How to Escape

by Square and Compass

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1.
01:11
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2.
04:02
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3.
02:03
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4.
04:07
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5.
02:39
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6.
05:08
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7.
03:14
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8.
00:48
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9.
01:47
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10.
03:26
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11.
05:40
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12.
04:37
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13.
03:45
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14.
30:14
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credits

released 01 November 2012
All songs written and recorded by Square and Compass
Engineered by Mike BBQ at Big Door Studios in Webster, TX
Produced by Square and Compass
Mixed by Mike BBQ
Mastered by Carl Saff
Artwork by Matt Mims

*drums performed by John Sanchez
*bass performed by Tommy Grindle
*additional engineering on "Variation" by Jack Sananikone
*drums on "Variation" performed by Jacob Warny

Square and Compass is:

Thomas Heard - vocals
Tommy Grindle - guitar, vocals
Todd Spoth - guitar, vocals
Jack Sananikone - bass
Dylan Jay - drums

tags

tags: rock indie post-hardcore Houston

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about

"This is a newer band made up of OG punk/hardcore kids from Texas. They put on a super energetic and interactive live show, thanks to their insane singer. Really fun to watch, and a great homage to the punk/DIY scene from ten years ago. They’re just getting started and already doing a bunch of rad stuff." - Sarah Saturday (Warped Tour Booking Agent) ... more

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Track Name: Imminent Demise
In my beginning is my end.

This is the sound
of faucets left running
and scattered novels half-read.
There’s single frames of film spliced in between static:
last looks at the moon,
would-be legendary loves never actualized,
conjoined coronaries cut apart too soon.

A star-crossed birth
Guaranteed my doom.
Track Name: Détente
Disarm my heart!

Honey, you’re my home.
But I’m imprisoned by my own neuroticism,
and I dread the day you’ll tire of my dismal charms.
I’m a crude, weathered sculpture vainly flapping
the cupid wings you planted on my back.
Yes, I’m made of want and want is made of stone.

I guess I’m still a mess, but I finally know
that love is not enough.
I’m a keen romance wrangler with no peace of mind to show,
‘cause love is not enough.

Remember our first tryst?
Our adverb-shaped bodies magnetized under star-peppered skies,
but we failed to surmise that in this world
even desired fates are star-crossed.
Satisfaction murders passion and passion constitutes the soul.

I guess I’m still a mess, but I finally know
that love is not enough.
I’m a keen romance wrangler with no peace of mind to show,
‘cause love is not enough.
But it’s all I’ve got!

This unquenchable lust
makes a minefield of my life.
I must disarm my heart!

Take this muscled sack of blood
and throw it in the river, ‘cause
it blinds me with its need and greed,
so I can’t be what I need to be:
a man with the world in the palm of his hand,
not some pathetic fragile mess.

So disarm my heart!
Track Name: Ever After Disaster
Girl, your body is composed
of crisp first pages of novels,
but I’ve always been a sucker for endings.

Our doom, it looms
like the brazen moon showing face while the sun still shines.

My heart is the loaded gun
hanging ominously upon its rack
in the first act of a Chekhov play.
Track Name: Hacksaw
What’s the cure for futility,
the human condition,
the non-stop need to need?

And why can’t I define satisfied?
Why’s it always the pursuit of more
that navigates my life?

We all aspire to the brilliant stars.
But the world is the ball on the chain
weighing down our hearts.

I want to take my foot off with a hacksaw.

I’m so tired of drifting afloat
on this brittle raft made of scrap-wood
that we call “Hope.”
‘Cause we can’t survive
on pacifying, Prozac-laced salt water
when we thirst for divine wine.

So we all aspire to the brilliant stars.
But the world is the ball on the chain
weighing down our hearts.

I want to take my foot off with a hacksaw.

My body is my cross to bear.
It can’t attain desire’s reach.
My only chance to catch the stars
is the hacksaw.
Track Name: Time is a Blacksmith
Once upon the distant past
you tore me down like a cobweb
in the rafters of our romance—
made me a dust bunny hopping toward my death.

My constant cry
has been, “I won’t survive.”
But years are armor,
preserving my sepulchered life.

You gave me reptile wrists—
a coat of blade-proof, scaly scars.
And now my cold blood just gets colder;
I’ve got an eternal internal ice age.

I’ve been counting on your curse to kill me, but it’s only caked on my skin.

Your kiss of death
proved useless.
And the effect of age
is a thickening shell of fear and pain.
Track Name: Pile of Bones
Maul and meld.
You got to maul to meld.

I’m molting my life’s eras like layers of melting ice caps—
the smothering dander of sighs, wails and mishaps.
Those masochistic mimics of myself adjourn
when self transforms lovelorn to love-sworn.

Our bodies are impeding partitions,
but they’re the only things we’ve got to hold onto.

You’re my blanket at night, or rather my skin;
you sheath me in tender limbs ‘til the cruel sunlight comes in.
“Baby Boy,” you say, “I must go to work.”
“Baby Girl,” I bay, “this will never work!—
our suckling cells slaves to separation—
we need a spell for touch preservation!”

I wish we were vagrants asleep in a field—
the sun roasts our bodies and our flesh begins to yield;
returning to dust, enduring our grasp,
Our lungs mold together as we share one final gasp;
the cumbrous meat melts to earth as hair just keeps on growing—
we’d be a be a beautiful pile of bones, cuddling while decomposing.

Our bodies are impeding partitions.
Well, just maybe, self-excavation
could lead souls to amalgamation;
‘cause these bodies are impeding partitions.
Track Name: Golden Retreater
I’m running away from failing fantasies
and the rot-rot-rotten realities
of everyone who knows my name,

but my ankles are swollen
‘cause the way woe twists my insides up
contorts my outsides just the same.

