[Verse 1]
Fog eats the harbor
Salt in my teeth
Rust on the crab traps
Something moves beneath
Diner on Front Street
Closes at ten
But the church on the headland
Opens again
Lanterns in basements
Curtains pulled tight
Everyone’s praying
To anything but light
[Chorus]
Brine and blacklight
Rolling in from the deep
Something old
Something cold
Teaching quiet towns to creep
Brine and blacklight
Hear the tide chant your name
When the shoreline bends
And the sky runs red
You’ll swear it all felt the same
[Verse 2]
Old men at card games
Fold on the word
Every loose conversation
Cages a bird
Fingers webbed slightly
Gills pale and new
Kids at the bait shop
Staring straight through you
Lighthouse keeps pulsing
Rhythm too slow
Not here for sailors
Pointing down below
[Chorus]
Brine and blacklight
Rolling in from the deep
Something old
Something cold
Teaching quiet towns to creep
Brine and blacklight
Hear the tide chant your name
When your neighbor hums
What the sea once dreamed
You’ll hum it back just the same (just the same)
[Bridge]
[Clean guitar and brushed cymbals; vocal almost whispered]
Grainy old yearbooks
Eyes all the same
Whole generations
Mouthing one name
Circle of footprints
Leading straight to the waves
No one turned around
No bodies
Just graves
[Instrumental Sax Solo]
[Band shifts into fractured swing; sax screams
Then slithers over a churning riff]
[Verse 3]
Claws in the kelp beds
Teeth in the foam
Something that isn’t a storm
Crawling home
Towers of vertebrae
Breaking the swell
Choir on the bluff
Singing welcome to hell
I taste the future
Copper and brine
Feel my own fingers
Growing new lines (oh)
[Chorus]
Brine and blacklight
Coiling up from the deep
Every prayer
Every stare
Wakes a mouth that used to sleep
Brine and blacklight
We’re the stairs to the crown
When the coastline lifts
And it opens its eyes
We’ll call it “our little town”
[Outro]
[Half-time breakdown
Sax and guitar in unison]
From the pier to the pines
To the flooded church door
It was rising
Rising
Here long before
(Brine and blacklight)
(Here long before)