Only Skin
Ys
Joanna Newsom
Full song, not just the eponymous movement.
Chord alignments to lyrics only approximate.
You're going to need to study the whole
seventeen minutes to even attempt the thing.
F Am
and there was a booming above you
F Am
that night black airplanes flew over the sea
F Am
and they were lowing and shifting like
beached whales
F
shelled snails
Am
as you strained and you squinted to see
F Am
the retreat of their hairless and blind cavalry
Em D
you froze in your sand shoal
C Bb
prayed for your poor soul
Em D C Bb
sky was a bread roll, soaking in a milk-bowl
and when the bread broke,
fell in bricks of wet smoke
my sleeping heart woke, and my waking heart spoke
F Am
then there was a silence you took to mean something:
F
mean "Run, sing,
Am
for alive you will evermore be!"
F Am
and the plague of the greasy black engines a-skulkin'
F
has gone east
Am
while you're left to explain them to me
F Am
released from their hairless and blind cavalry
with your hands in your pockets,
stubbily running
to where I'm unfresh, undressed and yawning
well, what is this craziness?
this crazy talking?
you caught some small death when you were sleepwalking
Am E D A(sus4)
it was a dark dream, darlin', it's over
Am C Bb
the firebreather is beneath the clover
beneath his breathing there is cold clay, forever
a toothless hound-dog choking on a feather
F#m C#m F#m D
but I took my fishingpole (fearing your fever)
F#m C#m
down to the swimminghole,
F#m D
where there grows a bitter herb
F#m A D
that blooms but one day a year by the riverside -
Gm7(arpeggio up)
I'd bring it here:
F C
apply it gently
Bb Dm
to the love you've lent me
F Am
while the river was twisting and braiding, the bait bobbed
F Am
and the string sobbed, as it cut through the hustling breeze
F Am
and I watched how the water was kneading so neatly
F
gone treacly
Am
nearly slowed to a stop in this heat
F Am G
- frenzy coiling flush along the muscles beneath
Am C Em G
press on me: we are restless things
Am C Em G
webs of seaweed are swaddling
Am C
you call upon the dusk
Em G
of the musk of a squid
Am C Em G
shot full of ink, until you sink into your crib
Dm F C Em
rowing along, among the reeds, among the rushes
Dm F C Am
I heard your song, before my heart had time to hush it!
Dm F C Em
smell of a stone fruit being cut and being opened
Dm F C Am
smell of a low and of a lazy cinder smoking
C G C
and when the fire moves away
Am G F
fire moves away, son
C G C
why would you say
Am G F
I was the last one?
Am C Em G
scrape your knee; it is only skin
Am C Em G
makes the sound of violins
Am C Em G
when I cut your hair, and leave the birds all of the trimmings
Am C Em G
I am the happiest woman among all women
C#m
and the shallow
Fm
water stretches as
C#m
far as I
G#m
can see
C#m
knee-deep, trudging along
Fm G#m
a seagull weeps; "so long"
Fm
I'm humming a threshing song
until the night is over
C#
hold on! hold on!
Fm
hold your horses back from the fickle dawn
I have got some business out at the edge of town
candy weighing both of my pockets down
'til I can hardly stay afloat, from the weight of them
(and knowing how the common-folk condemn
what it is I do, to you, to keep you warm
being a woman, being a woman)
but always up the mountainside you're clambering
groping blindly, hungry for anything:
picking through your pocket linings - well, what is this?
scrap of sassafras, eh Sisyphus?
I see the blossoms broke and wet after the rain
little sister, he will be back again
I have washed a thousand spiders down the drain
spiders ghosts hang soaked and dangelin'
silently from all the blooming cherry trees
in tiny nooses, safe from everyone
nothing but a nuisance; gone now, dead and done
be a woman, be a woman!
Very fast:
Fm
though we felt the spray of the waves
C#
we decided to stay till the tide rose too far
we weren't afraid, cause we know what you are
and you know that we know what you are
Cm
awful atoll
o, incalculable indiscreetness and sorrow!
C#
bawl, bellow:
Fm
Sibyl sea-cow, all done up in a bow
toddle and roll;
teeth an impalpable bit of leather
while yarrow, heather and hollyhock
awkwardly molt along the shore
Fm C#
are you mine?
