i admittedly need a lot of help/suggestions on this one.

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the buffalo had given up on the world
and apollo, apollo is kissing all the valley girls
we climbed up the cross (?) on the mountain on new year's eve
it was just God, the blizzard, the dreamweaver and me

my god, i miss the way we used to be
so here's a photograph for you to hold
it's my picture right before i got old
it's a picture of a buffalo
that we rode (?) into extinction
that was the crime we committed in the night

apollo, i heard your sister is equated with the moon
i think your sister is just another Runaround Sue
i say where have you been, where have you been, Erato?
where have you been, where have you been, Erato?

because it's been a long time since we sat around the willow tree fire
where Anna played guitar and the rest of us fell in love
that was back before she changed her name
did he ever find out where to her side was fame?

like the days before anna changed her name
well here's a photograph for you to hold
it's my picture right before i got old
it's a picture of a buffalo
that we rode into extinction
that was the crime you committed in the night
that was the crime you committed in the night
so here's a photograph for you to hold
it's my picture right before i got old
it's a picture of a prize (?)

you hunter, you hunter, oh you hunter

Anna, Anna, Anna, Anna, oh, why'd you change your name?



i'm pretty sure about most of that. Runaround Sue is the name a song from the 60s - i'm not sure why it's there but i'm pretty sure that's right and he definitely doesn't say "fool." Erato is one of the Greek muses, and she is generally shown carrying an instrument that Apollo invented, so that makes sense. The last major change I made was "where Anna played guitar and the rest of us fell in love" instead of "we're on the flaming tower and the rest of us headed home" which I'm positive about. And then there were some pronoun changes. The only lyrics i'm not sure about are "we climbed up THE CROSS," but that seems kind of right, "that we RODE into extinction" which could be roll like you had it, but mostly "did he ever find out where to her side was fame?" which i'm positive is wrong but I have no idea what it is.

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I feel like "Anna" is a reference to something I just don't get. But it doesn't matter, I love it anyway.

The other themes, growing old, the moon (artemis), etc etc are recurring... such a great albuM!1!

I think it sounds more like "crime you committed in the name" as well

this might relate to the Anna Oh! business? ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_O

I'm definitely hearing "crime we committed in the NIGHT"

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we climbed up the cross (?) on the mountain on new year's eve
it was just God, the blizzard, the dreamweaver and me

my god, i miss the way we used to be
so here's a photograph for you to hold
it's my picture right before i got old
it's a picture of a buffalo
that we rode into extinction
that was the crime we committed in the night


At the recent Vancouver (30/6/09) show Spencer explained some of these lyrics in an interlude.

They come from an incident years earlier with two of his friends, Hadji (formerly of Wolf Parade) and Steve Snard (?).

One night in Montreal they had been smoking weed and wandering, when they came across a huge landmark cross. The three of them decided to climb it (god, the blizzard, the dreamweaver & me), setting off alarms in the process (the "crime"). I'm pretty sure he said this happened on a Christmas eve although the song references new years'.

This song moves me.

The beginning I can't say much about, but the Greek mythology and Anna O. I can:
Apollo was the god of, among many things, music. He was associated with the sun.
His twin sister Artemis, on the other hand, was "equated with the moon". Artemis was, also among many things, the goddess of virginity [Runaround Sue] and the hunt [buffalo/extinction?].
Erato, as said before, was one of the muses, specifically love poetry.
Cassandra was a human given the gift of prophecy by Apollo because he admired her beauty. She rejected him, though, so he placed a curse on her where no one would listen to her prophecies [Will we ever find our way into Cassandra’s gaze again?]
And also as referenced before, the Anna O. is the pseudonym of Bertha Pappenheim [Anna, Anna, Anna, Oh! Why’d you change your name], a patient of Josef Breuer (A colleague of Freud). Her treatment is commonly seen as the beginning of psychoanalysis.

I'm pretty sure that the term "runaround sue" is equated with being a "floozy" if you will.

Official lyrics...

The buffalo have given up on the world.
And Apollo? Apollo is kissing all the valley girls.
We climbed up the cross on the mountain on New Year's Eve:
It was just god, the blizzard, the dream-weaver and me.

My god I miss the way we used to be.
Here's a photograph for you to hold.
It's my picture right before I got old.
It's a picture of a buffalo that we rode into extinction.
That was the crime we committed in the night...

Apollo, I heard your sister is equated with the moon,
but I think your sister is just another run-around Sue.
And where have you been, Erato?
Because it's been a long time since we sat around the willow tree fire,
where Anna played guitar and the rest of us fell in love.
That was back before she changed her name.
Will we ever find our way into Cassandra's gaze again?

Like the days before Anna changed her name?
Here's a photograph for you to hold...
It's a picture of the prize, you hunter...

The whole Bertha Pappenheim/Anna O. thing doesn't fit. This song, in fact, this entire album is full of themes about getting older and settling down, and this Anna O. thing has nothing to do with that. Spencer is far more prone to writing metaphors about his personal life than he is to making obscure historical references. The lines about Anna and the repeated "Anna, Anna, Anna, Oh! Why'd you change your name?" to me seem to be a clear reference to Up on Your Leopard, Upon the End of Your Feral Days. In that song, he expresses unhappiness/regret that this woman (friend? ex-lover?) has enslaved herself to settling down/married life. This song, full of nostalgia, talks about the times when Anna would play guitar and ends with the "why'd you change your name?", (meaning, why did you get married/settle down). But this borrowed thought from Up on Your Leopard has more sadness in this song (there was more frustration/anger in the other) as he is using that event as a metaphor for a larger happening: he is not merely talking about losing "Anna" to marriage but how him and (i'm assuming) his friends are losing their youth and missing those times in the past. You can even see how that metaphor comes to be in these lines:

"because it's been a long time since we sat around the willow tree fire
where Anna played guitar and the rest of us fell in love
that was back before she changed her name"

If any, I think this line sums it all up: "my god, i wish the way we used to be"

While I give credit to those of you who have shed some light on the mythological references, I think mostly he is using them almost as pseudonyms for his friends.

Taktak's mention of the Montreal Cross makes perfect sense. Being a Montrealer as well as Spencer Krug, I got the reference immediately.

"Anna Oh!" is probably a reference to Bertha Pappenheim, an important client of Sigmund Freud's and a major case study in hysteria, who was referred to in Freud's writing under the pseudonym "Anna O."