Purchase this album as a CD or a digital copy on the band's online store!: https://www.spgiraffestore.com/collections/music-albums/products/steam-powered-giraffe-mkiii-cd

The third studio album from San Diego's quirky group of antique automatons released in 2013. This release introduced the robot named Hatchworth to the band and new musical programming interfacing with their familiar harmonic tones for a variety of sleek, ear-pleasing catchy melodies, fresh beats, and comedic stylings. From pop music to disco, the robots will have you tapping your toes all night long. Listen with caution, though, because you might just catch Hatch Fever!

MK III

A Way into Your Heart

Shipwreck

I'll Be Waiting

A Surprising Conclusion

Learning to Be Lost

Welcome Back, Misery

Someday, 
Maybe ten, maybe twenty years from now, 
There will be a knock at your door. 
There will be a man standing there with a clipboard. 
And you will sign your name on the dotted line. 
The man will hand over 
A parcel bundled up in wool. 
You will look down to consider it; 
You will look up to say thanks, 
And the man will be gone... 

But a plaintive cry will draw your eyes 
To a baby pelican 
Sitting on your welcome mat, 
And the pelican’s eyes will dilate, 
And the eyes of the trees will dilate, 
And you will be a sea anemone: 
You will contract upon this contact. 

Will you feel small? 
And will you feel scared? 
And will you gasp for air 
And find there’s nothing there 
But a fatal mistake? 
Will you finally weigh what you have given 
Against what 
You take and you take and you take and you take. 

Somehow, 
You will think once again of the package in your hands 
You will begin to tug at the wool. 
It will come off easily in pieces, 
But it will cut right through the prints upon your fingers and 
It will pile up around you in a mountain of gauze 
In a car on a hospital train, 
Where the surgeons lack credentials 
And the scalpels are just saws. 

But a plaintive cry will draw your eyes 
To a baby pelican 
Sitting on your welcome mat, 
And the pelican’s eyes will dilate, 
And the eyes of the trees will dilate, 
And you will be a sea anemone: 
You will contract upon this contact. 

Will you open your arms 
To the birds? 
Will you open your arms 
To the trees? 
Will you repast them 
With your own blood? 
Will you finally give back 
The breath that you take? 
(and you take and you take and you take. 
You take and you take and you take and you take.) 

Somewhere, 
Underneath the many years of stinging fibers, 
You will find your gift. 
Will you ever understand what it means?

credits
from A Troubled Piece of Fruit, released 23 July 2012 

Stephan Nance, piano/vocals
Merlin Showalter, drums 
Tim McLaughlin, bass/guitar 
Angelica Sather Hodgetts, cello

Stephan Nance — Paid By Weight

Trouble is, 
Nowadays, 
We go walking in the rain 
Protected by our plastic parasols. 

From the mists 
To the waves, 
We don't think we ever will implode again, 
The mighty leaden rollers rushing in to kill us all. 

But the ships are swiftly sinking, 
And the submarine in which I am 
Sequestering myself 
Is failing to produce a proper answer. 
I'm thinking to myself, 
I'm telling me that deftly I'll be 
Giving my advice to all the world, that 
The cells we're in are splitting 
So it's looking like 
It's likely that it's cancer. 

You looked sweet 
Standing there, 
Smiling at me sleepily 
Suspiciously like someone who is dead. 

Shake the sheets, 
Let 'em air, 
We'll go down in history 
Conspicuously grinning like the cat who's in the story life we've led. 

And the ships are softly sighing 
As the sedimental seafloor says 
A prayer to bring them home 
And sings a sullen cradle song of death. 
I'm thinking to myself, 
I'm telling me that certainly we 
Haven't got the heart to tell the world that 
The tumors are malignant, 
So the time is coming 
When we'll breathe our last breath. 

From the start, 
Where was I? 
I was not the kind of guy 
To look a fading flower in the eye. 

Cross your heart, 
Hope to die, 
Hope to soon be sailing smoothly heaven-high, 
Surrounded by the seabirds as they skim the starless sky.

credits
from A Troubled Piece of Fruit, released 23 July 2012 

Stephan Nance, piano/vocals
Angelica Sather Hodgetts, cello/melodica 
Tim McLaughlin, trumpet

Stephan Nance — Immunodeficiency

I can’t wrap my head around 
The notion that the present is a gift. 
You know me well enough by now 
To know I know that your devotion 
Has a tendency to shift. 

I can wait for you forever 
If that’s what you want. 
I can be a fountain for you 
Always filling, always spilling. 

I burnish every surface in the house 
But still I’m haunted by the dust. 
How much of it is your skin? 
How could I begin again? 

You know the words to all my songs 
And you prove it to me every night. 
But could you guess the lyrics 
To the song I didn’t write?

credits

from A Troubled Piece of Fruit, released 23 July 2012

Stephan Nance, piano/vocals

Stephan Nance — The Song I Didn't Write

I Want to Feel Chaotic

Rust

Red Room Vol. 1

Room By Room

Shayfer James has built a creative world entirely his own—where poetic lyricism collides with cinematic arrangements, where darkness waltzes with whimsy, where rebellion and vulnerability share the same breath. His work explores the dual forces of isolation and belonging, of longing and defiance, all delivered with theatrical flair and unmistakable swagger that both welcomes and unsettles.

A Surprising Conclusion

Shayfer James

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