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Extra Medium

by Izaak Opatz

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    First pressing on heavyweight 180g classic black 12" vinyl in a handsome matte-finished jacket. Package includes download card, lyric inner sleeve & bifold poster.

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    On ye olde compact disc in a handsome matte-finished jacket with a lyric booklet.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Extra Medium via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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  • 180g "Extra Medium Cheddar" LP (+ Album Download)
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    First pressing on limited edition heavyweight 180g "Extra Medium Cheddar" colored 12" vinyl variant in a handsome matte-finished jacket. Package includes download card, lyric inner sleeve & bifold poster.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Extra Medium via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.
I was only looking for someone To pull on the end of my sleeve And help me out of my coat While I was driving I’d almost stopped hoping it would ever be true love In the passenger seat I was trying to get free of my fantasies I was holding off holding out hope For long gone, long odds girls like you Who would tie up the phone While someone more like me Was trying to get through And then you fell out of the bottom of the stairs Unmistakably warm in the eye Looking at me like we’d both agreed The time was finally right I swear I never saw it coming If I had, I would’ve messed it up already But you got me good with a left hook Swole my good eye up in love Again Enough years go by loveless I start planning my life alone With a dog I’ll name Ramona In a house that doesn’t have a phone It’ll be good to put this behind me All this straining, desperate hope But the odds all change in the instant it takes A gaze to fly across the room I could tell by the way you held my eye I could tell by the way you moved Walking up to me in a straight line Blazing with a warmth unknown I guess I’d always dreamed it would be like this But it’s so dangerous to hope That you’d fall in love with me Again I was only looking for someone To pull on the end of my sleeve And help me out of my coat While I was driving I’d almost stopped hoping it would ever be true love In the passenger seat
2.
Chinook Wind 02:56
We started arguing on the on-ramp Of Interstate 90 West As the engine strained to recollect fifth gear And I struggled to keep my head For the last month, I’d been scratching your name With my fingernail in the frost Of the windowpane in the attic of a friend’s I’d been staying since you broke it off Then out of the blue, you asked me on a date To a hot springs out of town And on Valentine’s Day, no less, I knew I should But I could never turn you down Now I’m sitting in the steam with a cold gin & tonic Sweating in a plastic cup Trying to make sense of your sudden change of heart If that’s what it really was You swept in like a Chinook wind Blowing warm through the woods A pulse of June in the middle of the winter Can do more harm than good You thawed out my resistance And I let you back in You were unseasonably warm As a Chinook wind Watching the snow crying off the pine trees Standing around the edge of the pool Their bare green needles naked in the cold I started to feel like a fool Maybe I was dying in the high Himalaya In the final stages of undress Just then I felt you swim up behind me like a reaper And softly kiss the back of my neck You swept in like a Chinook wind Blowing warm through the woods A pulse of June in the middle of the winter Can do more harm than good You thawed out my resistance And I let you back in You were unseasonably warm As a Chinook wind
3.
Handholder 03:30
I always knew you were a little bit bloodless And you could turn unsentimental as a mannequin Leaving fools like me, reasoning with plastic Fools like me, rereading your last letter Fools like me, thinking I should’ve known better than this I always knew you had a catacombs in you And when times got tough, that’s where you’d descend to Leaving fools like me, up here on the surface Kicking myself, knowing I deserved it I’d seen it before, and still I couldn’t resist I always knew you had a heart with a trapdoor Any moment, at your word, I could fall through the floorboards Because I liked you just a little too much And I had too much time, and you didn’t have enough And you just changed your mind, all that’s fair in war and love But it was what I didn’t know that got me Your warm, tender love that shocked me This isn’t what I expected Didn’t think you would kiss like this I never took you for a handholder
4.
