Lyrics for RE: Stacks as interpreted by J.Diddy

RE: Stacks Lyrics
This my excavation and today is kumran
Everything that happens is from now on
This is pouring rain
This is paralyzed

I keep throwing it down two-hundred at a time
It's hard to find it when you knew it
When your money's gone
And you're drunk as hell

On your back with your racks as the stacks as your load
In the back and the racks and the stacks are your load
In the back with your racks and you're un-stacking your load

I've twisting to the sun I needed to replace
The fountain in the front yard is rusted out
All my love was down
In a frozen ground

There's a black crow sitting across from me; his wiry legs are crossed
And he's dangling my keys he even fakes a toss
Whatever could it be
That has brought me to this loss?

On your back with your racks as the stacks as your load
In the back and the racks and the stacks of your load
In the back with your racks and you're un-stacking your load

This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization
It's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away
Your love will be
Safe with me

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sifellt neytandi
10-09-2007

Rated 0 
Something about this part really gets me:

There's a black crow sitting across from me; his wiry legs are crossed
And he's dangling my keys he even fakes a toss
Whatever could it be
That has brought me to this loss?

Very lovely lyrics and imagery in this song.

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1 Reply
sean1058
11-18-2007

Rated 0 
amazing. song of the year for me.

i dont get the "today is kumran" line though. what the hell is kumran?

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johnxavier
11-23-2007

Rated 0 
it's actually Qumran, where the dead sea scrolls were found

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K33ZUR
12-03-2007

Rated +1 
Amazing song.

I love the self awareness in the lines "This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization."

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J.Diddy
12-12-2007

Rated 0 
It is kumran in the disc booklet, however, which is I got all these from. We'll see how it's listed when the album is re-released in February.

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KingFatass
12-13-2007

Rated 0 
One of my favorite songs this year.

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insomniac328
02-23-2008

Rated +2 
I keep throwing it down two-hundred at a time
It's hard to find it when you knew it
When your money's gone
And you're drunk as hell

all so true, with a cripplingly beautiful sense of reality behind the lyrics.
What i cant decide for myself is what i want it to mean when he sings the chorus- what's the load?

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freddyjh
02-25-2008

Rated +1 
Kumran is an alternate spelling for Qumran.

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Silver195
02-28-2008

Rated 0 
I think the chorus refers to the scene described in the song "blindsided" earlier in the album that he keeps replaying over in his head painfully.

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mikec
03-11-2008

Rated +1 
I interviewed Justin a few weeks back, and I made sure to ask him about this song (as it is my favorite off this album). He did not delve into specific lyric meanings; as they are deliberately (and appropriately) oblique. However, he did mention the last lyrics "this is not the sound of a new man/ or a crispy realization/ it's the sound of the unlocking and lift away" best described those months in the cabin. He said it was his liberation, and this song reflects it.

Who knows what many of his meanings refer to, the chorus certainly puzzles me. However, it is not hard to sense that this song represents his accomplished catharsis. "everything that happens is from now on ..." A beautiful, beautiful song.

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away we drift
04-02-2008

Rated 0 
such a beautiful song
i'm glad he found his 'unlocking and the lift away' ... out of that cabin

cannot wait to see, after such an amazing depiction of a lonely introspective time, what wonderful music bon iver can produce on his freedom.

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sidelinedseason
05-08-2008

Rated 0 
i think the line "this is the unlocking and the lift away" is from bonnie "prince" billy's album "the lift away"

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JeremyB1
05-10-2008

Rated 0 
"[I]n 'Stacks,' there's a mention of gambling chips, and also how that is a metaphor for how things stack up. The chorus is very repetitive, but there are different lyrics every line. It's just a billion ways to say that things build up and it's impossible to break them down sometimes. You're just underneath it all."

http://treblezine.com/features/143.html

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information travels
05-11-2008

Rated +1 
insight to the Kumran reference, from an interview with justin.
"It’s referring to the excavations where they found the Dead Sea Scrolls. When they found them it changed the whole course of Christianity, whether people wanted to know it or not. A lot of people chose to ignore it, a lot of people decided to run with it, and for many people it destroyed their faith, so I think I was just looking at it as a metaphor for whatever happens after that is new shit.”

http://www.drownedinsound.com/articles/3254968

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otoman14
06-03-2008

Rated 0 
Justin Vernon said, "this song is for anyone who's been at a poker table and sort of seen there soul. Good or bad"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geLRjqAo2cw&feature=related

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lakewater
06-14-2008

Rated 0 
the black crow seems similar to the poem "the raven" by edgar allen poe in which the poem describes the death of a loved one and a heavy loss to the subject

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YouKnowStuff
07-01-2008

Rated 0 
I read an interview where he kind of specified that the song isn't about WHAT the load is...it's about the load itself. The "Re:" in Re: Stacks means "Regarding"...therefore, the song isn't about what the stacks are...it's about the stacks themselves. how life tends to stack up...mediocrity tends to build once you are experiencing it and when you are living it.