Fm
my heart?
C#
mine anymore?
F C#m etc.
stay with me for awhile
that's an awfully real gun
I know life will lay you down
as the lightning has lately done
Fm C#
failing this, failing this,
Am G
follow me, my sweetest friend
F Am
to see what you anointed in pointing your gun there
[ Tab from: https://www.guitartabs.cc/tabs/j/joanna_newsom/only_skin_crd_ver_2.html ]
C
lay it down! nice and slow!
G F
there is nowhere to go, save up
Am F
up where the light, undiluted, is weaving in a drunk dream
Am
at the sight of my baby, out back:
F Am F
back on the patio watching the bats bring night in
F
- while, elsewhere, estuaries of wax-white
F Am
wend, endlessly, towards seashores unmapped
Em D C Bb
last week our picture window produced a half-word
Em D C Bb
heavy and hollow, hit by a brown bird
Em D C Bb
we stood and watched her gape like a rattlesnake
Em D C Bb
and pant and labour over every intake
Am E D A(sus4)
I said a sort of prayer for some rare grace
Am C Bb
then thought I ought to take her to a higher place
said: "dog nor vulture nor cat shall toy with you
and though you die, bird, you will have a fine view"
F#m C#m
then in my hot hand
F#m D
she slumped her sick weight
F#m C#m
we tramped through the poison oak
F#m D
heartbroke and inchoate
F#m A
the dogs were snapping
F#m D
so you cuffed their collars
F#m A
while I climbed the tree-house
F#m D
then how I hollered!
F#m C#m F#m A D Gm7
well she'd lain, as still as a stone, in my palm, for a lifetime or two
F C Bb Dm
then, saw the treetops, cocked her head and up and flew
F#m C#m F#m
(while, back in the world that moves, often
A D Gm7
according to the hoarding of these clues
Em D
dogs still run roughly around
C Bb
little tufts of finch-down)
F Am
the cities we passed were a flickering wasteland
F Am
but his hand in my hand made them hale and harmless
F Am
while down in the lowlands the crops are all coming;
F
we have everything
Am
life is thundering blissful towards death
F Am Em
in a stampede of his fumbling green gentleness
Am C Em G
you stopped by, I was all alive
Am C Em G
in my doorway, we shucked and jived
Am C
and when you wept, I was gone:
Em G
see, I got gone when I got wise
Am C Em G
but I can't with certainty say we survived
Dm F
then down, and down
Am
and down, and down
C
and down, and deeper
Dm F
stoke without sound
C
the blameless flames
G
you endless sleeper
Dm F C Em
through fire below, and fire above, and fire within
Dm F C G
sleeped through the things that couldn't have been if you hadn't have been
C G C
and when the fire moves away
Am G F
fire moves away, son
C G C
why would you say
Am G F
I was the last one?
Am C Em G
all my bones they are gone, gone, gone
Am C Em G
take my bones, I don't need none
Am C Em G
cold, cold cupboard, Lord, nothing to chew on!
Am C Em G
suck all day on a cherry stone
Am C Em G
dig a little hole, not three inches round
Am C Em G
spit your pit in the hole in the ground
Am C Em G
weep upon the spot for the starving of me!
Am C Em G
till up grow a fine young cherry tree
Am C Em G
well when the bough breaks, what'll you make for me?
Am C Em G
a little willow cabin to rest on your knee
Am C Em G
what'll I do with a trinket such as this?
Am C Em G
think of your woman, who's gone to the west
Am C Em G
but I'm starving and freezing in my measly old bed!
Am C Em G
then I'll crawl across the salt flats to stroke your sweet head
Am C Em G
come across the desert with no shoes on!
Am C Em G
I love you truly, or I love no-one
C G C
fire moves away
Am G F
fire moves away, son
C G C
why would you say
Am G F
I was the last one? last one
F Am
clear the room! there's a fire, a fire, a fire
F Am
get going, and I'm going to be right behind you
F Am
and if the love of a woman or two, dear,
F Am
couldn't move you to such heights, then all I can do
F Am
is do, my darling, right by you
