The theme of this song is pretty straightforward as a message of loving. This has been my favorite of Postal Service's songs for some time and I mainly liked it due to its frankness and bald sentimentality.
One particular point which catches my eye now that I read the lyrics again is that this song really matches the great poetry of the English Renaissance.
The lyrics start out with a load of awesome metaphysical conceits (is Ben Gibbard our modern Donne?), personifying himself in the roles of such absurd yet poignant objects such as the platform shoes and the phonograph. This reminded me of Donne's Renaissance masterpiece of a poem "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning" in which he compares himself and his wife to the legs of a compass.
Then there is a shift where the speaker begins to speak more of dreams and the future, which matches perfectly the pastorals of seventeenth and eighteenth century England. Just as the pastoral poems idealized life out in the country, Gibbard romanticizes the notion of taking his lover "far from the cynics in this town" to a place where they can feel "the sun... heat the ground under [...their] bare feet".
In addition to the rural setting, the song also expresses itself in an idyllic, flighty fashion. Of course, I must also mention the other quality which can be matched up with Renaissance poetry, the fact that it is a wooing call from a lover.
This song alone stands as great proof that Ben Gibbard is indeed a poet with his songwriting, crafting a charming, yet modern, pastoral for this generation to enjoy.
The theme of this song is pretty straightforward as a message of loving. This has been my favorite of Postal Service's songs for some time and I mainly liked it due to its frankness and bald sentimentality.
One particular point which catches my eye now that I read the lyrics again is that this song really matches the great poetry of the English Renaissance.
The lyrics start out with a load of awesome metaphysical conceits (is Ben Gibbard our modern Donne?), personifying himself in the roles of such absurd yet poignant objects such as the platform shoes and the phonograph. This reminded me of Donne's Renaissance masterpiece of a poem "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning" in which he compares himself and his wife to the legs of a compass.
Then there is a shift where the speaker begins to speak more of dreams and the future, which matches perfectly the pastorals of seventeenth and eighteenth century England. Just as the pastoral poems idealized life out in the country, Gibbard romanticizes the notion of taking his lover "far from the cynics in this town" to a place where they can feel "the sun... heat the ground under [...their] bare feet".
In addition to the rural setting, the song also expresses itself in an idyllic, flighty fashion. Of course, I must also mention the other quality which can be matched up with Renaissance poetry, the fact that it is a wooing call from a lover.
This song alone stands as great proof that Ben Gibbard is indeed a poet with his songwriting, crafting a charming, yet modern, pastoral for this generation to enjoy.