| The Postal Service – Brand New Colony Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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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. |
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| Ted Leo and the Pharmacists – Counting Down The Hours Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Although there are obviously infinite ways to interpret a song, I've interpreted a couple of the lines in terms of war protest considering that it is a running theme of many Ted Leo lyrics. "Innocence, it don't come easy - in a sense it never will Accidents mean no one's guilty, ignorance means someone's killed" The first two lines can generally mean the tone of diplomacy and international relations during a tragedy. Many people will try to simplify problems by trying to designate one party as innocent while the other party is the complete cause. However as indicated by the first line, few will be competely innocent; most nations involved in a conflict will each have had a contribution to creating said conflict. As it relates to the current state of the US, Americans might want to pin all the blame on Saddam and Osama as reasoning for the tragedies that have occured in the War on Terror, however the United States has its own share of guilt. "Were concerned more with a car than with the fact the light had changed" This line describes those who care more about the means and method, rather than the plain facts about whether or not it can happen; he car represents a way to achieve a goal, while the (stop)light represents its plausibility. That could be a reference to the government's readiness to enter Iraq: while the Bush Administration crows about how it will instate democracy and bring freedon to a former dictatorship, it seems that there was little forethought about how the American version of democracy could ever be integrated into Iraqi culture. The car could also simply represent materialism of most Americans, whereas the light represents their goals and direction. "But after listening all morning, as I drove down 95 To a story of detainees who were barely kept alive" As some people have already mentioned, this refers to prisoners of the War on Terror who have been reportedly tortured in prison camps. "I could deal with trying to process pigeons acting like they're doves But not with interference from the power lines above" The pigeons are those Americans who feels as though they are saviors (doves), although they have done nothing to help. The narrator also (sarcastically?) takes the stance of a typical American citizen in our society; he states that he can stand the hypocrisy of pigeons acting like doves, however can't stand "interference with the power lines." I think the line about power lines could be a reference to the blackouts in New York. I remember hearing reports that many Iraqis were either outraged or though it bitterly funny when they heard that New Yorkers were going ballistic with the power outage while most of the infrastructure of Iraq had been down for almost a year. "And oh, precautions, yes precaution But if you're playing with a gun, you could kill someone And in the dark it's hard to know a friend" This seems to be about the typical nuclear age "diplomacy talk," in other words, the policy of brinksmanship. We try to make treaties like SALT I and SALT II, but it still leaves the possibilities of war. And as said simply in the song, with guns (and torpedos and anthrax and ballistic missiles) involved, violence is never gone no matter the precautions, no matter if it's just "playing." The darkness is the ambiguity of behind-your-back treaties and secret partnerships. With all these underground dealings, it's hard to know who allies are. "As I went on Wondering if I've got a soul and Counting down the hours 'til it goes" The chorus seems to be about how it feels to live during this War on Terror. Similar to the Cold War, it's all about paranoia and living on edge. His wondering about a soul is connected to wondering about what will happen if he dies. This leads him to lie in wait, counting the hours until death finally hits, whether it be a suicide bomber or a hijacking; the fear caused by the war makes the concepts of terrorism and death inextricable from one another. That's pretty much all that I could decipher myself. I'm really curious about what the whole Mr. Mellor thing could be about- it seems to be either a personal, or very obscure cultural reference. |
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