about
This is a track I’ve been kicking around for a while. ’Hear Boys Talk’ is the name of the 2nd Licks record, something I picked up off a promotional sticker on an AC unit in Manhattan a few years back. After finishing the album, I was kicking around the phrase lyrically and amused myself by creating a title track storyline. When the twee-pop bug bit me last week, I knew it was time to return to this tune and polish it up.
My goal with Hear Boys Talk was to write a story about someone completely separate from myself - no vague shade of my pathos. I don’t know where the plot came from really - except that sticker and repeating the words over and over again - but the phrase ‘All my family and all my friends must think I’m some sort of alien to stay’ popped into my head, and I started to think about Southern boys lost in the city - the few I’ve met, and why they stayed here, although still so completely of the South. The story has been in my head for a very long time, but the lyrics just came spilling out this morning, over the span of 30 minutes or so.
A friend contacted me last week about my post - hating on my voice, debating the merits of forming a punk band versus a twee band. He told me, yes, to invest in a capo, and also to entertain the idea that both styles could work together in the same outfit. I’m intrigued, but some of these things sound so genre specific to me that I can’t see how the pieces would fit. I’m interested in getting a few other people in the room, talented folks like my former Hey!-conspirator Morgan Lynch, and seeing if things line up. I recently moved in down the street from a fairly low-key Brooklyn music venue that could provide a safe first performance of whatever I create. Hopefully I can get some stage time together later this summer.
lyrics
High country side won’t you lie in the summer with me?
Sleep with the sting of rocks they sling in heat
They think they’re wild but not like I
And each dull smile is all it hides
My mother caught me laying so Lord has got a saying for me
Boy the country fields will do you ill
To the sister city chapel, get your proper fill, he say
Dark lost trip, but my bags inside
And I’m out the door, then I realize, that
You can hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk
You can hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk
The saints got an eye, say you never can hide from they
But I’m sweeping pews beneath their view all day
And they never pay a thing to say
Bout who I talk to, anyway-
If they did it was hid with a smirk and a showing of faith
And all my family and all my friends
Must think I’m some sort of alien to stay
Well, I’m homesick and I tell ‘em so
But God’s got work for an adventurous boy and
I can hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk
You can hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk
Hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk
You can hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk
The summer’s hot but it’s getting dark
What you say about Central Park?
Smells like home in just about a hundred ways.
Well, I’m homesick and I tell ‘em so
But God’s got work for an adventurous boy and
You can hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk
You can hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk
Hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk
You can hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk
Hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk
You can hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk
Hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk
You can hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk hear boys talk
credits
from
Singles 2010,
released December 31, 2010
Music and Lyrics by Mattroi
license
all rights reserved
