Oh comely
I will be with you when you lose your breath
Chasing the only
Meaningful memory you thought you had left
With some pretty bright and bubbly
Terrible scene that was doing her thing on your chest
But oh comely
It isn't as pretty as you'd like to guess
In your memory you're
Drunk on your awe to me
It doesn't mean anything at all

Oh comely
All of your friends are all letting you blow
Bristling and ugly
Bursting with fruits falling out from the holes
Of some pretty bright and bubbly
Friend you could need to say comforting things in your ear

But oh comely
There isn't such one friend that you could find
Here standing next to me only my enemy
I'll crush him with everything i own
Say what you want to say hang for your hollow ways
Moving your mouth to pull out all your miracle for me

Your father made fetuses with flesh licking ladies
While you and your mother were asleep in the trailer park
Thunderous sparks from the dark of the stadiums
The music and medicine you needed for comforting
So make all your fat fleshy fingers to moving
And pluck all your silly strings and bend all your notes for me
Soft silly music is meaningful magical
The movements were beautiful all in your ovaries
All of them milking with green fleshy flowers
While powerful pistons were sugary sweet machines
Smelling of semen all under the garden was all you were needing
When you still believed in me
Say what you want to say and hang for your hollow ways
Moving your mouth to pull out all your miracle for me

I know they buried her body with others
Her sister and mother and 500 families
And will she remember me 50 years later
I wished i could save her in some sort of time machine
Know all your enemies
We know who our enemies are
Know all your enemies
We know who our enemies are

Goldaline my dear
We will fold and freeze together
Far away from here
There is sun and spring and green forever
But now we move to feel
For ourselves inside some strangers stomach
Place your body here
Let your skin begin to blend itself with mine



Lyrics submitted by PLANES, edited by MK217

Track duration: 08:18

"Oh Comely" as written by Jeff Mangum

Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

Lyrics powered by LyricFind


Oh Comely song meanings
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  • -6
    General Comment:guys i know this is gonna sound crazy but here me out alright? This album is about my friend, he is the king of carrot flowers, he is the two-headed boy. im not crazy trust me. Jeff Mangum built a time machine and went back in time and made fetuses with Anne Frank. That fetus is my friend Matthew McDonald. I know this because he told me.
    Flagged thomyolkeon January 24, 2013   Link
  • +4
    General Comment:There seems to be multiple story lines throughout the album. Two clear ones are A.) Anne Frank and B.) reincarnated conjoined twins. These two stories very well might merge. It's hard to say. I'm figuring all this out as I write it.

    As I piece the story together I find that the songs aren't in chronological order. If we change the order of some of the songs, a through line begins to present itself. So, this is me trying to understand the story of the conjoined twins and what, if anything that has to do with Anne Frank.

    1.)King of Carrot Flowers Part 2. The time before. Limbo. Purgatory. The rhythym here and the instrumentation create a feeling of being stuck in time. The lyrics are spiritual. "I love you Jesus Christ." Floating suspnended in a mother's womb.

    2. Oh Comely
    "But now we move to feel
    For ourselves inside some strangers stomach
    Place your body here
    Let your skin begin to blend itself with mine"

    "Inside some strangers stomach" could be how someone reincarnated as a fetus could look at their present situation. The "let your skin begin to blend itself with mine" line could refer to growing together in the womb as conjoined twins.


    3.) The King of Carrot Flowers part 3:
    "Up and over
    We go through the wave and undertow
    I will float until I learn how to swim
    Inside my mother in a garbage bin
    Until I find myself again, again"

    The birth. Being birthed. The music here is frenetic and charging. The imagery in the lyrics as clear as any on the album. "Until I find myself again" referring to being reincarnated. The next two verses the baby (ies) getting older. The following three lines, one from each verse, takes us through the first few phases of life:
    "I will float until I learn how to swim
    I will spit until I learn how to speak
    I will shout until they know what I mean."
    There is also something in the third verse about a "synthetic flying machine." I have no idea what this means. It's only of note because of another line in Oh Comely: "I wish I could save her in some sort of time machine." Are these thoughts related? I don't know.

