Harlem Roulette Lyrics

Mountain Goats Harlem Roulette

Unknown engines underneath the city
Steam pushing up in billows through the graves
Frankie Lymon's drinking Sea Breeze in a studio in Harlem
It's 1968

Just a pair of tunes to hammer out
Everybody's off the clock by 10
The loneliest people in the whole wide world are the ones you're never
Going to see again

Feel so free when I hit the avenue
Nothing like a New York summer night
Every dream's a good dream
Even awful dreams are good dreams
If you're doing it right

Rememeber soaring higher than the clouds
Get pretty sentimental now and then
The loneliest people in the whole wide world are the ones you're never
Going to see again

And four hours north of Portland the radio flips on
And some no one from the future remembers that you're gone

Armies massing in the dusky distance
Ghosted in the ribbon microphone
Leave a little mark on something maybe
Take the secret circuit home

Nothing in the shadows but the shadowhands
Reaching out to sad young frightened men
The loneliest people in the whole wide world are the ones you're never
Going to see again

Yeah the loneliest people in the whole wide world are the ones you're never
Going to see again