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Joanna Newsom – Inflammatory Writ Lyrics 17 years ago
lol, occam's razor is great and all, and i suppose my tone in my previous comment was a bit too caustic - my apologies. but having heard much of joanna's music, i sincerely doubt any of her lines are meaningless.

also...i'm providing my immediate reaction to the song :-p over-analyzing i am not. i really think the song is about a relationship.

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Rilo Kiley – The Angels Hung Around Lyrics 18 years ago
well, it's definitely got a country side to it. i wouldn't say it was "influenced" by the watson twins album. she was the singer! people don't influence themselves! :-p

you can tell even from the times of "it's a hit" that they were moving toward a country sound. it's just how they developed as artists. and if you listen to the elected, you can tell blake sennet's creative direction had a lot of impact on how they produced this album.

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Joanna Newsom – Inflammatory Writ Lyrics 18 years ago
inflammatory writ is written language that can inflame. it incites "a light be lit" in the sense that it causes a commotion.
this song is about a relationship. she's addressing a love interest.

their relationship is suddenly spent. "waltz through your empty bed"? what else could that reference but being alone?

She spent all night writing her inflammatory writ - there's nothing about writer's block. their ~relationship~ was a bedraggled ghost of a sonnet.
it's a metaphor. jeez.

the last verse is an insult to him, because he ran away. everyone knows the great american novels were full of characters like holden caulfield and gatsby - they were losers that were thrown in the gutter and beaten up and no one cared about. but at least they didn't run away from their problems, like her loser boyfriend - that's what made those characters great american heroes.

it's very subtle, yes, but so is most of her stuff.

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