Empty Pledges

Never assume, it makes an arse of you and you alone And if you're right? You're not a Knight to be anointed Your bogus podium remains the same when I'm exposed Behold the dickhead with their big bag full of bonus points I went to town to sand down the edges I wore a suit and scaled the tallest building Hanging off the slightest ledges My fingers gripped tight from a great height As I pressed my face against the glass And dialed up the bass in both of my front wedges I saw the cars below and read aloud their custom regs They cut relentless crescents in the August snow Making U-turn after U-turn on their empty pledges Look at 'em all burnt out with nowhere left to go An astra, ten cans trailing Decimated by spray paint red The wedding present Swerved the dent in the road where my head went when I fell I wonder if they know who David Gedge is And how long I've left with all these thoughts Before I reach the gates of Hello, how you doing? I'm doing very well I've done absolutely nothing since I last saw you four years ago Ah, how you doing, yeah, I'm still chipping away But I've got absolutely nothing Absolutely nothing new to say The city bleeds but I'm not from here I retain the right to roam I built a life rife with promise and squandered solace in monochrome The monitors popped and my ears bled But I preserved with a public facing air of nonchalance The empty promise came full circle more than once Oh behave I get between the sheets and pray it's just a dream I'm only sleeping in my Gravy with the chips, you lot are always lugging round On your shoulders like the world has never told you how you sound Yeah, everytime I hear you moaning If I only had a pound I could've sold the house for nowt and built a solid tungsten bunker underground I gave the drink up except for one shot of sake in Kyoto A mescal in Mexico A limoncello in Zucco Still smoke loads though Gotta look good in all these photos Yeah I worry about all the same things you do as far as hope goes so Put me in your magazine or I might just start my own and go full Howard Devoto How hard is devotion? How hard is putting on a show? How deep is the ocean really? Hello you, yes you Do you feel like an imposter for every new level you ascend to too? Did you pull the ladder up behind you 'cause all your friends became resentful? No one has a clue Do you have to bluff as much as I do? Table service in fancy bars Another hoop they make you jump through What's wrong with just pushing in and shouting, excuse me love, dead loud What's wrong with doubting yourself? What's wrong with doubting yourself? What's wrong with being proud? What's wrong with being proud? I can account for my whereabouts if you just check back on the camera I don't wanna know how the magic works It's par for the course to be cursed by the scourge of drinking straight from the source What’s wrong with Leeds? Come on, what were you thinking? What's wrong with anywhere really Of course London's more fun If you like slumming it with lots of money Cops bust your once trusted source On the Conspiracy course Crop circles can't cut the mustard Groveling in the dirt, crying for your mum, stop Just divorce yourself from all the noise and scrape the scum off the top Young upstart, upskirting the rung above Everybody's got their knickers in a twist up there too And there's still no love to be found Well maybe I'm looking dumb, done looking or just plain out of luck 'Cause when you're this self-obsessed, it's no wonder no one up on high gives a **** By now you're either with us or you're not So you can sit down shut up and listen Or switch this shit off