    4.) The King of Carrot Flowers Part 1:
    "When you were young you were the king of carrot flowers." This song also has some of the most straightforward lyrics on the album.

    It's about two young people who shared a (shitty) childhood (twins? brother and sister?) and how they dealt with it (imagination, solace in each other, etc.)
    "And your mom would stick a fork right into daddy's shoulder
    And dad would throw the garbage all across the floor
    As we would lay and learn what each other's bodies were for

    And this is the room
    One afternoon I knew I could love you
    And from above you how I sank into your soul
    Into that secret place where no one dares to go"
    The two seemed to have shared a sexual relationship of some sort. (Also noteworthy but ambiguous is the referring to "your" mother, but when talking about the father, just saying "Dad".) It also could be that the mother and father in this song are talked about more in Oh Comely: "Your father made fetuses with flesh licking ladies, While you and your mother were asleep in the trailer park".

    5.) In the Aeroplane Over the Sea:
    One song on the album that potentially seems like a stand alone, but if you listen to the lyrics with the conjoined twins theme in mind, there are some interesting connections:
    "What a beautiful face I have found in this place; Let me hold it close and keep it here with me.
    And one day we will die and our ashes will fly. Love to be in the arms of all I'm keeping here with me."
    Just a selection of lyrics from the song. Didn't to want to post all of them. Particularly of note, expecially when trying to build the conjoined twins theme is the last line above "love to be in the arms of all I'm keeping here with me."

    6.) Two-Headed Boy: (the events in this song are out of chronology, much like the entire album)
    Upon first listening I assumed two-head boy to be symbolic for something else (someone consumed with sex, someone who's bi-polar, etc.) but I now see that it's possible the title is meant to be taken literally and the two-headed boy refers to a set of conjoined twins. In this light, I believe the second verse and the third verse are about the twins enjoying life and each other's company\falling in love:

    "Two headed boy
    Put on Sunday shoes
    And dance round the room to accordion keys
    With the needle that sings in your heart
    Catching signals that sound in the dark
    Catching signals that sound in the dark
    And in the dark we will take off our clothes...
    Two headed boy
    With pulleys and weights
    Creating a radio played just for two
    In the parlor with a moon across her face
    And through the music he sweetly displays
    Silver speakers that sparkle all day"

    I believe the chorus is about the twins having surgery to seperate them (likely against their will) and one of the twins dies during the procedure:

    "We will take off our clothes
    And they'll be placing fingers through the notches in your spine
    And when all is breaking
    Everything that you could keep inside
    Now your eyes ain't moving,now
    They just lay there in their climb"

    The last line of the third verse also support this: "Made for his lover who's floating and choking with her hands across her face."

    The first verse is a case of en media res. The song starts with the twin already dead and the boy being alone in his room, reaching out and trying to connect with her:

    "Two headed boy
    All floating in glass
    The sun it has passed
    Now it's blacker than black
    I can hear as you tap on your jar
    I am listening to hear where you are
    I am listening to hear where you are"

    The fourth verse is the boy saying goodbye to his sister/love:
    "Two headed boy
    There is no reason to grieve
    The world that you need is wrapped in gold silver sleeves
    Left beneath Christmas trees in the snow
    And I will take you and leave you alone
    Watching spirals of white softly flow
    Over your eyelids and all you did
    Will wait until the point when you let go"

    6.) The Fool: A funeral dirge.

    7.) Holland 1945:
    "The only girl I have ever loved...." and he then goes on to describe Anne Frank (but then they buried her alive with just her sister at her side and only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone)
    So if the narrator of this song is the same narrator from the first 5 songs, then it stands to reason that the only girl he ever loved is his twin and is also Anne Frank. So was Anne Frank reincarnated as his twin sister? Some lines that support this:

    In the Aeroplane Over the Sea: "Anna's ghost all around, Hear her voice as it's rolling and ringing through me."
    Oh Comely: I wish I could save her in some sort of time machine.
    Ghost: Ghost, ghost I know you live within me
    I feel you as you fly
    In thunder clouds above the city
    Into one that I love"
    "And she was born in a bottle rocket, 1929" (Anne Frank was born in 1929 and died in 1945, just a couple of months before the allied forces invaded the beaches at Normandy i.e. only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone.)