As we plunged through the potholes of West Philadelphia I thought I might’ve bent my frame The truck was fine but after you got out You and I never drove the same You kept to your side of the room at the party I wish I’d just gone to bed At the end of the night, I put soy sauce on your rice You looked so tired and unimpressed I drove 2000 miles in an old rusted truck Just because it had a bed in the back I hung up fairy lights and curtains and I packed it with expectations Til the leaf springs sagged I’d been all winter daydreaming a rendezvous I never bothered to fact check In the first five minutes after getting there I saw you with your arm around his neck You don’t look at me the same As you did in Colorado Before I drove all this way I should’ve known what I already knew Because I can tell that he’s on your mind And now I’m just in your way I look at you like we used to But you don’t look at me the same In northeastern North Carolina one night Everything finally stopped going south And you crawled into the back of my truck, though Streptococcus kept me from kissing your mouth Still, in the morning I was jubilant Singing “Cecilia” and texting my friends All the time I bided and the miles I made Were finally paying dividends But you saw something in my end zone shuffle That stank like certainty I guess the glow between us was only visible in The midnight of perfidy You said I took all the fun out of it When I kicked my feet up on the couch I should’ve known at your age that the getting there Is not as fun as the sneaking around It’s not as fun as the sneaking around After Philadelphia, the curtains in the windows Made the truck feel more like a hearse And that last night in Maine, kissing wine-drunk in the kitchen Only made me feel worse Knowing, to you, I didn’t mean as much As a nightcap of human touch Sometimes a look says more than words ever can Sometimes it doesn’t say near enough And you don’t look at me the same As you did in Colorado Before I drove all this way To mine own guts I should’ve been true Because I can tell that he’s on your mind And now I’m just in your way I look at you like we used to But you don’t look at me the same
5.
Big Sandy 05:28
We played a show last night At Pep’s Bar & Lanes To a rowdy crowd of skateboarders There from out of state They all spilled out on the street When the bar finally closed Jeremy’s shooting fireworks Out of the bell of his trombone As I watched the roman candles Spit and sizzle through the dark You drifted into my mind like blood Across the nose of a shark I felt a kick of cretin craving And romance soften my spine I was as likely to resist you As a pine needle on the tide I woke up sweating in my sleeping bag Mosquitoes pestering my brow This park was dark and empty Last night when I laid down But now the day has overrun me The tide’s rising and my boot’s stuck I didn’t mean to still be here And hungover when the kids showed up So I packed up my sleeping bag And pull out the gazetteer When you wake up in Big Sandy You’re a long drive from anywhere You were up in the Mission Mountains Halfway across the state It felt crazy to drive that far but far Worse to go the other way If I just drove home directly It’d already be a drive So maybe I should just push it Over the Jocko Divide And chalk it up to Sunday The price of gas and the Big Sky When really I’m just giving in To this wishful heart of mine The engine light’s on, my stomach’s growling My back is tired from sleeping on the ground But my heart wants to go for a drive Yeah, my heart wants to go for a drive Montana is an ocean With a lot of open sea between the towns And leagues of power lines that slouch and slip Like waves lapping on a prow And all that nothing on the radio All that alfalfa for a view Gives me plenty of time to wonder if you think of me The way I think of you It might just be a waste of time I know it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense It could be a mutiny of romance For the slim plunder of a kiss Either way, it’s the summertime And the day is long and warm So maybe I’ll keep on driving Just to feel the sun on my left arm When I get there, she’s ambivalent That I made the drive at all When I tell her how far I’ve come I get a patronizing nod I tell myself she’s from the East Coast And doesn’t grasp the Western scale Though I know that I’ve misjudged her And made of her my great white whale
6.
I watched your face in the rear-view mirror As we drove to Forest Lawn For any skirmish of misgiving or recognition Or tell you were putting me on But you betrayed nothing, your face was untroubled As fresh dirt over a grave Smiling out the window, singing to yourself You covered up what we didn’t say You’re giving me the wild-eyed George Bailey heebie jeebies Making me think that maybe I’ve never been born All you gotta do is look me in the eyes Tell me you remember Last November When we were in love, we were in love Just a couple months ago, you came to visit When we were still head over heels It’s chilling now to see you pretending like you didn’t I don’t know what’s real I don’t know how to Feels like I’m looking through a two-way mirror You can’t see me but I can see you Just praying you’ll corroborate my story for the record I swear you loved me, too You’re giving me the wild-eyed George Bailey heebie jeebies Making me think that maybe I’ve never been born All you gotta do is look me in the eyes Tell me you remember Last November When we were in love, we were in love What good’s a memory When it’s just a story two people share And one of those people refuses to acknowledge That she was even ever there? You’re giving me the wild-eyed George Bailey heebie jeebies Making me think that maybe I’ve never been born All you gotta do is look me in the eyes Tell me you remember Last November When we were in love, we were in love Slipping on the grass in my new huaraches I think to check your feet Sure enough, you’re not wearing the pair that I bought you Down on Olvera Street I start checking the names on the gravestones I wouldn’t be surprised To find one that said, Harry Bailey - He died when he was nine ‘Cause you weren’t there to save him, George You’re giving me the wild-eyed George Bailey heebie jeebies Making me think that maybe I’ve never been born All you gotta do is look me in the eyes Tell me you remember Last November When we were in love, we were in love
