Animals

(this is stream of consciousness sorry if it doesn't make sense ) I think this song is about isolation, and that being alone leaves you to your thoughts. She isn't prostituting herself literally, she feels regret towards the "avenues" that she has given her love away so easily on, or without really thinking about it. When we are alone we are left to our thoughts, and we can't help but think we could have done something a different way, or not given a part of ourselves with such ease. Because it often leads to heartbreak and loneliness. or "wake up half empty". This song is about heartbreak, about living and dealing with the pain of love

"He's my evil shadow dove My black Palamito Can't break him like a diamond skull" He's the evil part, the one that broke who she is, but she can't break him. She cherishes the pain I think, and the pain makes her who she is (makes us all who we are today). She can't just have him killed like the mob, nor would she, because we all have to live with the memories, whether they are good or bad. Killing him, or breaking him would not ease her pain.

Fragility plays a great part in this song as well, the reference to leaves, Autumn is the time of death and stillness. The innocence of animals and the comfort and solitude that they offer her to be alone with her thoughts and memories. animals aren't judgmental so she can live with who she is, and won't feel so misunderstood by them. I loved the crushed spirits simile "like Indians and butterflies"

"I sit and entertain the bizarro ghosts of my soul His name still lingers maybe lactates on my tongue Perhaps I'm just teething for a foreign fallen destiny Miserable but mine, I look like his mother" Okay, if you've been in a falling out with someone you loved deeply, you can completely relate to this part. She entertains the thought of them being back together. Part of him still lingers in her memories, his name is in her mouth and on her mind. she's craving her "fallen destiny", she wallows in misery and its all hers.

Well the wind blows, and life goes on, and that's the reason for the last line. So the moral is, deal with your heartache, its yours, and no one elses. Find time to be alone and miserable, tell everyone you're okay and go live with some animals and get out of shitty, judgmental society.

I saw an interview the other day with Sierra talking about how she felt really left out during a great deal of her childhood and that she befriended animals as she preferred them much more over people. Makes sense, since she sings the chorus.

brilliant brilliant words

My favourite as well. The willow ("Wild willow, windy winter, won't you blow through me ...") is also addressed in "Werewolf", interestingly ("Weeping willow, won't you wallow louder"), which suggests that the two go together - that'd make the 'he' at the beginning of the song the speaker's father, possibly, and the one towards the end (of whom she says she might resemble his mother, ergo if she is the mother, her lover is the father) one of the lovers she turns to that are just like him. Then in this song there's that sense of recognising that leaf-in-the-wind, here-and-there-and-nowhere kind of life she's leading (also through the death of the brother, who is also mentioned in "Werewolf") and after a long phase of loneliness and doomed affairs that she fled into 'desperate for love' possibly returning to what remains of the family. Or it could just be another beatnik fairy tale :)

This song is intensely sad to me. It reminds me of my childhood, when I spent a lot of time alone and depressed because everyone hated me or I thought that everyone hated me. "Nobody likes me everybody hates me guess I'll go eat worms" was something that I constantly sang to myself in this state, and the chorus directly reminds me of it.

The song in general, I think, is about wallowing in one's own misery. It seems like a detailed introspective study of a terrible mood. Maybe it's about mourning, or maybe the mourning is just the trigger for a deep depression.

Some things that stand out to me: "Home is on the highway living on soft bread and solace" I read somewhere that their mother moved one or both of the girls around constantly, from state to state, during her/their childhood. Thus, home is on the highway. Having lived this myself as a child, living on soft bread and solace is, well, what you do.

"I guess I'm waiting for nightfall or a solar eclipse And to wake up half empty Only to be filled again with mourning" This is about just wanting to be asleep, so that you don't have to face things. You don't want to wake up in the morning. You don't want to face the day. You just want to be able to sleep forever.

"Like an empty restaurant filled with perfume and balloons I sit and entertain the bizarro ghosts of my soul" To make a point of saying that you feel like an empty restaurant is interesting. Clearly it's all about putting on a show and pretending to be normal and happy and all of this business, but restaurant specifically? Interesting. And the bizarro ghosts of my soul, again, is all about introspective wallowing. She's passively letting her emotions and memories and depression take her over.

& also, I see a lot of references to childhood in here.

To me, this song is about her mourning her brother passing when she was a child, (watched some interviews about how hard it was for sierra dealing with her brother passing) and how she felt alone and deserted to deal with the pain, she feels lonely, deserted, she must of felt like her mother wasn't there to support her properly during her mourning hence she sees herself as an orphan child: I never really ever thought it had to do with prostitution but now that I've looked at it properly, I do think she is reminiscing and almost comparing how lonely and empty she feels during the act of "selling her love" to the passing of her brother: Now that I'm alone I feel the lonely brokenness Of all the wicked avenues I've ever sold my love on All these moments of meekness and trembling subsided I'm the outright abandon of this orphan child

in this paragraph she's painting a picture about her thoughts that ran through her head as an innocent and fragile child, it's about her breaking out of this depression but she refers to it as a "he" as a form of metaphor. How she'd view the pain so immense as a child would describe it "don't know if baby dinosaurs Maybe could live through it": He's my evil shadow dove My black Palamito - (yes this does mean swan or bird in spanish but its "palomito) Can't break him like a diamond skull I can't seem to do so Can't just rob him out like the Mob used to do so Like memories of porno and tea stains And tobacco O it's a mini disastro Bigger than the ice age don't know if baby dinosaurs Maybe could live through it, like Indians and butterflies What's crushed is my spirit, Oh I fear it is too fragile Like fall leaves burn like paper

when they sing this part they have a child like voice, seems as if she feel like she's she feels better off to go and live with animals to live a much free and simpler life: I always knew I would spend a lot of time alone No one would understand me Maybe I should go and live amongst the animals Spend all my time amongst the animals And on the tracks I would go they lead to the sea To be amongst the animals

this paragraph I feel as if here she almost looking at it from a 3rd persons point of view and looking at herself as a child, how she looks so much like her mother "I look like his mother" (as in she looks like her own mother her brothers mother also) and "Slow motion I cling to my child desperate for love" she's giving herself a hug.

Oh I'm just a fall leaf something simple and shy like that That's how my heart lies down beside the sidewalk Like an empty restaurant filled with perfume and balloons I sit and entertain the bizarre guests of my soul His name still lingers maybe lactates on my tongue Perhaps I'm just teethin' for a foreign fallen destiny Miserable but mine, I look like his mother Or Sophia Loren in an old fashioned movie Slow motion I cling to my child desperate for love One day soon my brother died, made me remember all the Subordinate feelings I cast aside Maybe I had lied when I said I was ok Just getting along like a little song that stops to sing and say "Wild willow, windy winter won't you blow through me My whole eternity"

The song is ended with her blowing the memories away: "Wild willow, windy winter won't you blow through me My whole eternity"

this is my favorite song of the new album. i dont know the meanings though.

they're so good at creating moods. the a lot of the album focuses on movement and finding small fufillment through nostalgia and family... but its hard to see if there is any solid message in there.

i dont really care about the definition of this song, I just love to sing it in the car every now and then.

sounds like bianca