My theory on this song is that this is Isaac's take on humanity from Jesus's perspective. Now, from a lot of his other music, it's pretty clear that Isaac is an atheist with some agnostic values (see Bukowski, Ocean Breathes Salty, and TSAP to name a few). He has also created a song from the perspective of God before (Dark Center of the Universe) so having one from the eyes of Christianity's main man is something he would do. Now for some analysis.
So "a wild pack of family dogs," the metaphor:
Dogs of course were taken from the wild (willingly) and domesticated, or civilized, by man. They became docile and peaceful companions, yet when these civilized animals are thrown out into the wild once more (i.e. natural disaster), they become more savage than the wolves they were before. They do not simply kill what they need to survive, but anything they want. This is representative of human kind - as civilized as we sometimes are, when we enter a "mob mentality," we become the most evil beings ever to walk the Earth.
With that out of the way, I'd like to talk to you about Jesus Christ (I'm going to call him J from now on). So I don't think the song is exactly 100% coherent to his life (I have no idea what his sister is supposed to represent here, maybe innocence? Pandora?) but there's a few major things that line up. First off, his father. He scared the dogs off in the beginning by shooting his gun up in the air, (a nod I suppose to God in the old testament, or perhaps some point in J's life) but later when the daughter was killed and J's mother was "cryin' blood dust," he was fired from his job (Isaac tends to believe that if God is all-powerful, he must be an asshole or just bad at his job). J then proceeds to go wait out by the mud lake for the dogs to take him away (crucify him - mob mentality) and then proceeds to watch as the dogs float up into the glowing sky and receive their reward.
So basically, this song is a tie-in between Isaac's religious fun-poking and the ideas he later expressed in We Were Dead that humanity was better off (or at least just better) in the cave.
My theory on this song is that this is Isaac's take on humanity from Jesus's perspective. Now, from a lot of his other music, it's pretty clear that Isaac is an atheist with some agnostic values (see Bukowski, Ocean Breathes Salty, and TSAP to name a few). He has also created a song from the perspective of God before (Dark Center of the Universe) so having one from the eyes of Christianity's main man is something he would do. Now for some analysis.
So "a wild pack of family dogs," the metaphor: Dogs of course were taken from the wild (willingly) and domesticated, or civilized, by man. They became docile and peaceful companions, yet when these civilized animals are thrown out into the wild once more (i.e. natural disaster), they become more savage than the wolves they were before. They do not simply kill what they need to survive, but anything they want. This is representative of human kind - as civilized as we sometimes are, when we enter a "mob mentality," we become the most evil beings ever to walk the Earth.
With that out of the way, I'd like to talk to you about Jesus Christ (I'm going to call him J from now on). So I don't think the song is exactly 100% coherent to his life (I have no idea what his sister is supposed to represent here, maybe innocence? Pandora?) but there's a few major things that line up. First off, his father. He scared the dogs off in the beginning by shooting his gun up in the air, (a nod I suppose to God in the old testament, or perhaps some point in J's life) but later when the daughter was killed and J's mother was "cryin' blood dust," he was fired from his job (Isaac tends to believe that if God is all-powerful, he must be an asshole or just bad at his job). J then proceeds to go wait out by the mud lake for the dogs to take him away (crucify him - mob mentality) and then proceeds to watch as the dogs float up into the glowing sky and receive their reward.
So basically, this song is a tie-in between Isaac's religious fun-poking and the ideas he later expressed in We Were Dead that humanity was better off (or at least just better) in the cave.