence? Is filled with joy
I swear I'm not like the other boys
I got a bachelor degree
I got a bachelor degree
Look, trust me
I got a bachelor degree
Look, trust me
I got a bachelor degree
My parents? Doctors
My birth certificate? Now reads adopted
My hairstyle? Windswept
My HECS debt? Forever indexed
My time capsules? Buried underground
My high school poems? They ain't profound
My gym membership? It's untouched
My blood pressure? In God I trust
I got a master's degree
I got a master's degree
Look, trust me
I got a master's degree
Look, trust me
I even went to RMIT
I can be a Marxist, if you want me to
I can love anarchy, if you want me to
I'll worship Adorno, if you want me to
I'll recite John Donne, if you want me to
I'll take the money from Thiel, if you want me to
I'll join skulls and bones, if you want me to
I write ten essays bland, if you want me to
And I'll forget what I learned when you pay me too, because:
My weekends? They're bereft
My performance review? Totally inept
My mental state? Completely burned out
My short courses? I dropped out
And my concentration's wavering
The chip on my shoulder I am savouring
My final report? I'm down and out
My humanity is something I can live without because
I got a P.H.D
I got a P.H.D
Look, trust me
I got a P.H.D
Look, trust me
I even went to Melbourne Uni
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Don't look at me at least I tried
I hired an empathy coach for four ninety-nine
I needed the help I didn't have the time
To relate to my father, is that a crime?
Is it so bad if I make my mother cry?
I'm just 'doing the work', that's what my coach admires
'Cause I'm the smartest guy in the room
I just need a helping hand with my business plan
I'm the most-liked guy in the office
you're just star-struck every time you turn down my lunch offers
But don't look at me at least I tried
To stop the years of mediocrity passing me by
When your hairline recedes you buy rogaine and pray
So why is it bad if I hire someone to say
That I'm the smartest guy in the room
But my foot's in my mouth when it comes to the Jews
I'm the most liked guy in the office
But you'd have a hard time too if you spent all day on Zoom
I wrote these words on Christmas Day
Trying to give all my gifts away
But is it really for the best to spoil the poor?
What will they use these AirPods for?
Don't look at me man at least I tried
I hired an empathy coach for four ninety-nine
I got a coupon code to work on my pride
You can't blame me now if I fuck up your life
Don't look at me man at least I tried
I hired an empathy coach for four ninety-nine
I spent three hundred dollars on a suit and tie
If clothes make the man then I'm twelve stories high
Don't look at me man at least I tried
I hired an empathy coach for four ninety-nine
I got a coupon code to work on my pride
You can't blame me now if I fuck up your life
Don't look at me man at least I tried
I hired an empathy coach for four ninety-nine
I spent three hundred dollars on a suit and tie
If clothes make the man then I'm twelve stories high
Don't look at me man at least I tried
I hired an empathy coach for four ninety-nine
It took a lot for me to listen to another guy
Be proud I pulled my wallet out and swallowed my pride
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5. |
Australia Post Modern
02:40
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How does it feel to have a culture that resists
Any form of sincerity and genuine bliss
Chop down the achievements of the working poor
A big brown land with a rotten core
Sand angels in the Nullarbor, cooked flesh barely raw
Tourist trap clap back sand worm mighty maw
Wolf Creek documents Australian mind
Hate the foreigner but keep their culture by your side I wish
we could back to the VB Days
At least then we were honest about our visceral hate
Now every day we are welcomed and acknowledge our crimes
Before we hold our meetings to poison the earth for a dime
I'll never forget when QANTAS was an airline
I'll never forgive John Howard for his hairline
Find me dead on a Hills-Hoist Clothesline
Watch me swing eating a Golden Gaytime
Climbing Ayes Rock and getting thanked by an ancient tribe
No words can begin to describe
Horrific genealogy of our own reason and rhyme
Australia, stupid yet sublime
How could I bear to look at myself on the world stage
When all I've produced is genocide and a stagnant wage
A nation of convicts that follow the rules
yet act outraged when they get fed nothing but gruel
The big Merino
The big Galah
The Big Lobster
The Big Golden Guitar
The Big Easel
The Giant Prawn
So much to see and so little to adore
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Cross the Yangtze like Mao Zedong when he crawl
I'm at the Wuhan wet market like Shannon Noll
Respect Vladmir Lenin I know he tried hard
So I put my money in the account named Vanguard
My Everyday Rewards are here to stay
It's the Australian way to overpay
But it's worth it if I collect points I guess
And get ten bucks off for every two grand spent
They jack up the price and they jack up my rent
I'll just blame the banks and the immigrants
Because money is nature and countries are wolves
Why would an economist lie, surely they ain't fools
When I'm living the dream I just get in the way
Content for my masters to lead me astray
Read the words in the paper every day
It's the fault of the East unless I'm there on holiday
With their funny languages and spicy food
I'm just asking questions don't mean to be rude
But can you see as wide as me with your slanted eyes
Hey, don't shoot the messenger I read about it online!
