Artists whose lyrics are actually a joy to read on the printed page. And examples if you wish.

i used to have it, it didn't feel particularly necessary (the sylvian book)

The Handsome Family.

I am afraid of bridges. Sometimes I have to turn around when I'm driving towards one and my heart begins to pound. Last night at the bridge to Johnsburg I swerved down a dead end street. I sat there shaking in an empty lot full of broken glass and weeds. Then past me in the darkness ran four wild dogs leaping over abandoned tires high into the air. In the air, in the air, someday I will live in the air. Once I loved a girl named Joan whose skin smelled just like falling snow. One day she drove us off the road into a dead field of corn. She laughed and hit the gas as we bounced across the rows, but I held onto the dashboard with my eyes tightly closed. Those wild dogs brought back that smell of falling snow and the girl who lives in Johnsburg across a bridge I can not cross.

The Cathedral in Cologne looks like a spaceship, like the hand of God falling from the sky. 1,000 stone-carved saints hang like icicles, but icicles don't take 1,000 years to die. And everyone who ever worked on this cathedral or even spent a moment walking by, everyone of us is swept away like breadcrumbs. What comfort does it bring, soaring towers left behind? There's a fiberglass castle in Wisconsin where kids race go-karts around a moat. Once we went up there in December when every water-slide and fudge shop was closed. Hoping to feel love under the icicles. All we did was drink in an empty bar. But, stumbling drunk we crawled back to our motel room and I fell against you and felt your beating heart. Snow was slowly falling on the ice machine and the moon shone hazy through the pines. But, there were lounge chairs thrown into the empty pool and a dog chained to a tree barking at the sky.

Kurt Wagner

And as your hand rests gently on her head
Remove the clutter and the papers that you read
A whispered comment, or a compliment is said
And you take her hand and you gesture toward the bed
I can't believe this feels this good
No, I can't believe this feels this good

No no, no no no no, no no no no, no no there's no limit!

i've really been digging courtney barnett lately but she is another dylan-y person where without the phrasing and her voice it can look kinda clunky on the page.

Beefheart. Syd Barrett.

When the moon shines on the cow shed
and we're rolling in the hay,
All the cows are up there grazin'
and the milk is on its way.

We're having a gang bang
We're having a ball
We're having a gang bang
Against the wall
We'd like you to join us
It's part of the fun!
Oh a gang bang is the thing to do
But it takes more than one

Sur le trottoir d’en face, une fille riait
Et ses dents blanches me creusèrent la faim
Je courus au boulanger m’acheter un petit pain
Et tout en le beurrant je pense aux paysans.

Paysans, dès lors décision est prise
Oui, j’irai, j’irai à travers la campagne
Offrir aux paysans dix ans de ma jeunesse
Connaître leur sort, leurs durs travaux des champs.

Oui nos champs n’ont rien de commun avec leur ranch
Ici pas de charrue ni de tracteur zélé
La hache dès le point du jour, on avance puis on brûle
C’est pas pour plaire aux yeux mais pour mieux faire pousser le café.

Du café oui du café ne vous en étonnez pas
Les amis nous ont dit qu’il n’est pas compétitif
Néanmoins le soir venu faut chasser grosses bêtes
On allume des grands feux, on tape dans des tonneaux.

Des tonneaux vieux, vides de mauvais vin
Qu’on nous avait filé les dernières élections
Croyez-moi la nuit venue, on oublie bien vite ce vin
Quand sur son tam-tam, Ogula nous fait danser

« Arrêtez de danser sales nègres, arrêtez ! »
C’est un prospecteur, un boucher recyclé
C’est sur un gisement d’or, nous explique le salaud,
Que nous dansions depuis des générations.

« Go home, sale colon » fis-je coup sur coup
Il comprit alors que je suis un intellectuel
« Chut, me fit le con, je suis de la croix noire
Pour l’intérêt des noirs – d’ailleurs je t’écrirai »

M’écrire ? Il tint promesse, il le fit bientôt
« J’ai l’honneur, le plaisir….vous êtes conseiller »
Adieu cochons et vaches, je m’en retourne là-bas
Dans ces coins publics où paissent les grands messieurs.

Conseiller ? Je fus un peu étonné, mais enfin
On s’adapte, il faut dire que je signe fort bien
Mais s’épuisent les gisements d’or, tarissent les amitiés
Mon mandat fut très court, mesures d’austérité.

Sur le trottoir d’en face, une fille riait
Et ses dents blanches me prédisent la faim
Je cours au boulanger comme tout bon patriote
Mais plus de boulanger, il est presque député.

