After Everything (2024)

Track listing –

Bone Dance
Good News
Until it Happens
Karaoke
Avalanche
The Way I Am
After Everything
Barcelona
______________________

Bone Dance

She's standing in the door frame
Apron the color of the shingles
She can't recall the song's name
So she sings me just a little
She's been working on a painting
The tourists always want the same thing
She says "anyways, enjoy your walk dear
It's good to have you back around here"

Turn me around
Fishing town, fishing town
Up the road, past the pond
The waves are beating on
Crashing and laughing again
Saying so much for your big plans
This life's but a bone dance
With no place for idle hands

Down on Main she's selling used clothes
Dressing strangers for a funeral
She says “this island is a tightrope,
If I were you I'd take the backroads”
There's a wind up from the northeast
Everybody knows what that means
Oh the boats will sure be in soon
We'll keep the coffee hot long past noon

Turn me around
Fishing town, fishing town
Up the road, past the pond
The waves are beating on
Crashing and laughing again
Saying so much for your big plans
This life's but a bone dance
With no place for idle hands

Turn me around
Fishing town, fishing town
Up the road, past the pond
The waves are beating on
Crashing and laughing again
Saying so much for your big plans
This life's but a bone dance

With no place for idle hands
With no place for idle hands
No place for idle hands

Written by Hayley Reardon

_______________________________

Good News

You said your whole life’s your moment
So I don’t know which one you mean
As we sat outside the station
I was talking about the dreams
That strangle me

I was caught between some running list
Of other people’s plans
I was holding out my life with
Scared unsteady hands
You were holding your heart
I remember it well|
Your gaze unwavering

All along
A turning point
A crossroads in some cosmic void
Branches bend
Strings come loose
You have only ever been good news

We were looking at the fields
From your mother’s garden
Yellow buds along the flatlands
Summer had barely even started
I could feel the sun dancing
From your skin to mine
It was changing me
Finally

Your fingerprints
On all my maps
I gripped so tight I almost crashed
But roads they bend
Strings come loose
You have only ever been good news
You have only ever been good

The way your left foot still tilts inward
Every couple steps
The way you fed me blueberries
On that night bus to Switzerland
And how you somehow speak in poetry
In a language that’s not yours
Oh something deep within you
Has been here before

All along
A turning point
A crossroads in some cosmic void
Branches bend
Strings come loose
You have only ever been good news

Your fingerprints
On all my maps
I gripped so tight I almost crashed
But roads they bend
Strings come loose
You have only ever been good news

Good news
Had it not been for you
Good news

Written by Hayley Reardon

________________________________

Until It Happens
I wake up freezing
In some stranger's house
In some little corner of some Nordic town
I think of my father
Out plowing the driveway
It's snowing in Boston
All those miles away
For everyday I go
Living my life
Is one day I won't get back when he dies

I should have called him
But I called you instead
You said don't think about it
And went back to bed
So I watched the sunrise
And started to cry
Because I think about it all the time

How do you do it
How do you grow when
You're just so aware that
It's all gonna go?
I live in the midst of
Some future sadness
But it's impossible
Until it happens

There are boats in the harbor
Graves in the graveyard
I feel the weak winter sun on my face
I picture the lives of
The people I walk by
'Cause I wanna know how it feels in their place

How do you do it
How do you grow when
You're just so aware that
It's all gonna go
I live in the midst of
Some future sadness
But it's impossible
Until it happens

I won't let it happen
Until it happens
Don't let it happen
Before it happens

Written by Hayley Reardon & Ryan O’Reilly

_____________________________________

Karaoke

Karaoke at your sister's house
Said her boyfriend was going out
Said you'd pick me up in a couple of hours
And it's never gonna feel the same
As broken English singing Purple Rain
Left you waiting as the blue light fades
into the night

I was falling through the cracks of you
Nothing left to hold on to

Smell of booze, someone collecting coins
Told you I hate the city noise
Feels like I'm only getting softer
Instead of stronger
Oh that winter was a long missed friend
I watched you smoking out the window in the kitchen
Didn't wanna let the moment end
So I chased it

I chased it through the reds and blues
Changing into something new
Falling through the cracks of you
Nothing left to hold on to

Christmas Eve
Baby came too soon
They gave him a Muslim name like you
All but a year went by so fast
And I still don't know
When I'll be back

Karaoke at your sister's house
Said her boyfriend was going out
Said you'd pick me up in a couple of hours
And it's never gonna feel the same
As broken English singing Purple Rain
Left you waiting as the blue light fades
into the night