7.
Fishing for attention at highway speeds Desperate to meet my eye Is a smiling, Photoshopped, bare-shouldered bombshell Making it hard to drive I don’t remember anybody asking me If they could pimp my gaze With a 50-foot billboard selling Big Macs and Money Back And Painless Procedures for my Varicose Veins I wish they’d’ve stayed in the back of the phone book And just left me well enough alone But some marketing team made a whole lot of money Taking my eyes off the road I don’t want to be convinced anymore Ashamed or enticed Made to think I’m falling short So that someone can make up the difference for a price Wall ads, bench ads, painted on a bus Or dragged behind a plane in the sky It’s everywhere I go and it’s everywhere I look It’s getting hard to escape my eyes I mean, what am I doing, watching commercials At the gas pump on a little TV screen? I never asked for this, and I can’t turn it off Like some bad Bradburian dream I don’t want to be convinced anymore Ashamed or enticed Made to think I’m falling short So that someone can make up the difference for a price Squatting my unoccupied attention Selling what I never meant to buy I don’t know how you got my number But I’d like to unsubscribe I wouldn’t know what I didn’t have Until I saw it in a magazine Nice shoes, duck face, adolescent hip-to-waist Big watch, square jaw, hard body, good skin Prime, Pro, pre-check, air miles credit card Fast car, stiff cock, married with kids
8.
I’ve been grinding my teeth and clenching my jaw I’ve been chewing on the inside of my cheek the way my sister does I’ve been holding my breath, changing lanes with my fingers crossed Wasting my prayers on yellow lights and parking spots If I can just get east of Barstow, I know I’ll be okay I don’t really have a reason, I just need to get away I just need to see the stars again, despite it’s being a cliché If I can just get east of Barstow, I’ll be okay I’ve been wincing at crescendos, airplanes out of sight My overheated heart falls backwards into a bucket of ice Helicopters stringing overhead, their metronomic spider eyes Blinking red through the demi-dark, saturated city night sky Even in the middle of the night, when I’m just lying in bed I can hear the infinite squall of pavement and tire treads Madness filling up the blank space, that’s the circular breath of the interstate It’s the reason and the way I think I want to get away again If I can just get east of Barstow, I know I’ll be okay I don’t really have a reason, I just need to get away I just need to see the stars again, despite it’s being a cliché If I can just get east of Barstow, I’ll be okay
9.
Blue Pilot 04:15
For Christmas, you gave me a leather-bound journal And a Blue Pilot G-2 10 As I looked at the innocent ink in the reservoir I thought I knew what it would spell out, then Looking at you cross-legged on the carpet Underneath the Christmas tree I felt as full of love and hopeful for the New Year As I’d ever had a right to be You can take your bearings from the present Try to guess if she’s in love or just smitten But there’s no way to know what the next page is gonna say Until it’s been written At times, I take my daydreams for the future Forgetting that time is like a river You can paddle like crazy You can swim for safety But it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference No, it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference As I fanned through those blank, unlined pages I could almost see the songs I’d write Odes, love songs, and sweet dedications Private entries of tender nights I’d been so long whining and complaining About love that fizzled or fled I filled a lot of Moleskines with discontent I was gonna fill this one with love instead At times, I take my daydreams for the future Forgetting that time is like a river You can paddle like crazy You can swim for safety But it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference No, it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference Just one week into the New Year Just a couple happy pages in You tore me out like a bad idea I started writing sad songs again I might never have filled that notebook If things had stayed the same Because love can be a little boilerplate But the heart breaks a thousand ways At times, I take my daydreams for the future Forgetting that time is like a river You can paddle like crazy You can swim for safety But it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference No, it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference
10.
