submissions
| The Mountain Goats – Source Decay Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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John Darnielle's comments on this song:
"Well, there are two stories in the song: the present-day one, in which a person relates how he makes a weekly trip to Austin from somewhere two hours west, which he does specifically to retrieve mail from a P.O. box. He takes a long route there so he can drive through a place where he used to live - “our old neighborhood” - presumably the “our” is him & whoever he’s talking to, though that’s neither explicit nor certain. Then he drives home, brews some coffee, “walks the floors” (this is a reference to an old Ernest Tubb tune; Tubb was from north Texas) to sort out his thoughts, and, adding the one he just brought back from Austin, examines an ever-larger pile of postcards on the table, trying to put together the story he hopes they’re trying to tell. That this story, the backstory, the ones the postcards don’t tell, is obscure and uncertain — that’s kind of the point of the song. The backstory blurs and won’t cohere, the evidence mounts and is available but it just won’t gel into a satisfying narrative, which is a longstanding theme of mine, this way you sometimes really deeply and desperately need to get a clean narrative line through some story in your life, and when life won’t give you that, you finally have to smile about it, but it’s a pretty bitter smile, not the kind you smile when you’re feeling good about something.
The second story in the song is the one that refuses to come clear; the above is just a parsing-out of the extant detail in the song, but to fill in the outlines of the second story would be very uncool of me because the song is about how those outlines are like blurry shapes in fading light that you eventually have to just accept as they are. " |
submissions
| The New Pornographers – Stacked Crooked Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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Except that the first line is "I counted on / my private Altamont" in reference to the infamous Altamont concert of 1969 featuring the Rolling Stones and others, at which four people were killed. |
submissions
| The Mountain Goats – Source Decay Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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I think this explanation misses a few important points from the song.
The narrator obviously wants to know where the subject is "I search.. for signs of any pattern at all" but the subject also doesn't know where the narrator is, and might actually be continuously trying to re-establish contact.
The subject does not have the narrator's actual address, only a post office box "2 hours east". The subject also wants some kind of information or acknowledgment from the narrator: "I'll tell you what I know.. I don't think it's gonna do you any good."
Rather than a romantic separation, the sense I always got from this song was that these people needed to start new lives apart for some reason, possibly with new identities. It's definitely a sore point for them - the feeling I get is of some kind of betrayal, but I'm not convinced it's as simple as "she left the poor guy and now sends him postcards from around the world". |
submissions
| Okkervil River – The Latest Toughs Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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No.
While I think it would be overly generous to even describe Rand's theories and worldview as a "philosophy" per se, even if you accept it as such, that doesn't mean this song has any connection with them. A lot of belief systems, of varying standards of completeness and quality, contain individualist or anti-authoritarian themes.
Whether or not Rand would agree with the lyrics of this song is kind of irrelevant. The point I was trying to make was that to a man with only a hammer, everying looks like a nail, and to fans of half-baked pop pseudophilosophy, everything looks like John Galt. |
submissions
| The Mountain Goats – Romans 10:9 Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Very true. For me, this song is as sick and despairing as if they'd been singing about heroin instead of God keeping them going. But for a believer, it could sound quite sincere. |
submissions
| The Mountain Goats – Your Belgian Things Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Hard to say, because it's idiotmatic in a few different ways. It's a common way to refer to 0.1 of a gram of drugs ie a point of speed, or it can refer to a hypodermic needle. Playing a point is also a common expression in tennis, and probably other sports too. Within the context, a drug reference seems likely, but it still doesn't quite fit. |
submissions
| The Mountain Goats – Romans 10:9 Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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It stuns me that anyone could interpret this as a happy song. The narrator is putting on the bravest place possible, but they are hanging by a very dubious thread (their faith in God).
A kind and loving God *would't* let their small ship run aground. Nonetheless, their ship is going to run aground. Ergo....... |
submissions
| The Mountain Goats – Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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I get a very "No Country For Old Men" feeling from this song. It's desolate and quite apocalyptic. The narrator has committed a horrendous crime (kidnapping, torture and murder) and has gotten away with it. What's more, all he supposedly needs to do for grace and redemption in the afterlife is to ask forgiveness for it. He will never face any sort of justice. This fits in with the overall tone of the album, which, despite what some of the more shallow interpretations of these songs would have you believe, is on balance extremely critical of faith and religion. I compare this to the characters in Psalms 40:2, the second track on the album, who are committing a violent crime spree even as they are evoking the name of God, confident that he will absolve them once they confess. |
submissions
| Ariel Pink – Round and Round Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Haha I love that you posted this. If you think this is what he's singing about, you're even more cracked than Ariel. :D |
submissions
| Okkervil River – The Latest Toughs Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Well you've certainly taken the "pause and add your own intentions" line to heart, because there is absolutely no way this song has any connection to that ludicrous, poorly written little fantasy. |
submissions
| Drive-By Truckers – Bob Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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"The Bobs I know are not gay."
Not that you know of. Which is precisely what the song is saying. |
submissions
| Drive-By Truckers – Bob Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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This is it exactly. I think the question of whether Bob is gay or not is actually kind of central to the song. It's obvious that Cooley is dropping multiple hints to that effect, and it comes down to whether you take him at his word when he says "Bob ain't light in the loafers". It's still ambiguous, but we're supposed to take the hint. The fact that he drops this line twice shows its weight.
Frankly, from what I know of DBTs, I'm inclined to think Bob is gay. DBTs tend to subvert cliches about the south with their characters, and a gay good old boy is a much more interesting subject for a song than a plain ol' good old boy. |
submissions
| The Hold Steady – Magazines Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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I think the point of the song is that the girl DOESN'T have problems; she thinks she does. There's a heavy dose of sarcasm from the narrator here. |
submissions
| John Vanderslice – White Dove Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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White Dove is about how when horrible things happen to us, it can cause us to lose our humanity and abandon all possibility of forgiveness. And within the context of the album, it is of course about how once we do that, we can do horrible things like fly planes into buildings, or invade other countries without good cause. |
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