You know that people they are driftin' from do' to do'
But they can't find no heaven
I don't care where they go

People, if I ever can get up
Off a-this old hard killin' flo'
Lord, I'll never get down
This low no mo'

Well, you hear me singin'
This old lonesome song
People, you know these hard times
Can't last us so long

You know, you'll say you had money
You better be sho'
But these hard times gon' kill you
Just drive a lonely soul

Well it's down the road and up the hill and just around the bend
Pick 'em and put 'em down and pick 'em up again
Cadd9
And it sets me into wonderin' what it's really all about
Fightin' for the things we know we'll always be without

Down the road by the way
Where the laughin' waters play
'Cross the ribbon-wavin' sand
We go walkin' hand in hand

Nothin' old and nothin' new
Nothin' special there to do
In those good old yesterdays
Down the road by the way

Well it's light and lovely Brenda comin' cool across the waves
Floatin' over rows she helped me hoe in yesterdays
And it's me whose thirsty now for all that sweet milk gone to waste
Somewhere on the road of no returnin' yesterdays

Well it's down the road and up the hill and just about the bend
Pick 'em and put 'em down and pick 'em up again
And it sets me into wonderin' what it's really all about
Fightin' for the things we know we'll always be without

xxp yeah if I limited it to one-liners then I would fill the thread with lines from kristin hersh ("I don't know where I am. I don't even know when I am, 'cause you insist on using fucked-up military time!")

it also took a great deal of restraint not to fill the thread with 75% of these http://www.irishmusiccentral.com/tychonaut/lyrics-love-life.html

Anything by Will Sheff.

A black sheep boy grows horns, breathing smoke through his microphone.
The airwaves stretch and they groan, bleeding, birthing his black diapason.
He says “there’s plenty of things to wear when you come to me,
every color of sleeve to be rolled.
There are millions of rolling eyes that still cling to me.
Every language of king is concerned.
So why did you bawl from the spell of some old holy song,
that some liar laughed as he composed - some liar I loved to control?”

Bid's stuff always reads like poetry

(Alphaville) She slits her senseless skin
(Alphaville In time to Fred Astaire
(Alphaville) I know you're always there

(Don't look now) She's so debonair, she's a manic depressive
(Don't look now) She's a millionaire, and her bills are excessive

(Alphaville) She feels her senses wane
(Alphaville) In pleasant melody
(Alphaville) I'll take you now with me

(Don't look now) She's a movie star, she's a split personality
(Don't look now) She's got oom-pah-pah, and Papa says it's insanity

Don't look now, your mind's deteriorating
Don't look now, and if it's irritating
I'll know how to set it right again

Don't look now, your world's collapsing, dear
Don't look now, and if it's taxing, dear
I'll know how to put it back again

(Alphaville) She sleeps in useless flesh
(Alphaville) The rancid, blood-soaked breast
(Alphaville) In sunlight and slow death

(Don't look now) She's a movie star, she's a little bit touched
(Don't look now) She's so wünderbar, all gears and no clutch

Grand Belial's Key and Arghoslent (same lyricst, I think)

Fugitive
Witch-doctor
Born in an impoverished stable
Could this flimsy child truly be an predicted scepter?

Balaam's prophecy, Judah's predictions
Artificial pages of an unearthly fetish
Interpreter of the Torah
Worshipped by the Magi of Arabia

Hobo of Aramaic Tongues

The outline of a dead fish on a wall of mud
Signs of the resistance

Hobo of Aramaic Tongues

Frauds, hoaxes, serpents of Earth
Surviving on quails and manna
Christmas star of a frozen Palestine
Saturn no longer protects thee
...

JoeStork beat me to it but Handsome Family to thread

Craig Finn:

"She came to in a confession booth, infested with infections, smiling on an abscessed tooth. She climbed the cross, found she liked the view and sat reflecting on the Resurrection. She put her mouth around a difficult question. She said, "Lord, what do you recommend to a real sweet girl who's made some not sweet friends? Lord, what would you prescribe to a real soft girl who's having real hard times?""

Can we all please just calm the fuck down?

