Lyrics for All Fires as interpreted by soupcans

All Fires Lyrics
You have a father
There is another
You have a sister
There are no brothers.

You have good friends
You have a lover
When friendships end
You will still love her
But it’s Teresa they love the best.

There was a flood
A world of water
The mason’s wife
Swam for her daughter.

One thousand people
Did what they could.
They found the steeple
And tore out the wood.

Five hundred pieces
Means five hundred float.
One thousand people means
Five hundred don’t.
And it’s Teresa they love the best.

I’ve said it before,
And I’ll say it again.
All fires have to burn alive.
All fires have to burn alive.

From near his heart,
He took a rib.
All fires have to burn alive to live.
From near his heart,
He took a rib.
All fires have to burn alive to live.
So it’s Teresa that I love the best.

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proposals
08-09-2006

Rated 0 
"You have good friends
You have a lover
When friendships end
You will still love her"

So, so beautiful. I cannot wait for this album.

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sethbrown
08-20-2006

Rated 0 
"Five hundred pieces
Means five hundred float.
One thousand people means
Five hundred don’t"

i love this verse. this is a gorgeous song. i guess it's about a shipwreck.

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mswer
09-16-2006

Rated 0 
++ sethbrown - such a brilliant line.

That's a great verse, but the second to last line of the song is hands down the best - "All fires have to burn alive to live."

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Colin B.
09-17-2006

Rated 0 
"Five hundred pieces
Means five hundred float.
One thousand people means
Five hundred don’t.
And it’s Teresa they love the best."

Definitely the best verse.

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peechlove
09-24-2006

Rated 0 
probably one of the best songs on the album

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cakeandmilk
10-03-2006

Rated 0 
beautiful haunting beautiful

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cakeandmilk
10-03-2006

Rated 0 
Oh, I guess if we're analyzing...

lots of religious images... flood, steeple, a man's rib...

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youandme718
10-21-2006

Rated 0 
"Krug navigating the story of half a town drowning for the love of a beauty named Teresa, five chords washing like waves from an acoustic guitar." --www.pitchforkmedia.com

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Thief-
10-26-2006

Rated 0 
I think it's "But it's Teresa that you love the best."

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universal remonster
11-23-2006

Rated +1 
beautiful song.

as far as the meaning goes,
the singer is in a relationship with this wonderful girl (Teresa) that everyone adores. There is a disaster in the relationship (symbolized by the flood), and he knows that even if he tears apart everything sacred to him (church steeple), its not certain that things will work out (about a 50/50 chance).

but hes saying that he must give it everything he has no matter what.
all fires must burn alive to live

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MaxpowerSupreme
12-02-2006

Rated 0 
I don't think this is a love song at all.

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Sunset Rubdown
12-03-2006

Rated 0 
i think this is probably the best song on the album

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valrus
12-07-2006

Rated 0 
Krug pulls a Destroyer in stealing from himself and re-using the line "all fires have to burn alive to live," almost verbatim; it originally appeared in "They Took a Vote and Said No" on "Shut Up I Am Dreaming." And he slyly precedes it with "I've said it before and I'll say it again," so clearly he knows what he's up to. I wonder if his working with Dan Bejar has anything to do with these shenanigans. ;)

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Katastrofen
12-12-2006

Rated 0 
I think the main line "All Fires have to burn alive to live" could be relating to the struggle to live in a life threatening situation, which would make sense considering the sinking of the ship.

Another possible meaning of this line: It could be talk of 'burning alive' as a form of human suffering like saying that every person must suffer before they die- pointing out a consiquence of life.

Maybe its just me being dumb, but those are just two things I pondered.

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AllisonHasIt
02-12-2007

Rated 0 
you have a lover, when friendships end, you will still lover her, but it's Teresa that YOU love the best.
is actually the first line. not THEY.
At the end of the song he refers to himself loving Teresa so I think he's talking about himself at this point.

Now I could be going out on a limb but...
He has a lover, but they're just friends, and when it ends they'll still be okish. but he loves Teresa the most. So he takes this chance (flood) and maybe he was getting married to this other lover. hints the steeple. And the mother swimming for her daughter after being left. If they were getting married that means half of the people get ditched. or this new attempt at Teresa is risky.

All fires have to burn alive to live.

That one's kind of hard. beautiful line. I think it means everything just has to run it's course.

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soupcans
03-22-2007

Rated 0 
I'm still not certain what this means, but I suppose some songs are more about feeling than a clear-cut message. I'm sure the religious imagery is there for a reason, and I wonder if the 'all fires' line means that same that it does in "They Took A Vote and Said No". Of course, that song is about as easy to decipher as this one, but they do feel different to me.

