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Radio waves are coming miles and miles
Bringing only empty boats
Whatever feeling they had when they sailed
Somehow slipped out between the notes
Out on the desert now and feeling lost
The bonnet wears a wire albatross
Monster ballads and the stations of the cross
Sighing just a little bit
Sighing just a little bit
And I was thinking about what Katy done
Thinking about what Katy did
The fairest daughter of the Pharaoh's son
Dressed in gold beneath pyramids
Out on the desert now and feeling lost
The bonnet wears a wire albatross
Monster ballads and the stations of the cross
Sighing just a little bit
Sighing just a little bit
Ones and zeroes bleeding mesa noise
And when you're empty there's so much space for them
You turn it off but then a still small voice
Comes in blazing from some vast horizon
And I was thinking about my river days
I was thinking about me and Jim
Passing Cairo on a getaway
With every steamboat like a hymn
Out on the desert now
I'm feeling lost
The bonnet wears a wire albatross
Monster ballads and the stations of the cross
Sighing just a little bit
Smiling just a little bit
Bringing only empty boats
Whatever feeling they had when they sailed
Somehow slipped out between the notes
Out on the desert now and feeling lost
The bonnet wears a wire albatross
Monster ballads and the stations of the cross
Sighing just a little bit
Sighing just a little bit
And I was thinking about what Katy done
Thinking about what Katy did
The fairest daughter of the Pharaoh's son
Dressed in gold beneath pyramids
Out on the desert now and feeling lost
The bonnet wears a wire albatross
Monster ballads and the stations of the cross
Sighing just a little bit
Sighing just a little bit
Ones and zeroes bleeding mesa noise
And when you're empty there's so much space for them
You turn it off but then a still small voice
Comes in blazing from some vast horizon
And I was thinking about my river days
I was thinking about me and Jim
Passing Cairo on a getaway
With every steamboat like a hymn
Out on the desert now
I'm feeling lost
The bonnet wears a wire albatross
Monster ballads and the stations of the cross
Sighing just a little bit
Smiling just a little bit
Lyrics submitted by EffulgentEnnui
Track duration: 04:06
"Monster Ballads" as written by Josh Ritter
Lyrics © EMI Music Publishing
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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I think the second major element though is the linkage between the solitary, alone-ness of journeying-- with all that it teaches you as you are left just with your own thoughts and aspirations amidst a world that is clearly so much bigger than you normally understand it to be when in the midst of your most familiar of social surroundings--and the solitary, contemplative aloneness that music can also bring on. Here, I think, the character in the song is doubling his own contemplativeness by both literally journeying on the Mississippi and doing so while attuned to the strange indrift of "moster ballads" that he is somehow picking up via his 'wire albatross' as they drift in. "They" being these monster ballads, this "mesa 'noise'", these radio waves coming in from miles and miles away after having been translated from what initial meaning they had as human voice and music into digital form as "ones and zeroes". But as we sort of learn and see, the amazing thing about them, like about the contemplation that journeying generally inspires, is the way they are translated back from "ones and zeroes" into meaning and poignancy (if that is, one can get that wire albatross working) once some distant listener travelling along can hear them again as more than "ones and zeroes" and here in them "sighing" and "smiling" just a little bit. And then to synch things Josh combines the two references he has been making to the ways in which we can be prompted to contemplate in the final version of the image of the "stations of the cross" which sounds now like a play on words, as if the lst time he mentions it the point is that these ballads that can be picked up on the 'wire albatross' are like different little radio "stations" on the cross of that makeshift antenna and not just similar to the contemplations about Christ's journey through the stations of the cross that the song's narrator was initially contemplating at the prompting of his own journey. The song is beautiful. It takes my breath away. Thanks josh ritter.
Great story! Give it a read. And yet another amazing song by Ritter.. Best new talant to come along since Dylan! Keep up the magic.