| Andrew Bird – Lusitania Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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I'm pretty sure that I'm the dumb boy in this song - literally. I'll tell you the story: you can decide. Back in 2009, St Vincent opened up for Andrew Bird in Indianapolis. It was the beginning of their tour and pretty much the first time that they'd met. I'm a big A.B. fan going back to 2001, so I went with my friends. We walked in halfway through St Vincent's set and were like "whoa" as Annie Clark started splitting the sky open with her guitar. Anyway, after the show my friends and I went to another concert at Radio Radio in Fountain Square: some band, can't remember who - we just wanted to support the scene. After about an hour, Andrew Bird shows up with his band and St Vincent in tow - instant star shock. We tried to play it cool for a few minutes, but we were giggling 14 yo girls on the inside. So we go up to him and try to strike up a clumsy conversation. I mentioned that we had met before in this very bar back in 2001... yada yada yada. Awkward. At this point, I notice Annie Clark standing near listening to us; so I turn to her and say "you were amazing too. My buddy and I walked in halfway through your set and were like 'whoa'..." and we drifted off into our own conversation as my friend continued to speak with Andrew. Annie and I decide to go smoke a cigarette, so we go out front to the sidewalk. It's raining, so we kinda sit on a ledge close to the door, under the awning and the buzzing lights - kind of in the way, but it wasn't too crowded. We light up and start talking about music and Sufjan Stevens and stuff [I thought he was from Nebraska or something - he's from Brooklyn. TIL]. Eventually, we get into this meta-conversation about how strange and silly it is that I can have a completely normal and relaxed conversation with her - who I had never even heard of before that night - and how clumsy and awkward I was talking with Andrew Bird. At this point, I should explain that Annie Clark is a very lovely person with huge Disney-princess eyes and we're deep in conversation - so she has my complete attention. I spoke of the formative effect that Andrew Bird's music had on me and how it's been part of the soundtrack of my life for the last decade or so. I said "I wouldn't have been this nervous meeting Bob Dylan because Bob Dylan's music doesn't mean as much to me as Andrew Bird's does AND OH MY GOD HE'S SITTING RIGHT NEXT TO US ISN'T HE?" He was. He had sidled up to Annie a few minutes before, and I was so engaged with her that I hadn't noticed until just then. He heard everything. So, the second part of the song, Annie's part, is pretty much a straightforward, though poetic, telling of what happened that night. Andrew Bird's part of the song - the sinking ships part - is trickier. We didn't talk about ships that I remember (though we could have - I was in the Navy and gave a lecture on the Spanish-American War in college). Assuming that the first half of the song was inspired by the same event as the second (a big assumption) I would hazard a guess that I touched a nerve. How do you deal with people who idolize you? What does having adoring fans do to one's ego and self-identity? What kind of internal conflicts might that create? What kind of fear? Trying to stay humble and grounded when people are putting you on a pedestal. Where do you go from there? I think that this might have been an issue for Andrew earlier in his career: something he had come to terms with or compartmentalized -"we don't study this war no more." And then I came and re-opened that wound. Or maybe I cock-blocked him - who knows? |
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| Neko Case – We've Never Met Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| "Bittersweet are the memories that make your lovers pine." | |
| alt-J – Fitzpleasure Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| The Irish prefix "Fitz" indicates illigitimatcy. "Fitzpatrick" means "bastard son of Patrick." | |
| Portugal. The Man – So American Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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This song has dick-all to do with Obama. It's about the way that the band sees reality. There are many people that literally believe that all is one. We're all just incarnations of an infinite, perfect being experiencing itself subjectively so that it can understand imperfection. This belief gives a rational basis to many of the things that Jesus said and did. "I and the Father are one" - since oneness is the nature of all reality this makes perfect sense. When PTM sing of "you are the one they call Jesus Christ" they are talking to you; literally. You and the Father are one also - you just don't realize it. Jesus did. Whether or not this is true of not is basically unprovable "there may not be a heaven or a place in which to send you buy you know that end the end there's a madness in us all." Now take this worldview and idea of Jesus and compare it to what gets passed around as Christianity in America nowadays. To be a "Real American Christian" one need only be white and say the words "praise Jesus" - actually acting like Jesus is hippie-liberal bullshit. The singer sees so many Sarah Palin-style Christians (they are from the same town ya know) glorifying war, despising the poor and using their faith in Jesus as justification to hate people. The whole tone of the song isn't one of anger though - it's one of bemusement and pity. "You think you're so American." He's seeing people who are not seeing. "There's two eyes for every one of us, but someone got there first and took them all." He's saying that the ability to become realized, to feel that love and connection that comes with it is within us all if we could just see, but we're raised to conform to a culture that has lost its way. |
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| The National – Afraid of Everyone Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| "I defend my family with my orange umbrella." This is a reference to Citibank. Their logo was the words "Citi" with an orange umbrella over the letters. The same Citibank who's lights the character in "Mistaken for Strangers" was mistaken for a stranger by his best friends. The character in this song is suffering in the uncertainty and angst of a world that seems to be crumbling around him. He's been conditioned by years of watching pharmaceutical commercials on Fox News that there is a pill for every problem, but it's not working this time. He loves his family and is never knowingly mean to anyone, but he knows so little - and he doesn't know it. The corporate-owned news channels he watches have been telling him what he thinks he already knows: he's a good person surrounded by freedom-hating people who want to kill him because they are jealous of his virtue. But the truth that is eluding him is that much of the rest of the world - people who love their families also - are suffering under the exploitation of the corporations that he is invested in. He's unaware, or unwilling to admit to himself, that his comfort is built on the suffering of others and it is this exploitation that is creating the backlash that he's so fearful of. | |
| The National – Lemonworld Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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The singer didn't go off to war himself: his less well-off cousins did. He just put a yellow ribbon on his bumper to send the message that he "supports the troops." College kids like him don't join the army - they go off on day trips to the coast to hang out with girls and their sisters to drink expensive wine and try to forget how awful the rest of the world is. He takes pains to avoid the news channels and parks the dial on MTV or something equally vapid. "Lay me on the table, put flowers in my mouth and we can say we invented a summer-loving torture party." This is waterboarding imagery. He's acutely aware of the dichotomy between his heavenly life cavorting at the beach house with two beautiful girls while his cousins and countrymen fight and die in the dust and sand of ugly wars full of torture and terror. He doesn't want to think about them. He wants this day, this beautiful moment to be his whole world - his eternity, but he knows the lemon-scented cleanness of the moment he's in merely masks the stench of the world that it is built on. |
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| Neko Case – I Wish I Was the Moon Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| I think that "chimney falls and lovers blaze" is a reflection on the memory of knocking boots so hard that the chimney on top of the house actually crumbles from the force - it's a reference to the passion of youth. It's followed by: "Now I've freezing hands and bloodless veins As numb as I've become" - which represents the melancholy of the subject's present life - growing old and longing for past love. | |
| The National – Cardinal Song Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Cardinals (the bird) mate for life. I think that this song is kind of about the "principle of least interest." The party least interested in a relationship has the most power. "If she knows you're paper, you know she'll have to burn you." If she figures out how much he really loves her, he fears that she'll lose interest in him. I've experienced this myself. By acting cold, distant and selfish, he's insuring that she'll stay around. A really sad but beautiful song. |
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