After all those meals I shared with just a magazine Egg yolk dripping off my chin, leaning over the sink Last night talking across a sawhorse table with you was a dream For the first time in a long time, I knew just where to put my feet You made marinated portobello mushrooms on the grill And we just ate them off the tin foil You made everything happen with an offhand grace More midwest than California We tuned into a honky-tonk show from your old hometown And talked until the wine was gone and the candles burned out We both liked the same pop-country songs And taking long road trips on a whim We went back and forth for over an hour Playing have you ever heard, have you ever been? Right off the bat, it was comfort and common ground Your breath tasted like water and your skin felt like a memory Usually, I find some reason to leave but everything kept feeling alright I slept on a bed outside your window like a dog that night We both liked the same pop-country songs And taking long road trips on a whim We went back and forth for over an hour Playing have you ever heard, have you ever been? Before I climbed in my car to drive back to the city, you gave me a sweetgrass braid And a loose hoop of wire you’d been wearing around your wrist I floated like a mag-lev train down your washboard road Thinking, oh, it must be good, a kind of thing that would start like this
11.
Shampoo 03:17
I’ve gotten good in the last few years At surreptitiously uncapping The shampoo in the shower so my hosts don’t know I didn’t bring my own It probably wouldn’t be a problem But I’m just so tired of asking They always say to make myself at home Home’s just where I leave my stuff Where the mail goes and my plants dry out Home’s been sleeping with my ankles dangling over The end of someone else’s couch Home’s where I’ve got a full shampoo but No time to use it I can’t remember the last time I finished a bottle And threw it out I can’t remember the last time I got to the bottom of anything Squeezed the sides and rolled up the tube And tried to get the last drop out I’m always leaving in the middle It’s easier to think it probably never would’ve worked out Easier to pine for something out of reach Than someone who could let me down In lieu of finding some reason to be here I always find some reason to leave Pour out the rest of the milk and hide a key I’m never as happy as I am these days When I’m just on the way Halfway there and in-between Using the windshield as a TV screen I can’t remember the last time I got to the bottom of anything Squeezed the sides and pounded on the counter And tried to get the last drop out I’m always leaving in the middle It’s easier to think it probably never would’ve worked out Easier to pine for something out of reach Than someone who could let me down I don’t mind doing the dishes Stripping the bed or leaving a note But none of it will ever really make up For the kind of hospitality I’ve been shown I’m gonna have to buy a house Open it up to all my friends Make sure everybody’s got a place to sleep And the Wi-Fi’s on the fridge And in the bathroom, I’ll make sure There’s a big bottle of shampoo and soap With pump lids so they’ll never have to worry That I’ll never need to know I can’t remember the last time I got to the bottom of anything Squeezed the sides and pounded on the counter And tried to get the last drop out
12.
This city’s not so bad By the light of a love affair The way the spring rain will sweep in And scrub all the dirt out of the air And suddenly, you can see snow-capped peaks High above the San Gabriel Valley And the hills and dales of Eagle Rock Might as well be Chamonix And those tall buildings with the bank names on them They’re almost pretty as the sun sinks down Peach-lit and gleaming Monuments to greed and power From up here, on the edge of Mt. Wilson Laying in the back of your truck All that glass and steel downtown’s just ambiance And atmosphere to us I was just about to leave when I met you I thought I had about as much as I could take But all I needed was someone worth thinking about While I was pouting on the interstate Nothing’s as pretty as a taco stand Strung up with a garland of bare light bulbs Above a steaming griddle full of corn tortillas When everywhere else is closed And the kamikaze clouds of the parakeets The sweet, sweaty smell of the pepper trees All of it’s a payoff If you stick around long enough to see And that long drive on the 210 East Through the gauntlet of San Bernardino County All those faux-adobe shopping malls, tract homes, and big rig stalls Used to drive me nuts And these four lanes of brake lights, inching through Azusa Used to would’ve had me pulling out my hair But now if I squint, they sort of look like roses In the light of a love affair

about

Produced by Malachi DeLorenzo, Izaak Opatz & Dylan Rodrigue
Engineered & Mixed by Malachi DeLorenzo
Mastered by Kevin Ratterman
All Lyrics by Izaak Opatz
Front Cover Photography by Mari Cahalan
Back Cover & Inner Sleeve Photography by Kendall Rock
Design by Vincent Bancheri

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released April 29, 2022

© & ℗ 2022 Mama Bird Recording Co.
under license from Izaak Opatz

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Izaak Opatz montana

Lullabies for single people.

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