My Everyday Rewards are here to stay
It's the Australian Way to overpay
But it's worth it if I get approved for a loan
Thirty years chained to a husk of brittle stone
They jack up the price and they jack up the rent
I'll just blame the banks and the immigrants
Because money is nature and countries are wolves
Why would an economist lie, surely they ain't fools
You wonder and ruminate on why no one takes Australia seriously
But see nothing wrong with chicken nuggets costing more than a DVD of Crocodile Dundee
If Mad Max is the future count me in
At least then I'll get rewarded for original sin
'Cause Blade Runner's looking more and more likely each day
I didn't pay attention in LOTE so the desert better blow my way
My way or the highway
The great Princess Highway
They jack up the price and they jack up therent
I'll just blame the banks and the immigrants
Because money is nature and countries are wolves
Why would an economist lie, surely they ain't fools
When I'm living the dream I just get in the way
Content for my masters to lead me astray
Read the words in the paper every day
It's the fault of the East unless I'm there on holiday
好好学习天天向上
They told me to hate a place I only knew on a map
So I stumbled through back alleys with a dictionary app
Power cables twisting upward into the night sky
麻将 players with bellies full and eyes wide
Two hundred geriatrics dancing to C+C
Everybody dance now then time for dumplings and tea
Get home read the paper and it makes me sick
Cheaper to visit Chengdu than pay rent in Brunswick
Black clouds over Shenzhen by Western decree
We blame the Middle Kingdom for a carbon footprint we
Fitted the shoe for back in nineteen seventy three
Everything made in China but now we want them to leave
We blame them for the power we granted to thee
And now you believe anything on a TV Screen
But you can learn the language and see for yourself
Who am I kidding, you'd rather they hate us instead
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I don't need your degrees in forty degrees
Summer heat beat down on BlueRapta sunnies
I break my body for a hole dug to burn more coal
And I spend every payday at the same watering hole
They give me pills for the pain and I'm back on the tools
Been six months since mum and dad called me a fool
Bank balance still zero but I live like a king
Crown took all my money but still I can sing
I'll keep searching for the job that gets me somewhere I can stand up
On my two feet I can dream of my own house I'll forfeit later
And when it comes tumbling down
I'll be on the first airplane out of town
Card in the red, but face full of mirth
The flight attendant smiles says 'next stop, Perth'
Don't tell me I made a mistake
I dropped out of high school it was make or break
Hold a sign in the heat for 50 bucks an hour
Blow it all on cocaine and back in eight hours
My mother always said I was young and fit
But the mines made all my mates paraplegics
'That's the way it goes' said the foreman as he sat
In the aircon office with the fire warden's hat
The boss makes a dollar while I make a dime
So I warm the crack pipe on company time
Then tool around in a scissor lift trying to find
A good reason I'm still in this desert alive
But the sea of sand makes me feel mad
Am I a real man if I say I miss my dad
I can imagine him now, 'I told you so'
But he'd still forgive me and let me live at home
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Well I was 'living the dream', and I was posting the memes
I could feel my own soul tear apart at the seams
Reddit Karma reached four figures so it seemed
I was on the right side of history
I had to pay the rent to a charity
Who's advocates were as white as could be
Told me it would be given to a poor family
While my landlord's still trying to evict me
I got tricked by the lie that they sold me
All I needed to be smart was a master's degree
But despite all the reading of philosophy
My teacher never quoted anybody who was Chinese
So they acknowledge the land and repent for sins
On behalf of everyone with white skin
Then hold shareholder meetings on potential wins
Of oil pipelines through a gap-toothed grins
So I work and I work just to see the day
I can barely afford an overseas holiday
And just before I step foot on the big jet plane
They reject my visa no choice but to stay
The terrible truth is I'm a number on the board
I'm the part of the census forever abhorred
A poor man alone in a sea of sin
Welcomed to my own country but never let in
On podiums across the nation the same words read with consternation
Clinical prose written by AI, a procedure that carries no light or fire
They extend respect to elders past, present and future
But would spit on the street at the sight of a Yarra Trams communter
Tell me, where does it end?
