Matt Pless - Tiny Desk Contest 2025 - When the Frayed Wind Blows

When the Frayed Wind Blows
By Matt Pless

If it starts with an explosion, do you end it with a bang? First the whistles start a-blowin', then the guilty finally hang.
There’s a storm on the horizon and the water’s on the rise. We're watching history repeatin' with the changin' times.
The figureheads keep talking but they're buried in the sand. Everyone is pointing fingers; everybody plays their hand.
The fix is in, the game is rigged, the pawns are polarized. You either pick a side or think outside the picket lines.
I wonder, is this a revolution or just mass confusion? When every voice is trying to scream the loudest for equality.
While we argue strategy, culture and philosophy, people die in city streets all paved with blood and poverty.
Power’s with a chosen few; desperation’s just a tool that agents of corruption use to keep the jails and prisons full.
Diamond pockets lined with profits earned from broken lives misled to pledge by one discrimination under God.
I'm sayin' stop the world, I wanna get off everything's on fire and it's falling apart.
So, if we can't turn back can we change the course when the fury of the frayed wind blows?

The preachers sell salvation to the faithful on their knees. Some prey upon our need and want for something to believe.
And some have spun the doctrine’s holy guide toward paradise to justify injustices and centuries of genocide.
Surrender to your temples, to your altars or your shrines, the weapons used by shepherds so the sheep will keep in line.
Conflicting congregations thinking only of themselves. If that’s the path to heaven, hate to see the road to hell.
I’ll tell ya' they take a vision, make religion, cause division, keep you vacant and complacent and dependent on a system
by creating ways to separate, utilizing class and race, prejudice perpetuates and keeps monopolies in place.
Trickle up or trickle down, stack or spread the wealth around. Someone’s hope is runnin' out while fortune fills a bank account.
Empty-promise politicians pander to the poor while there’s money used for funding phony wars on foreign shores.

I'm sayin' stop the world, I wanna get off 'cause they're loading up the bullets and they're dropping the bombs.
The propaganda beats to the narrative drums when the fury of the frayed wind blows.

The criminals in congress they ain't got no ground to stand. They're building walls and borders all around the stolen land.
A legacy of liberty that’s how the story goes, but conquerors rewrote the past to suit the status quo.
So is it institutions or the state of humankind that leads to some exalted over thousands left behind?
They'll push you to your limit but in turn, they'll push their luck ‘cause sleeping giants riot when they've finally woken up.
Because they're buying your silence with those shiny advertisements. They lie and cheat and steal and tax your habits so you'll finance
what they hide away behind the scenes, cover over underneath, population, exploitation victimized by vanity.
Faces in a magazine, pictures on a pixel screen set a lofty standard that disintegrates your self-esteem.
Race to chase a plastic dream, red carpets, and limousines blinded and distracted by the flashbulbs of celebrity.
But just beyond the limelight after fame has run its course they'll throw you to the lions while a sold-out crowd will roar.
I'm saying stop the world, I wanna get off ‘cause they're bodies lying breathless, bleeding, piling up.
They shook the bottled rage now it's bound to erupt when the fury of the frayed wind blows.

You can think yourself in circles but the answer’s never clear. Is there safety with surveillance? Is there freedom without fear?
Unravel and untangle all you thought you understood and question everything until you question why you should.
We'll change the world with flowers, or we'll change the world with guns. We'll plant a seed or dig a grave before it’s said and done.
But if we come together, all for one and one for all, resistance rises up sure as an empire will fall.
So, I’ll just push toward the future, may it crumble for the better where tyrannical oppressors are but shadows we remember.
No judgment based on color, or your lover, or your gender; dismantle older models so they can’t be reassembled.
But the day the tables turn your way watch out for a twist of fate. Careful not to stumble and become the very thing you hate.
Seek out something comforting search for something innocent but you'll never have those eyes that look at life that way again.
So, you can take the high road, nothing ventured, nothing gained, but you fight fire with fire when you're going down in flames.

I'm sayin' stop the world I wanna get off ‘cause we're at each other's throats and now it's choking my heart.
So, we can burn the earth or extinguish the torch when the fury of the frayed wind blows

Record by Joe Bird and Brendon Bosmans
Featuring Matt Pless vocals guitar
Joanna Clare violin
Joe Bird bass