In the Disney sunset
We see the end of time
Soon we'll both be free again
We'll strip the shelves in Wal*Mart of our souls
Humans, not consumers, in the end

In my getaway Benz
We'll leave it all behind
With Starbucks consciousness in mind
Our Coca-Cola cocoon
Can keep us warm at night
With Warner dreams to hold us tight

CHORUS:
Of vanity and vultures
The viewpoint never changes from up here
Wrapping us in ennui
These spiders like their victims numb and near

Selling us our own coffin coffee cups
Could they be believed?
Could we be deceived?
Blessed by Nike we will walk the map
And fall into the Gap

All we've left of happiness
Are Polaroids and McDonald's toys
So we're filling our lungs with laughing gas
And filling our ears with synonym noise

Our empty lives were never
Filled with spending more
So what do we live for?

CHORUS

This plastic embrace
Of STDs and SUVs
Posed in harlquin window displays
With emptiness on MTV
All this can be yours:
A better life, a thinner wife
If you waltz lifetimes away
With credit cards and a nomadic heart

Shedding our logo tattoos
To reclaim identity
Shopping malls crumble to sand
To reveal serenity
Billboards remain to remind
Of past religions
We'll be the only ones left
To witness beauty

Music and lyrics by Owen Burns. Copyright 2004 Argyle Doren Music (ASCAP)

" 'Ad' is the perfect example of a song popping up out of nowhere. I was playing my acoustic through my half-stack when the main riff for this song came up. Out of nowhere came the verse/prechorus motif, and the chorus just wrote itself after that. I'd just moved back to Lancaster from Somerville so it was a fairly tempestuous time. In fact my half-stack was in my room between packed boxes and furniture and everything else, and I hadn't even unpacked my electric guitars, which is why this came out on an acoustic. I doubt it would've been written on anything other than my acoustic, though, because it has such a strong melodic foundation.

The riff sounds to me like the end of something because of the time at which it was written, so the lyrics kind of slipped out as a post-apocalyptic story of a romance of the only two survivors of the end of civilization, brought on by overzealous advertising. I'm extremely politically-minded, but I try not to be the asshole that yells his political beliefs at anyone within earshot, so I'll spare you the political grounds for the song, and jump to the explanation: I was still very much in love at that point in time but we'd broken up due to the move, so the song was kind of a hypothetical situation for that relationship, I guess.

After the lyrics came, though, I realized that the song had the same form as everything else I've written, and it sounded too dramatic for the usual verse/chorus/verse format, so I tooled around with it and wrote a dramatic-sounding coda to it in 6/8 time. I wanted the song to sum up the entire spectrum of feelings that I'd just illustrated throughout the album, so it has a lot of subtle emotional push-and-pull through dynamics and melodic development. It eventually ended up with one proper "verse", a B section after the first chorus with two halves, another chorus, and then the coda. The coda was influenced by the cinematic song forms of silverchair's Diorama, but with a bit of musical hyperbole to match the lyrics. All in all it's a step forward for me in terms of progressive song form, and melodic maturity."