Lyrics The Perfect Crime #1 / The Day I Knew You’d Not Come Back - The Decemberists

Sing, Muse, of the passion of the pistol
Sing, Muse, of the warning by the whistle
A night so dark in the waning
A dawn obscured by a slate sky raining

Five and twenty burglars by the reservoir
A teenage lookout on the signal tower
The mogul's daughter in hog-tie
The mogul fingers the wrong guy, all right

It was a perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect
A perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect crime
It was a perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect
A perfect, a perfect, a perfect, the perfect crime
It was a perfect crime

The bagman's quaking at the fingers
The hand-off, glance a little lingers
A well-dressed man in the cross-hairs
A shot rings out from somewhere upstairs

It was a perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect
A perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect crime
It was a perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect
A perfect, a perfect, a perfect, the perfect crime
It was a perfect crime

It was like a ticker tape parade
When the plastique on the safe was blown away
And we all gazed from eye to eye
As we mouthed our silent goodbyes

The valley's sleeping like a bastard
It stinks of slumber and disaster
Two words are spoke on the tap wire
The agent's ploy finds a surefire backfire

It was a perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect
A perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect crime
It was a perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect
A perfect, a perfect, a perfect, the perfect crime
It was a perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect
A perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect
A perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect
A perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect
A perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect
A perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect
A perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect
A perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect crime