So I’m limping.
I’m running away limping.

It’s another escape:
another chance to brood and curse and hate my life.
The screeching tires and footsteps form the soundtrack to my cries.
Another escape:
trying to find the place that’s far enough
away from all the demons that wreak havoc on my mind.

Windows reflect my rampant goings and comings.
In distant glass eyes “soon” is the only word muttered.
Delusion is my only defense.

The pursuit of happiness is the bone-tingling itch
in the center of my spine
that would take a miracle to be soothed.

I just want to tackle houses
and drown in boards and bricks;
for shit’s sake, my will’s already crushed like brittle bones.

So I’m wincing.

I’m wincing, I’m limping,
I’m restless, I’m sweating ice,
I’m spitting dirt, I’m pissing fuel,
I’m lonely, I’m on the edge, I’m running away.

I’m running away.
I’m running away. I’m gone.

All that I’ll ever ask for again
is an atlas and a full tank of gas.
Track Name: Hamlet's Conundrum
Well, that’s the question:
to be or not to be?
Is it noble in the mind
to take arms against a sea of ceaseless troubles
and, by opposing, end them?

To die. To Sleep. To sleep perchance to dream.

‘Til we have shuffled off this mortal coil
must give us pause.
Track Name: Just a Taste
Say, girl,
I wanna taste you.
I’ll have a flushed flesh buffet:
epidermal eloquence devoured.

Say, girl,
I want to decay you.
Time for a tooth on meat melee:
meal of skin perfume-sugared or sweat-soured.

Hey! You won’t ever get your siren grasp on me.
Hey! One night of savage love is all I need.

Too long I’ve been a slave
to feminine wiles and romantic fallacy.
Kisses have only earned me hideous scars.
And alluring, lubricated cunts
have merely served as vacuums for my soul.
But no more!

Tonight you look ravishing;
licentious thoughts are washing over me.
For your angelic body, I am starving.
I want to eat you up and spit you out
like a thousand other girls have done to me.

Man inside woman—it’s a tired a cliché.
So reverse the curse; ingest her vitality!
My manic mouth mauling you, it’s almost
like crooked canines consuming the cosmos.

Say, girl!
I wanna taste you
and to decay you.
Say, girl!

Sex bite!
Track Name: How to Escape
Oh, your life is a tidal wave
and mine’s a splintering home.

Let’s go to Miami
and uproot our troubles
with hurricanes.
Let’s go.

Who needs doors and windows anyway?
You always see through me
like I’m naked, or lacquered in shame, or
like I’m wearing my skin inside-out.

I’m a Hellraiser.
Momma gave birth to a natural disaster.
I’m a cantankerous archangel
bottling defiant souls.
I keep your essence confined
in an air tight Holy Grail.
One of these days
I’m going to punch a hole in your chest
and free your blood
from its repetitious route.
My jailbar ribs
keep our hearts from colliding.

Let’s go to Miami
and uproot our troubles
with open arteries.
Let’s go.

Death by collision,
it’s such a cliché.
Instead let’s drain our futile pain.
Track Name: 1123
It’s been so many years since you have gone into your grave.
I still have your memories, but now those have begun to fade.
It’s getting harder to wake up every day,
and Johnny Walker only can numb so much pain.

Why did I have to be the one who found you lying there?
Fell to my knees when I saw your body, stiff and cold and bare.

Dying slowly.
Ripping and tearing, I’m falling apart at the seams.
So lonely.
I’m the last sprig in a forest of sawed-apart trees.
Woe owns me.

Time goes by
and tears run dry
and I’ll never know why
you were taken from me.

I want to know
what kind of god would steal the ones we love away from us.
If in fact he does exist, I’m sure he’s one sadistic fuck.

Now you seem
just like a dream.
I wish I could wake up
and find you waiting for me.

I swore I’d never forget
your scent, your voice, your face.
Please say my aging recollection
doesn’t denigrate my love.
Track Name: BONUS: "Violently" - Live at Walter's
The tide is rising now.
Our toes are sinking in the mud,
and I somehow forgot how water
composes two-thirds of the earth—
that we’ve been landlocked and prosaic
since the bay of our birth.

Pity on you and me. My love,
why are we toiling on through time
despite pre-written history?

If only we could float
among the clouds or ‘cross the waves
and pretend our mortal anchors won’t sink all
that we want to do, to be or know.
But even ancient stones are crumbling,
so how can we hope to hope?

Pity on you and me. My love,
how can I be a better man
when I’m already history?
O, I’d give anything, anything, anything to master
the mystic whir of destiny.
But I’m afraid I’m only the
quintessence of dust.

Kiss me violently,
if only for a moment to forget…

We live and we die in layers of dirt.
We live and we die in absence of mirth.
We live and we die with scruples unkept.
We live and we die; no time to reflect.
We live and we die.
Track Name: BONUS BONUS: "Violently" - Live at Walter's (SCREWED)
The tide is rising now.
Our toes are sinking in the mud,
and I somehow forgot how water
composes two-thirds of the earth—
that we’ve been landlocked and prosaic
since the bay of our birth.

Pity on you and me. My love,
why are we toiling on through time
despite pre-written history?

If only we could float
among the clouds or ‘cross the waves
and pretend our mortal anchors won’t sink all
that we want to do, to be or know.
But even ancient stones are crumbling,
so how can we hope to hope?

Pity on you and me. My love,
how can I be a better man
when I’m already history?
O, I’d give anything, anything, anything to master
the mystic whir of destiny.
But I’m afraid I’m only the
quintessence of dust.

Kiss me violently,
if only for a moment to forget…

We live and we die in layers of dirt.
We live and we die in absence of mirth.
We live and we die with scruples unkept.
We live and we die; no time to reflect.
We live and we die.