| Joanna Newsom – This Side of the Blue Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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This song strikes me as much less fantastical in meaning than it is in words... I think it's about that void you fall into when you're no longer a kid but you don't feel like an adult, and how the narrator (most probably meant to actually be Joanna) and her different friends are dealing with it. It doesn't have a message as much as paints a picture of that midway point in life, and feeling confined by the emotions it comes with. The narrator herself seems to be feeling depressed, without direction ("I do not know my own way to the sea"), uninspired ("I find myself knowing the things that I knew"), and negative about her place in life (the sea coming to her representing just letting things happen, along with the allusion to things happening in waves). With her reference to embarcadero I picture her on a train in San Francisco late at night (haha), over thinking to the point of feeling paralyzed. Svetlana doesn't sound too positive either. Jamie on the other hand seems to have something planned, goals in life (marching on, nowhere near through). Gabriel seems to be in a similar place as the narrator but embraces his existentialism (wears it as a hat) and uses it as his direction for life, takes comfort in it. The fourth stanza sort of paints of picture of how all of these characters spend their time, marveling at words (possibly stoned? or maybe they just really like words), watching birds, sort of existential activities as it is. It just helps to tie together an image of what each character has is dealing with and how they approach it differently. The last stanza also helps to complete the picture of where things will go, while still leaving it open enough to whatever may come (yet not in a terribly hopeful way). |
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| Beck – Pressure Zone Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I think this song might have more to do with abortions/bad sexual encounters or something of that nature (if you have to take it down the sexual interpretation road). Basically she's a girl who acts tough but deep down is much more vulnerable. She's avoiding sex for a specific reason in her past ("the country side is overgrown," "Cherry gardens feel like ice/ Hazard lights from her past"). "Lizards in the pressure zone" makes me think maybe she's fighting with her instincts as well, since it gives me an image of squirming over an important decision. Underneath it all there might be a traumatic reason ("hookers hug illegal dads" "fertile tears"). But the narrator still loves her, despite her coldness, and deep down seems to understand. |
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| Beck – Peaches & Cream Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I'm fairly certain this is a silly love song for his girlfriend of the time. Beck used to call himself/be called "the garbage man" because of his ability to scrap together junk and make great music with it when he was younger. Peaches 'n Cream being his girlfriend. He's also mentioned in interviews that the last line was just something ridiculous he put in on a whim, so that leads me to believe it's not such an intensely sexual song (in his intentions at least) |
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| Belle & Sebastian – Slow Graffiti Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I always saw the 'portrait in the back room' as being a mirror. He's staring at himself and being unable to recognize himself anymore after all the abuse and stress he's putting himself through taking care of this girl who seems to have serious issues (alcohol? drugs?). Yet he can't pull himself away, no matter what his friends advise him to do, he's still falling for her and with her into her own pit of despair. | |
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