As for the first verse, I definitely still hear 'they' more than 'that you', because there's no clear 't' sound. However, I have the version that was released before the album, so perhaps it's different.

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TheAbsolutionHowl
04-23-2007

Rated 0 
Such a disastrously beautiful song. Definitely one of the greater "campfire" songs of our time.

The last line in the first verse seems like it could allude to lack a of brotherhood in the world they are imagining.

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TheAbsolutionHowl
06-05-2007

Rated 0 
Also, does anyone think they had Mother Theresa in mind were choosing a name?

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Chase Elliot
06-15-2007

Rated 0 
There is a clear religious undertone going on in this song. I think Terressa is the name of the god that this community all loves so much, as it is reitterated over again. At first you get the idea that because this disaster is destroying these people, it is a message of religious faith being worthless, because your God won't stop such a terrible thing. But, if they never worshipped Teressa, they would not have built the steeple, and without the steeple, all would have parished in the flood instead of half. In the end though, it is the same message from "They took a vote." The natural cycle of life, that some things have to die so that others can live on. Humanity being compared to the life of a fire. A fire literally burns itself alive until it has used up all its fuel, and then ceases to exist, but if it does not burn it will never exist in the first place. "All fires have to burn alive to live."

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astorianstigmata
08-09-2007

Rated 0 
This Song...Yeah

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Scribbler17
05-30-2008

Rated 0 
"All fires have to burn alive to live"

I think that line is generally referring to passionate people. The passion could be for anything really. Love, honor, knowledge, whatever you can imagine. But we must suffer for the things we care most about, otherwise we'd never really live. So essentially, all fires have to burn alive to live.
I'd comment on the religious messages, but well I'm not of the religious sort, so I'll leave that to someone else.

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Dvorak
06-05-2008

Rated 0 
For me I think the key is "From near his heart, He took a rib." Others have commented on the biblical allusions so I won't mention any of that. What I believe this is referring to is the sacrifice of love. To love someone fully leaves you totally vulnerable to them, you give them the power to hurt you. By taking the rib from near his heart, he is leaving himself without defense. I think in essence, that is what the song is about. He is in love with Teresa, but he realizes that the only way a relationship would work out is to open himself up to her. He realizes the problem, knowing that showing his true 'nature' which may be destructive (...the storm). It ends off with the realization that all fires have to burn alive to live, that no love can exist if he holds out.

I'd be interested in hearing any comments, there are certainly things that I am confused about.

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enjoyyourroots
08-12-2008

Rated 0 
i agree with dvorak on alot.
this song is about sacrifice.
this song is about religion.
this song is about the sacrifice you make when you place faith your religion and how 'vulnerable' you are when you do so.

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thirsty_thursday
09-13-2008

Rated 0 
Don't you just think of a British Columbia lake surrounded by mountains and forests when you hear the reverb on that guitar?

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uburoi
12-03-2008

Rated 0 
I don't see why the biblical references, each of which worth parsing individually, have to add up to some explicitly religious theme or message. They each have their own reasons for being in the song, but I see no connecting pattern. Divine imagery is just a smart, easy way for Krug to add emotional weight and epic feel to the mythical narrative he is shaping (as if that guitar wasn't enough.)

Though it yet remains turbid in my mind, I feel pretty sure that this song is, somewhere below all those layers of wailing prettiness, using gender to highlight the essential tragedy of humankind. Notice first that both the narrator and the addressed are male. Notice also that every mention of Theresa, the unattainable, unidentifiable maiden at the center of this cryptic ballad, is prompted by some catastrophe (heartbreak, mass drowning, partial dismemberment/perpetual immolation.) And the Mason's wife swims "for" her daughter, not "to" her, implying that the struggling mother fails to make it to the girl it in time. Given the chivalry of those times when towns had steeples, Masons, and no plans or tools to mollify a flood, the five hundred wood floats would have been given chiefly to women and their children. Every woman in this tale (excluding your sister, who, to you, isn't effectively a woman at all, because, well, she's your sister, although the syntax of the lines does almost seem to blame her for your lack of brothers...) has someone suffering for her sake. This isn't a sexist imprecation of the female, though. Women are doing the suffering too. And, because the purity and beauty of woman renders life itself both possible and worthwhile, people will die for her willingly, and still love her even after. So, though Eve will make him Fall, Adam gladly yanks out his rib. Man must endure incompleteness, death, heartche, lust, loneliness, just to keep his other half around. He never quite seems to get the girl, though. In fact, he's been burning for her for millennia. Love hurts, ya know?



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