With A Hope-Lit Lighthouse and Honest Storms

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Tracklist:

  • Rough Seas, Good Sailors

  • Halocline

  • Now I Can See (By Your Light)

  • Cloudbreak

  • The One You Feed (Starve Both Wolves)

  • Safe Harbour

  • Horizon

  • Kintsugi (金継ぎ)

  • In Truth

  • A Call To Arms [Evan H. cover]


Partial Lyrics:

“Am I drowning in an ocean of flashbacks or the fountain of youth? I don’t even know how long I’ve been alive
Am I six years old or twenty-six? Sixteen or twenty-five?
I can't seem to fight myself free from this post-traumatic riptide
Waves of memory keep crashing over me, dragging me deeper into my own mind

The ripple effect will surely put me to death, 
‘cause I roughed these waters myself and now I’m out of my depth!
(Caught in the undertow, caught in the undertow)

I’m left clawing at the endlessness, sucking in breaths of fear and brine
I try to fight the current
I think I can break the surface 
but my lungs fill up with water and I’m drowning in the halocline!

Straining for illusory oxygen, hope waning just out of reach
I’m trapped in the past and my strength can’t outlast
The tricks salt and light play on me
Capsized by my own wake, taunted by breaths I can’t take
Every song left unsung drowns in my lungs and I realize the surface is fake

Now the ripple effect will surely put me to death, 
‘cause I roughed these waters myself and I’m in over my head!
(Caught in the undertow, caught in the undertow)

I’m left clawing at the endlessness, sucking in breaths of fear and brine
I try to fight the current
I think I can break the surface 
but my lungs fill up with water and I’m drowning in the halocline!

Won’t somebody throw me a lifeline? 
(Caught in the undertow, caught in the undertow)
I’m drowning in the halocline 
(Caught in the undertow, caught in the undertow)
I can’t fight the current; help me reach the real surface 
‘Cause I’m drowning in the lie.”
- “Halocline”, With A Hope-lit Lighthouse and Honest Storms (2021)
→written by: Kohao

Anarchy: “For years I lay alone searching for stars at night
wondering if you could see ones I couldn’t, blinded by the city lights.”
Chey: “I wanted to run back to you, call your name into the streets
but the system’s chains entangled me, couldn’t kick the anchors from my feet.”

Anarchy & Chey: “Please forgive me / for it taking so long, baby
You need to know, I thought that you were gone
Will you let me / hold you again, baby?
It’s always been that you’re the one.”

Anarchy: “I wouldn’t change a single thing—”
Anarchy: “You’ve been worth it all, babe, why can’t you see?”
Anarchy: “I’ll try to prove it with the songs I sing—”
Anarchy: “I’d do it all again to keep you here with me.

Chey: “If I could take back everything—”
Chey: “All the drugs and the poverty and pain—”
Chey: “I’d try and spare you all the suffering—”
Chey: “I hope that I can make it up to you someday.”

Anarchy: “I know you’d look in the mirror and see damaged goods—”
Chey: “But still loved myself because I knew you would”
Anarchy: “Look into my eyes, I want you to see—”
Chey: “Rose-red wine and honesty—”

Anarchy & Chey: “You’re everything, you make me believe 
That there’s always been light inside of me.”
- “Now I Can See (By Your Light)”, With A Hope-lit Lighthouse and Honest Storms (2021)
→written by: Chey & Anarchy

“If past is prologue, what’s the story I’m writing?
In coward’s ink, a single author’s infighting 
Shots untaken, blood unspilled—or in fact
(let by pints on my bedroom floor)
Not knowing whether friends or wolves were at the door
(drafted at birth into an internal war)
Never aware which side I’m fighting for

If you’re not with me, you’re against me—but I’m against me too; 
Align yourself with me (my enemy) and I’ll turn on you

A dog with too many feeding hands to bite, I choose to starve instead
(Trust in love and be heartbroken; trust in permanence, be left)
I’d rather have my certainty and so I’ll stay unfed.”
- “The One You Feed (Starve Both Wolves)”, With A Hope-lit Lighthouse and Honest Storms (2021)
→ Written by Kohao 

“I know that I act like I’m iron, like I’m heat-tempered steel
Strike matches off my smile and pretend I can’t feel
But the truth is I’m failing, it hurts me to speak
I’m breaking here, fragile, time’s worn me weak

So shatter me
So that the light can shine in
Break me apart so that I can start again
Break me, unmake me, repair me with gold
I want to have value even if it means being sold
Just let in the light and
Shatter me

I’ve felt worthless so long, I just want to mean something
I’ve been wasting my youth trying just to feel nothing;
Bleeding and purging and trying to starve out the pain
Masking the hunger with another line of cocaine
But this emptiness is lonely and this hollow’s not home; 
the darkness is cold and I’ve felt so alone

So shatter me
So that the light can shine in
Break me apart so that I can start again
Break me, unmake me, repair me with gold
Let me take back every lie that I’ve told

Just let in the light and
Shatter me.
- “Kintsugi (金継ぎ)”, With A Hope-lit Lighthouse and Honest Storms (2021)
→ Written by Kohao

“I say I don’t do love or second chances
that I’ll either let you down or cut you out
I see my friends exchanging glances
They know the lies that fill my mouth

Because honestly? Do what you want to me
Contrary to all those other songs I wrote
I’d rather be the victim now than be the one drawing blood
Just please kiss your knife if you plan to slit my throat

I’d rather have lips to my neck than some inked-in threat
I’d rather burn out than turn cold
The heart in my chest may be shattered at best
But I can handle that if what’s left is still gold...

I don’t know if I’ll ever believe 
that there’s still good inside of me,
That with all that I’ve been, I can still be redeemed
But even though my hands might never be clean
when everything’s been said and done
I’d give up my life for the ones that I love.

But maybe me gunning for martyrdom isn’t anything new
expect my friends are tired of me telling them “I’d bleed out for you”
I guess I’ve never shied away from death so it could be that in truth
I really should be telling them that I could live for them, too.”
- “In Truth”, With A Hope-lit Lighthouse and Honest Storms (2021)
→written by: Kohao