| The Decemberists – Odalisque Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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"And what do we do with ten baby shoes/A kit bag full of marbles and a broken billiard cue?" "And what do we do with ten dirty Jews/A thirty-ought full of rock salt and a warm afternoon?" (AaronTries' answer about the Ottoman empire was interesting. It shows how much post-WWII society assumes that when someone mentions Jews they're referring to the holocaust.) Here's my humble opinion: There are most likely parallels between the ten baby shoes and ten dirty jews. I assume the "baby shoes" line is about the girl's childhood, and the "dirty jews" line is about the holocaust: Then the parallel is that the people around them are torturing them, making their lives miserable. PS: I just googled "thirty-ought," and found out that a thirty-aught is a type of gun. According to another website, rock salt is just NaCl, where the water evaporated - which would evidently kill you if shot out of a gun. So it would presumably be an allusion to when the nazis would go and line up folks and shoot some of them. |
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| The Decemberists – Leslie Ann Levine Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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To whoever was wondering what "mesallied" means, I found something like it in the dictionary. It comes from a french word Dictionary mésalliance |ˌmāzəˈlīəns; ˌmāˌzalˈyä n s| noun a marriage with a person thought to be unsuitable or of a lower social position. ORIGIN French, from més- ‘wrong, misdirected’ + alliance (see alliance ). |
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| The Decemberists – O Valencia! Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Immediately when I heard this I assumed it was very much like West Side Story (and of course Romeo and Juliet). I didn't really think of the gender of the speaker--assumed the speaker was male because Colin Melloy is male. I loved how the music video was so different than I pictured it. Same for 16 military wives. I know--music videos aren't the only way to see the song, but it was really interesting |
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| The Decemberists – Summersong Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I agree DCFCAlex ... I've been noticing that a lot of their songs have alliteration and stuff in them. Like Odalisque (how many words with the letter r can you put in a row?). My first impressions of this song were that he's remembering the summer, like in Grease (summer nights). |
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| The Decemberists – The Crane Wife 3 Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Last year the youth theatre group did a series of little sorta plays, and the Crane wife story was one of them. This song is so sad, because he regrets it so much. |
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| The Decemberists – Of Angels and Angles Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I agree with the people who mentioned how life keeps going on and eventually they'll die (maybe old people, maybe not). Because "there's a ticking on the sill" could be like a clock counting down your life. I don't think it's about suicide. Too calm for that. My first impressions were of a house a long time ago (around the time of the Little House books), without very much in it but simple things--I picture a woman sitting in a rocking chair by the window, and her husband or husband-to-be is singing this song to her. |
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| The Decemberists – A Cautionary Song Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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She reminds me of Fantine from les miserables...Being a prostitute to get money to feed her child/children... It's a caution to the child/children: don't be like this. |
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| The Decemberists – Odalisque Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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turnejam: I looked up that poem (Sylvia Plath definitely needed someone to cheer her up) but it is very similar! And maybe the railroad cul de sac could be sort of symbolic, like she has no where to go, she has hit a sort of "dead end" in her life. |
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| The Decemberists – Odalisque Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I think when he is talking about the lazy lady that had a baby, the baby is the girl who they are talking about. So the line "and a sweet sound it made" is that she was so sweet as a baby, and if circumstances were different she would be different. When he says "Such a filthy dimming shine" it seems like as life goes on she gets "dimmer" as in more hopeless and cynical. It's such a sad song! |
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