| The Hold Steady – First Night Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I always thought this song was about that point at which the secular experience mutates into memory; the point at the dynamic between the party (Holly, Charlemagne etc.) and the aspiration become antithetical. Just like the 'moment' a memory doesn't bear any temporal significance once it has passed, so getting 'as high' as you got is a logical impossibility. What is in the past stays in the past and so to live a life chasing the feelings conjured by the fragmented sensual apparitions of memory is as futile as trying to 'feel' a concept - in the tactile sense - would be. |
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| Okkervil River – Singer Songwriter Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Hardly call it a film geeks film. Murnau is kinda like a keystone in the yuppie discussion circles. Not that he's not great, don't get me wrong. But it's abut vacuousness, The Last Laugh means nothing to these people. It's just something that other people don't watch. Y'know like how The Lives Of Others and There Will Be Blood can be hailed as genius. |
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| The Weakerthans – Left and Leaving Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I think to try and pin Left and Leaving o 'specific' emotions like the loss of a girlfriend is to limit its meaning severely. It's form is pretty distinct, the main thing I notice is the way he uses metaphor and imagery to anthropomorphize the city. '...through buildings gone missing like teeth.' To relate the various protrusions and gaps of a cityscape to the mouth is to imbue it with a sense of personality. These little moments show up throughout the Weakerthans songs - Virtute's plea; the notes taped to the heavy machines in My Favourite Chords; the transcendental imagery of the halo created by broken glass in Psalm For the Elks Lodge Last Call. As is evident in John's decision to state that the sidewalks are 'watching' the narrator - sidewalks cannot watch, they have no physical method of vision - the 'city' of the song is as much of a 'human' presence as all of the other possible characters implicated in the narrative (if there is one) The city is as much a vessel of transition and warmth as the body; subject to changes, both physical and emotional. As if without this understanding of the city there would be no anchor from which to function. The lack of existential understanding that life presents forces even the most scholarly and intellectual of people to find meaning where they can and I - personally - read in this song (and indeed many of his others) a confession of the part of it's author that understands the significance of 'home' and 'friendship' or at least the endeavouring spirit that dictates how a collection of man built architectures can foster so much warmth for every single one of us that has the ability to call such a place 'home'. |
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| The Weakerthans – Left and Leaving Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I think to try and pin Left and Leaving o 'specific' emotions like the loss of a girlfriend is to limit its meaning severely. It's form is pretty distinct, the main thing I notice is the way he uses metaphor and imagery to anthropomorphize the city. '...through buildings gone missing like teeth.' To relate the various protrusions and gaps of a cityscape to the mouth is to imbue it with a sense of personality. These little moments show up throughout the Weakerthans songs - Virtute's plea; the notes taped to the heavy machines in My Favourite Chords; the transcendental imagery of the halo created by broken glass in Psalm For the Elks Lodge Last Call. As is evident in John's decision to state that the sidewalks are 'watching' the narrator - sidewalks cannot watch, they have no physical method of vision - the 'city' of the song is as much of a 'human' presence as all of the other possible characters implicated in the narrative (if there is one) The city is as much a vessel of transition and warmth as the body; subject to changes, both physical and emotional. As if without this understanding of the city there would be no anchor from which to function. The lack of existential understanding that life presents forces even the most scholarly and intellectual of people to find meaning where they can and I - personally - read in this song (and indeed many of his others) a confession of the part of it's author that understands the significance of 'home' and 'friendship' or at least the endeavouring spirit that dictates how a collection of man built architectures can foster so much warmth for every single one of us that has the ability to call such a place 'home'. |
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| LCD Soundsystem – All My Friends Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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And if I'm sewn into submission I can still come home to this Listen to how nasal he sounds and then re-hear And if I'm TOURED into submission I could still come home to this. Made equally plausable by the fact that he refers to being 'on the road' shortly before. The song seems to me like the soliloquy - most probably an interior monologue on the dance floor - of a man tired of himself for feeling pressured to redefine. Everything tangible becomes absurd: life, drugs, people. Although he expresses no regret: 'I wouldn't trade one stupid decision for another five years of life' Something clicks, and he intones a litany that is at once a confession of his lonliness and at the same time a dismissal of it. His friends are where they have always been. Close to his heart. 'If I could see all my friends tonight.' |
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