| The National – Daughters of the SoHo Riots Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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---boy I am really tearing this one to bits and going on and on---- And the first sign that this song is sung to a lover but is meant to be irontic should hit the listener squarely on a first spin: You must have known I'd do this someday Break my arms around the one I love And be forgiven by the time my lover comes. Berninger clearly defines a separation between the one he lovers and his lover. One is someone he has an emotional attachment to, and the other is a sexually charged word. You can love anybody, a brother, sister or friend, but a lover is a whole different game. The narrator has either moved on or is caught cheating and is in a moment of reconcilliation. |
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| The National – Daughters of the SoHo Riots Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Futher clues to the general theme can be seen in most of the Narrators lines delivered to "the one he loves.... "How can anybody know How they got to be this way You must have known I'd do this someday" This is masterful line. The narrator confesses ignorance to the invetible slide from innocence to wearied, yet to know that "I'd do this someday" both shows the narrator and his lover were fully aware but chose blissful self-deception. later: I don't have any questions I don't think it's gonna rain You were right about the end It didn't make a difference. A great stanza outlining a boring an inevitable break-up. There are no questions left as everything has already been said -- in fact neither party has anything left to talk about at all. "I don't think it's going to rain" --- talking about the weather is not only perceived as boring, but is often seen as the most non-intimate material for a conversation....a topic better left for strangers...who the lovers have become. And as a bit of a stretch-- pathetic fallacy often appears in movies in which the weather mimics human emotion in various scenes...the most common is rain during an intensely depressive and emotional scene.....no rain means no emotion. At odds with the lyrics and tone of the narrative is the tender way in which the song is sung by Berninger. The loving vocals end up being an ironic play on the content of the song....mournful....but apparently not mourning the loss of his love, rather the loss of the pairs innocence and what should have or could have been. |
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| The National – Daughters of the SoHo Riots Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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The narrative of the song appears to revolve around the theme of things "not working out how it was planned". The main point of the song centering on a relationship that is at a predictable endpoint that the writer and and his lover had nonetheless vainly hoped to avoid in their youthful naivite. The image of Soho is artully used to display the theme. Soho in it's heyday was a spot for a cultural revolution that nutured burgeoning artists and ironically transformed an empty industrial sector into an artist's enclave. A side effect of artists moving into the area is the birth of cool.... and the enivitable movement of gentrification now seen in the older neighbourhoods of many worldclass cities. By creating something unique and "cool" and full of hope and ideas, the intial artists in Soho created a self-fulfilling prophesy in which human nature, especially in modern corporate America, cashes in on the unique, beautifu/cool/naive and ultimately destroys it. "things don't work out as they are planned, human nature always interferes." The sons and daughters of the Soho riot are who is left after the unique idea had been destroyed...literally the next generation inherting a perverted and commercialized image of the revolution. Those listless souls who don't realize sipping a Starbucks while shopping at a Bloomingdales is the antithesis of the original idea. To make a story short, the narrator's lover now listless and disillusioned is left to join the masses of refugees of an unfulfilled life. |
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| The Constantines – Shine A Light Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| too add: it's the ugliness and trials in life that shine a light on ourselves. | |
| The Constantines – Shine A Light Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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It's more of a collection of imagery and ideas outlining the trials, difficulty and beauty of the "human condition" (to coin an overused term), than a narrative story. A crime of passion, a cardiac arrest, are both spontaneous, emotionally intense moments that are life-altering. the very definition of "crisis". Throughout the tests and struggles and our interactions with other people also being beat down by life we are illuminated and educated to the beauty hidden behind the struggle. the soul of man. |
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| The Constantines – Insectivora Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I think people are looking too hard in the wrong spot on this song. focusing soley on the word "insectivorous" and not enough on how being insectivorous interplays with other imagery in this particular song and on the album as a whole. The error of affective fallacy is easy to fall prey to due to the emotional and subjective response of listening to a song. The speaking character in the song wishes to warn the "operators of chaos" that he has become insectivorous, that no "hunting dog will drag him out"... the character seems to be someone who either through oppression, or escape from oppression (the imagery of the hunting dogs being familiar in movies from the police/prison guards/authorities searching for someone) has embraced a level of survival that most rational people could not lower themselves to. The "earthworms and houseflies" becoming the mainstay of a man who is so determined to either remain hidden, or underground to continue in his fight against the "chaos agents, that he is learning to treat was once disgusting as a means of survival. the idea and repetitive refrain of learning to survive, the imagery of ingesting insects, and the general "fight the man" tone of the entire album lead one to believe that being insectivorous is a metephor for characters ultimate strength of will to resist. |
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