Drink The Young Wine

Here's a Red Atlas song. It's difficult to date Atlas songs, they just sort of build bit by bit like silt deposits in an Ox-Bow lake. Or something else that I half remember from Geography lessons. This one is our "slowie" and has actually been played, never well, live. Our live set is usually fairly high-octane, as well as being discordant and too loud and lumpily all over the shop. It has all the hallmarks of a Red Atlas song: references to drinking, St. John of the Cross, Shakespeare and bad puns.

There is a notional set of references to the First World War but really it's about me. That's right I'm comparing the suffering of millions to my own depression. I'm not totally insensitive: I could have named it Spanish Flu.

The title is ripped off from the Surrealists. It's an homage. It's an homage.

Drink The Young Wine,


Though I still question it,
I still sometimes believe,
In the dark night of the soul,
Licking shadows can decieve,
Here's the burden of the proof,
Time to take the strain,
One hundred per cent proof,
The last drop I drain,

Drink the young wine,
Drink the long draft down,
Drink the young wine,
In the Malmsy butt you drown,

A telegram from over-seas,
Oh brother please just...stop,
We are lions lead by donkeys,
Or is that over the top,
Here's the burden of the proof,
Time to take the strain,
One hundred per cent proof,
The last drop I drain,

By the way,
Bide away,
In the sunlight of those endless hours, wasting