(So light my fire)
Lines between token and friend?
(What's wrong with desire?)
Look me in the eye when you drone
(I consume because I am)
Be honest, was it ever about your home?
(I have no master plan)
When you voted 'No' did you feel strong inside?
When you voted 'Yes' did you feel above it all, so high?
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From far and wide, the farmers try
To grow their crops under pale blue sky
And when rains fail and crops die
Coast tells them learn Java runtime
'Vote them out' I learned in school
The other colour they say words true
I still pay taxes either way
And my cattle are dead at the end of the day
We need a leader, someone with charm
A man or woman with unwavering calm
To form a vanguard of those on the dole
Who'll abolish self checkout at Woolies and Coles
And finally put a stop to Halloween
We gotta start a new culture that's pure and clean
So get Kevin Bloody Wilson back on the stage
It's the Cultural revolution done the Australian way
The great brown land, stained by time
A melting pot of cultural slime
Import low culture from the world
Celebrate mediocity and call it a pearl
When faced with hubris laugh it off
Meet critiques with snark and scoffs
About the world stage just never listen
Mask the fear with alcoholism
If you do well in school we'll cut you down
Know a second language? We'll make you frown
Have a new idea? Don't rock the boat
Better to be a stone than try to float
And when it falls apart well 'she'll be right'
Ain't my problem I'm just livin' my life
I got the house two kids and a Commodore
Maybe get a second job if you're too damn poor
Roll up roll up, boys and girls of the Australian proletariat
Our Great Cultural Revolution is finally upon us
Soundtracked by Tame Impala and heralded by Clive Palmer
Embody the simulacra of unrefined capital
As you kids who never worked a day in your life finally get the opportunity
To walk seventeen miles in the snow every morning to get to school
And learn about our fearless leader Kevin Rudd
Who at least had the decency to learn Mandarin
Mao himself said a revolution ain't a dinner party
Which is good for me, because I wouldn't be caught dead in Toorak
I'm much more of a VB and Parma kind of guy
And under my new republic we could all drink and drive with no impunity
And it's the romance of it all that brought me here
All those times I said I'd string up Canberra on Facebook finally coming true
Yes, I look forward to my long march through the Simpson Desert, where the cops won't find me
I was prepared for 22 years of hard revolutionary Yakka and,
Then I saw that's it's tax time, and Flight Centre's got a return deal to Bali
Maybe we'll put off the People's Republic Of Australia for one more year...
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I had a nightmare, a recurring dream
That I was in charge of the Russian army
And instead of fighting to the bitter end
I tweeted "stop violence" and that was the end
My tossed off snark and ironic tone
Would cut through the sea of tempered moans
All lowercase with no intelligence left
My tweets, they know me better than myself
A library of irony, out of focus lens
Owned by a narcissist with no fashion sense
A cesspool of opinons that are treated like facts
Journalists quote so click to stacks
Part of it hurts to see the brain rewired
Knee-jerk living by a beachfront inspired
By the screensaver dad bought in 1999
The future ain't dead it's just an abattoir line
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Fourth Melbourne, Australia
What would you say if you came fourth at the Olympics?
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