| King Creosote – Bats in the Attic Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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And how I'll laugh out loud about that. -?- |
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| Owen Pallett – E Is For Estranged Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Dark and lovely. Who making music right now can use strings and piano in such a powerful way? His compositions are otherworldly. See the last two minutes to The Great Elsewhere for another example. | |
| Arcade Fire – Suburban War Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| Great and provoking read of this song, bernoulli. Thanks. | |
| The National – Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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This is a lovely interpretation, houdinisgoat. It doesn't all fit with my read, but it is very evocative. Ever read the book 'Geek Love'? You ought to. My sense of this song, and of the album more broadly, is that the narrator is working through a prolonged and heartbroken mourning. He is in the act of losing - more or less voluntarily - a part of himself. He is mourning the loss of that very "heat of the moment" you refer to. He has now become staid, and in doing so feels he has given an essential part of himself away (to family, relationship, domesticity, could be anything). Now he neither has the strength to walk away from what he feels to be his stifling fate and reclaim this sacrificed part of himself, nor the devotion and clarity in his heart to let go of what he can no longer have. Though he's torn, and even tortured about it, it seems to me that he will remain static, and simply remain in place, letting the waters rise around him and reaching no distinct resolution. He slips into living a life he has only half-chosen, and only half gives himself to. I know this interpretation is not 'right,' it's just what feels right for me. Anyways, thanks again for your thought-provoking post. |
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| Arcade Fire – (Antichrist Television Blues) Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I like what Emueyes offered on the first page, especially about the black mirror reflecting nothing back, but like others I don't think Arcade Fire's intention with this album is limited to a criticism of popular culture. For me, there are powerful abstractions moving in the substrata of each song that usually aren't treated directly by the songwriters and that aren't easily defined, maybe even for the members of Arcade Fire themselves! I feel like these abstractions sort of coalesce around themes of dislocation, spiritual and otherwise; cracks and ruptures in the modern consciousness, to which the trauma and violence of events like 9/11 and the Iraq war act as catalysts; existential fear, paranoia, collective sociopathy, and the distortion or derangement of the ideals of humanity that are offered through religious texts. And many other themes that it'll take me a thousand more listens to begin to fathom! It seems like Arcade Fire uses religion as a vehicle to explore these meta themes, these almost impenetrable themes at our moment in human history. Each time I hear the album I am stunned by the kick-ass job they've done of weaving insightful, subtle, and indirect commentary on complex concepts into each song, without falling into cliche or trite metaphor. The whole album holds together like an indestructible structure, it's amazing! Two big hints about what the subterranean side of this song is getting at, I think, are the lyrics of the first stanza, with its imagery of planes falling from the sky; and the musical cues that come at the end of the song, as - in a heartbeat - the tone goes from driving narrative with a steady guitar in the lead to snarling menace and imminent peril and a final, abrupt, creepy-as-hell silence. I think this song may be much darker than we might choose to hope. |
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