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Trees will make a forest
Trees will make a bow
These are all the harder
Words you have to know
If everyone's a structure
Where their own savior sits
I'm a little red house
But no one's living in it
Cars are little blood cells
We are oxygen
City is the airways
Suburbs appendages
She was feeling lonely
Tired of the hive
Rented out a family
And he bought a bride
Bought a bride
Bought a bride
Bought a bride
Little cities' names on very lonely maps
They tied her up and laid her on the train tracks
Where are all the seedlings
We grew for violins?
Down in Jersey lumber
Still in prosthetic limbs
Should've been a soldier
I could've fought and died
There's no revolution
So I bought a bride
Bought a bride
Bought a bride
Bought a bride
Coming down the aisle while the horns play Taps
They tied her up and laid her on the train tracks
If somehow I was new and everything was unsaid
I'd go and buy a hammer, never sing again
Sleeping on a stairway
Dreamt I had a boat
Sailed it out the harbor
Shot it full of holes
Folded up my prayer book
I couldn't see the lines
Drowning in a kelp bed
I bought a bride.
Trees will make a bow
These are all the harder
Words you have to know
If everyone's a structure
Where their own savior sits
I'm a little red house
But no one's living in it
Cars are little blood cells
We are oxygen
City is the airways
Suburbs appendages
She was feeling lonely
Tired of the hive
Rented out a family
And he bought a bride
Bought a bride
Bought a bride
Bought a bride
Little cities' names on very lonely maps
They tied her up and laid her on the train tracks
Where are all the seedlings
We grew for violins?
Down in Jersey lumber
Still in prosthetic limbs
Should've been a soldier
I could've fought and died
There's no revolution
So I bought a bride
Bought a bride
Bought a bride
Bought a bride
Coming down the aisle while the horns play Taps
They tied her up and laid her on the train tracks
If somehow I was new and everything was unsaid
I'd go and buy a hammer, never sing again
Sleeping on a stairway
Dreamt I had a boat
Sailed it out the harbor
Shot it full of holes
Folded up my prayer book
I couldn't see the lines
Drowning in a kelp bed
I bought a bride.
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However, I always thought this was a song about Jesse's feelings towards monogamy.
I believe this is the first time he played the song live:
youtube.com/…
There is clearly a girl in the song.
In this version,
"She threw a fit,
Now she's got a brick house
There's no children in it"
...
"Rented out a family
She/he bought a bride"
"Coming down the aisle while the horns play taps
Tied her up and laid her on the train tracks"
Almost like a damsel in distress. Seems to me like he's commenting on this idea society projects about how you have to find your soulmate and get married. "He bought a bride" meaning she married him because of wealth and because of the future he could have provided her. She might as well have died, or "Come down the aisle while the horns played taps/" Or, she might as well be tied to train tracks.
Seems to me like he's saying if you get married to this one person, if you believe in this idea that spending your one life with this one person, you might as well die. I feel like he had a real bad relationship and lost the girl to a guy and it made him feel this way.
But, the other explanation is really good. I think monogamy has a place in this song. A bad place.
Derek Webb- Wedding Dress youtube.com/…
"Little cities names are burned on the maps"
I was convinced at first that there was a 'v' sound, like 'over and on the maps', but I'm pretty sure now that it's just the way he's saying 'burned', in a sort of faux-southern drawl. Man, why can't they just give us a lyric book...
Trees will make a forest
Trees will make a bow
These are all the harder
Words you have to know
If everyone's a structure
Where their own savior sits
I'm a little red house
But no one's living in it
--Trees makes both good and bad things.
--He has no savior, no faith.
Cars are little blood cells
We are oxygen
City is the airways
Suburbs appendages
She was feeling lonely
Tired of the hive
Rented out a family
And he bought a bride
Bought a bride
Bought a bride
Bought a bride
--The city is our lifeblood. She wanted something more than this. She rented out a family and bought a bride. The bride is the Church, perhaps, a rough Biblical reference to John saying Christ is the bride of the Church, or something like that. Thus this person went to Church and made new friends (renting them out by tithing, essentially - in a way, this is like paying for a group of supportive friends).
Little cities' names on very lonely maps
They tied her up and laid her on the train tracks
--Little cities could be where all the Churches are? The Church members she "rented out" have not accepted her and laid her on the train tracks?
Where are all the seedlings
We grew for violins?
Down in Jersey lumber
Still in prosthetic limbs
Should've been a soldier
I could've fought and died
There's no revolution
So I bought a bride
Bought a bride
Bought a bride
Bought a bride
--All the good things we did for beauty and happiness (violins) have been misused for other tragic things (prosthetic limbs). He could have given his life meaning by fighting in a war and dieing for a noble cause, but there is no revolution, no cause, that is worth fighting for. Thus, he rented out a family and bought a bride (tithed and thus had new church friends)
Coming down the aisle while the horns play Taps
They tied her up and laid her on the train tracks
--The marriage between himself and the church - his new way of life - is like, for better or worse, a death of his old self. Thats why the horns are playing taps, which are what play at a funeral (especially military funerals). Again, the church has killed the person (tied her up...).
If somehow I was new and everything was unsaid
I'd go and buy a hammer, never sing again
--Not sure..a hammer to build something new (a new self?), never be this lonely person he has become?
Sleeping on a stairway
Dreamt I had a boat
Sailed it out the harbor
Shot it full of holes
Folded up my prayer book
I couldn't see the lines
Drowning in a kelp bed
I bought a bride.
--Sleeping on a stairway - He is stuck between stages of life - belief and non-belief.
--The rest (which is only in the Daisy Sessions version on Youtube), is confusing. I think he could be saying that he is drowning himself why holding on to a prayer book as a way of dieing and going to Heaven? Or perhaps he is drowning, and since he "couldn't see the lines," its more a rejection of faith...but I don't know what buying a bride would be..a new worship without a prayer book? More mystical in nature? Fuck, this song might be even be about religion at all.
One Love, AuBz
I believe this is quite literal, and kind of scary. I think Jesse is saying that if he could restart, he would have never made a band, and been a part of Brand New. As for the hammer, he sings in the Daisy Sessions version about sailing a boat out, shooting it full of holes, folding up his prayer book, and drowning in a kelp bed. I think he is saying he would buy the hammer so he could build the boat, and row it out and basically kill himself. Overall, I kind of think he's saying the only reason he has to live is to continue making music with Brand New, and if he wasn't in Brand New, he would have killed himself by now.
I'm probably wayyyy off, but then again, it's just an interpretation, let me know what you guys think of it.