    (Also from Ghost) "With all that was left within me
    Until we tore in two
    Now wings and rings and there's so many
    Waiting here for you."

    Until we tore in two could refer to their seperation talked about in two-headed boy.)

    To be honest, this is just one possible theme in album with many themes. I haven't been able to really crack (yet) Oh Comely and Two Headed Boy part 2. I have a feeling that a lot of the answers to the mystery that is this album lie within those two songs.

    Any thought? Do you agree there is a conjoined twins theme? Reincarnation? Is it meant to be taken literally or just symbolic? Share what you think. This is the most complex, layered album I have ever listened to, and I love that no matter how many times I've heard it, I discover something new with each listen.
    Flagged R2kon June 28, 2012   Link
  • +4
    General Comment:Am I the only one who notices his AMAZING use of alliteration? I really dont know how he does it.
    Flag calculatinginfinityon June 26, 2012   Link
  • +1
    My Opinion:I think the first part of the song is a message to Hitler. Although, highly unlikely to be true, wasn't there a rumour about Hitler and his cousin pooping on his chest? And after having done some research about Hitler's parents, his mother was a house wife and lived the sort of life you could today call a "trailer park" kind of life. And his father was a philanderer, and the very impersonal term 'made fetuses' I think expresses the contempt Jeff holds for this man. I also think the very beginning of the song is about Jeff imagining killing Hitler, the man responsible for taking away Anne Frank, the girl he cares very much for, which is what the second part of the song is about.
    Flag tc1988on May 05, 2012   Link
  • 0
    General Comment:soft silly music is meaningful magical
    Flag twelvefoldchainon January 10, 2012   Link
  • -1
    General Comment:Well, if you read the diary of Anne Frank, she was very dirty. She was really sexual and confuzzled by her hormones so lines like 'the movements were beautiful all in your ovaries' and 'pluck all your silly strings and bend all your notes for me' is basically saying she's having a self inflicted orgasm. And "Your father made fetuses with flesh licking ladies" is saying that the Nazi's own them now and most of the women would do anything for just a piece of bread even if the S.S. were too ashamed to admit they had sex with what they believed to be filth.
    Flag sunshinekowon December 22, 2011   Link
  • 0
    General Comment:After reading most of the comments on here i definitely see where there are a lot of things going on, but i dont believe the entire song is dedicated to Anne Frank.
    Flag bethaboo89on November 14, 2011   Link
  • +1
    General Comment:This is a concept after all, and I've tried to put together a linear story from start to finish. However I always run into songs like "Holland 1945" and start to think that maybe the album is just a bunch of anecdotes regarding the time period of the Holocaust, and perhaps (heavy) references to Anne Frank. However the placements of instrumentals leave me to believe there is a linear story, regarding a "King of Carrot Flowers," a "Two Headed Boy," "Comely," etcetera.

    In this song, I feel it's the emotional low. Whereas "Ghost" is an acceptance of death, "Oh Comely" is the death itself. I couldn't tell you how I think the story goes, but it's clear that here, the character is grieving over his dead lover as a result of the Holocaust, (the presumable Anne Frank,) while under the flimsy protection of his abusive parents (the King of Carrot Flowers.) It's very haunting and sad, obviously, and I don't know what Goldaline has to do with anything. But the fact this precedes "Ghost" I feel is important.
    Flag Jezroon September 21, 2011   Link
  • 0
    General Comment:I actually find a very sexual theme press in the song, like a man who´s having an adventure with a young lady, plain sexual, nothing sentimental, his feelings are drafts of something he read in a book years ago (here´s the reference to Anne Frank) his true feelings, but he still finds sexually atractive the young lady, growing a light of passion
    Flag Albert007on July 10, 2011   Link
  • +2
    General Comment:Anne Frank and semen
    Flag TheOneJudgeon June 01, 2011   Link

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