Karaoke at your sister's house
Didn't wanna let the moment end
So I chased it

And it's never gonna feel the same
Never gonna feel the same

Written by Hayley Reardon

____________________________________

Avalanche

Norwegian tobacco
The side of your mouth
There are kids on the beach
Burning holes in the ground

My vision is static
The night sky's a blur
I'm making up shapes
By the light of your words

So tell me again
What you promise you see
A swan in the stars
And a dormant edge in me

'Cause it's been a long haul
Nothing short of an avalanche
I've been meaning to find the words
But I still haven't had the chance
You are a window
To a room I forgot about
The door to the hall's ajar
And an old weight is clearing out

Headlights in the rearview
The long way around
These dark winding roads
Where I've been hiding out

Years in the making
The knot in my chest
Oh how loyal the burden
Chained by a thread

At the side of the bar
With your back to the wall
I'm holding my breath
As the words start to fall

'Cause telling the truth
is like singing a song
If you can just get inside
It will pull you along

It's been a long haul
I got too close to the nerve I guess
But I've been trying to get used to it
I've been trying to stay open
You are a window
To a room I forgot about
The door to the hall's ajar
And an old weight is clearing out

It's been a long haul
Holding on through the avalanche
I've been meaning to find the words
But I still haven't had the chance
You are a window
To a room I forgot about
And I'm staying near the light
As the sun paints a pattern now

Written by Hayley Reardon

_____________________________________

The Way I Am

Oh the seagrass
Draws circles in the sand
Like a needlepoint
inside a crater

You don't ask
Anymore about my plans
Safe and sound
In the blurriness of later

Day breaks
And the backshore is ablaze
As the sun burns
a hole right through the ocean

The true world
It drowns me from within
And I've only ever been
Part way open

I needed all this space
Just to feel the ache
That has always been
Under everything
I took the long way around
But it doesn't matter now
I just didn't understand
The way I am

Written by Hayley Reardon

_____________________________________

After Everything

If I trace it back enough times
My fingers on faint spotty lines
Feeling for figures and signs
Of how it all happened

Lately I’m doubting myself
Think maybe I just wanted out
The meanest thing you ever said
Did I imagine it

The birthday party
at the back of the bar
I’m not sorry
For falling apart

For the record
In the dim foreign haze
I felt proud that night of the life
and the friends that I’d made

I wanted everything back then
And after everything I’m no different

We were sick as dogs in Berlin
You came just to help me move in
Your head in my lap in the park
Starving for sunlight

Taking the bus across town
To drink a beer by the canals
People everywhere just hanging out
It felt like a painting

I wanted everything back then
And after everything I’m no different

Got off the plane in the cold
Cried at the border control
Police man said welcome back home
And I just kept walking

I had the address written down
Drove all the way there myself
Filled all the paperwork out
And did what they asked of me

I’m still angry I don’t get to explain
But it’s probably better at the end of the day
In all my laboring
Just to feel understood
I’d yet to learn what its worth just to know how to feel good

I wanted everything back then
And after everything I’m no different
I'm no different
I'm so different

I would feel it all again
I would brave and make another mess
I’m no different
I’m so different

Written by Hayley Reardon

______________________________________

Barcelona

I sat in the corner and kept to myself
I think the bar staff felt sorry for me
‘Cause they brought me a beer
And some pieces of bread
And then after a while left me be

I was thinking about
How you laugh when you say
What the bank doesn’t know is
I could die any day

It took me a while
But it was you who taught me
That’s just the truth
For anybody

Your dad’s sunroof was down
As we drove through the town
Beneath the mountain he named you after

Then your beautiful friend
Saw a heart she could mend
And for a moment the night filled with laughter

The moon hangs low over Barcelona
And paints a path across the wide, dark sea
Like a joke
Like a dance
Like a song that holds ya
I still can’t tell if it’s a dream

Underground on the train
It’s hard to explain
I had the feeling that something was wrong
And a stranger could see
So she waited with me
Until we both knew the danger was gone

Beneath the cypress and palms
Oh we walked arm and arm
You won’t find this place on the map

You rolled your cigarette
Without fear or regret
I just hope I can find my way back

And the moon hangs low over Barcelona
And paints a path across the wide, dark sea
Like a joke
Like a dance
Like a song that holds ya
I still can’t tell if it’s a dream
I still can’t tell if it’s a dream

Written by Hayley Reardon & Ryan O’Reilly