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xerces
07-04-2008

Rated 0 
it's hard to be completely taken away by this song... it's like all the loss i've ever felt is summarized.

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lyriclover81
07-17-2008

Rated 0 
I saw an interview with Justin and he said this song is about sitting at a poker table and seeing your soul...i'll have to say though...I think that was an easy answer to a hard question about this song.

I like how he uses a poker table as a metaphor for life. Because to me that is what I think the song is about, living life, moving on, and growing as a person.

This my excavation and today is kumran
Everything that happens is from now on (SO powerful. Its the idea of digging deep inside yourself to understand why you are the way you are but then letting it be and moving on)
This is pouring rain
This is paralyzed ( and the rain is like a baptism into the future even though the thought of the future is hard and sometimes paralyzing)

I keep throwing it down two-hundred at a time
It's hard to find it when you knew it
When your money's gone
And you're drunk as hell (he's looking back on how he's lived his life just making bets too high to ever win and with reckless abandon)

The chorus I see as his internal exploration and unraveling of the emotional knots that are bringing him down. The words are intertwined and everchanging and he's just examining his own "stacks" that have been loading him down.

I've twisting to the sun I needed to replace
The fountain in the front yard is rusted out
All my love was down
In a frozen ground ( i think of this as the beginning of his metamorphosis. He's twisting towards the sun as a rebirth in order to thaw out old demons of the past in order to finally let them melt away. Maybe past loves and losses that he buried deep inside himself years ago)

There's a black crow sitting across from me; his wiry legs are crossed
And he's dangling my keys he even fakes a toss
Whatever could it be
That has brought me to this loss? (he also mentions a crow in Blindsided but in that song he is the crow...so maybe this is an alter-ego? I feel like he realizes that he is the one that has brought himself here. He is the crow )

This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization
It's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away
Your love will be
Safe with me ( i love this part because he's kind of making light of the deep introspective journey he's been on. He may not be a new man but he's no longer chained by his own emotions and internal demons. And now he (and the crow) can fly away and move on)

God this song and its imagery brings me to a standstill....I hope I'm able to have such a soul-searching experience one day.

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1 Reply
YouKnowStuff
07-29-2008

Rated +1 
good points, lyriclover 81...especially the last verse. i think what he's saying is that you can't really become "new"...you can only fix yourself..

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bollywoodtoile
08-26-2008

Rated 0 
This song is a perfect closer for his album. It leaves you on a very hopeful note, and the last verse sums it up beautifully.

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astmarco
09-10-2008

Rated 0 
I think lyriclover81 did a great job but I have an idea about this part:
"I keep throwing it down two-hundred at a time,
It's hard to find it when you knew it,
When your money's gone,
And you're drunk as hell".

The 1st line:
I think its about investing far too much in relationships that may never work out.

2nd line:
He knows what love can be like and wants it back but its tough to wade through all the crap at the start to get there.

The last 2 lines:
He's bet/invested too much as it is which has left him drained and as well as that he judgment is totally impaired as a result of previous misgivings (relationships).

I think thats it anyway...

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Hobbespawn
10-06-2008

Rated 0 
Is it not a reply to a previous discussion that we will never be party to?
Is the beauty of the lyrics not that they are deliberately nebulous and therefore open to multiple intrerpretations?
That said lyriclover's interpretation is good. A reviewer of heartbreak should understand the subject and speak, as Justin however obscure, from the heart.

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feelthemusic
10-08-2008

Rated 0 
this song is about having an abundance of things on your plate. Either he's really stressed out or wants a relationship or love to work but feel he's tied down to other things.

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grelch
10-10-2008

Rated 0 
Before playing the song in San Francisco, he did indeed state that this song was about a humbling he received at the poker table in 2003. He didn't say more than that, but you get the feeling he had a very, very bad day at the table.

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