In an analogy that makes sense to most
This opportunity, it found me unmarked at the far post
But I blazed it right against the crossbar
Of the pub that you had worked in since you moved here from Bath spa
We agreed we couldn't trust the guy that didn't like a single sport
But those bow-legged suitors hadn't given me much of a thought
They said it smelled delicious, but it smelt of burning flesh
Not meant to be malicious but this is the cross we bear

The story of the winter I forgot how to speak my mind was like a nation's flag, but my breeze was too weak
How they dragged me to the hospital saying I had gone deaf
But I heard everything they said
It's just I had no interest

Our friends have put the two of us on suicide watch
And every second spent away we spend watching the clock
There are photos of us holding hands outside of the frame
I was there, but wonder where our fingers were all the same
It's like a self-restraint
It's the size of a fingernail
And then we chew it down
Yeah we chew it down all the same
Sad eyes for sad goodbyes
It's a crime, it's a crime, it's a crime, it's a crime

First and foremost, let it be said
I am writing this at 7:10 am
On the hard dry tarmac of a vacant forecourt
Astronomically speaking, it's the first day of autumn
But the sun is hanging round like summer's hungover
They'll knock the garage down and build flats where I sit
The traffic's so persistent that it barely registers
And it smells like a mix between petrol and dog shit

Just let me be the one that keeps track of the moles on your back
I just sighed, the universe replied: "let this pass you by"

Sometimes it's just enough to know I keep him on his toes
Is he as sympathetic as me to the untimely demise of your synthetic clothes?
I've displayed marriage proposals on the Jumbotrons of ballgames you've not been at
I've written eulogies in guestbooks of galleries in the hopes that you might pass

She: nervous and barefoot, chats to me at the front door
He: boyfriend, inside's a saint, becoming a martyr
Me: rolling, writhing on the floor, stared daggers pulled from my thoracic wall
When I hold sea shells to my ears, I'm pretty sure I can hear you

He gave a gift of the Faber Book of Love Poems
Annotated the ones he thought applied the most
Not gonna win you round with prose
If anyone should know then it's I should know (Oh-oh)
Girl, there must be a reason you let it slip
Went to the point of sending the message
Six months of visceral Catherine Wheels
Kissing carnivores to make it seem like less of a deal

I promise after this I will pick up the phone book
And choose the name that my eyes fall upon on their first look
Aim all of my poorly composed declarations there in the future
I'm so sorry to have to put you through a lifetime of dedications that you never desired
But this one sentence bludgeons me over the head
(Okay) I'm a little bit drunk, and I mean just a little bit
No lush in denial, only rather coquettish
I'm fifteen years old and my parents' only son
Like I barely survived a girls' school education
Prettier now that you've grown your hair long
I'm a slip of a man since I cut mine all off

Please just let me be the one to keep track
Of the freckles and the moles on your back

Shit, also anything Dickon wrote, especially the first Fosca album.

And OBVIOUSLY the entire catologue of John D.

I dreamt the film of my life as directed by Joseph Losey
It was eight minutes long, and cast as me was Parker Posey
It had a limited run in the small hours on Channel Four
And all of my scenes ended up on the cutting room floor
Because from Stockholm to Bolton they're coming to Soho in droves
For a sniff of some "face" whose skin barely touches his clothes
There's little more to your name but a cool, sharp, three-button pose
Ordering drinks with a flick of your famed button nose

I'm bereft, I don't have a single secret left
You traded them for every friendship's death
Of which you're a millionaire
If truth be told, I only wanted something for my cold
I blame the lure of the laissez-faire
That you're the millionaire of your own hair
I left my last social circle and I hid for a while
I worked in an undertaker's so I wouldn't have to smile
There's five weeks' worth of homework nestling under your bed
While between the sheets skulks a grateful deputy head
After Double French you silently slip your moorings
And kill an hour or two in town defacing catalogues of vinyl flooring
You're swearing in received pronunciation to impress a cute librairian
And exchanging hooded glances with the townies and the precinct barbarians

I'm bereft, I don't have a single secret left
You traded them for stakes in crystal meth
So you're a millionaire
If truth be told, I only came for something for my cold
I blame the lure of the laissez-faire
That you're the millionaire of your own hair

There is an ancient journalist and he stoppeth one in three
And he's asking me if I equate dressing badly with insincerity
He's writing a book called "How To Tell Taxi Drivers They're Wrong."
And he doesn't trust people, but he knows his all-time favouite song
Now the millionaire is busy pulling single dads on underground trains
And he's blanking the old hack with characteristic haughty disdain
Today he's fitting in a louche professor of Drama and Mime
He says "I'd love to be lonely but I can't seem to find the time"

I'm bereft, I don't have a single secret left
You traded them for stakes in crystal meth
So you're a millionaire
If truth be told, I only came for something for my cold
You're telling the newspaper questionnaires
That you're the millionaire
Yes, you're the millionaire of your own hair