| Band of Horses – The Funeral Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I love how open to interpretation this is. And I love seeing all of you offer to the chorus the specific way in which you relate to this. To some, it sounds like a hymn; to me, it sounds like a dirge. My interpretation: he has realized that a relationship (of some kind) has been undermined by hostility and perverse motives, and he's looking at each little breakdown as preempting a final break-up. | |
| Sufjan Stevens – Casimir Pulaski Day Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Sufjan talked a bit in an interview about why his songs waver between offering Christian messages and humanist woes. Sufjan: "On an aesthetic level, faith and art are a dangerous match. Today, they can quickly lead to devotional artifice or didactic crap." "It’s not so much that faith influences us as it lives in us. In every circumstance (giving a speech or tying my shoes), I am living and moving and being. This absolves me from ever making the embarrassing effort to gratify God (and the church) by imposing religious content on anything I do." "As for your question of faith (which I think has nothing to do with Dan’s statement): on a certain level you cannot separate art from faith, because it is our persuasions which drive us to create." "Whether you are religious about politics or fashion (or saving the whales), you are still motivated by your convictions to participate in art. But I don’t think that means faith should necessarily prescribe art. In fact, this is a dangerous assumption, which often leads to music that is pedagogical, or a novel that is moralistic. As for our intentions, well, that’s all bunk. We may intend our music for one person or another, but who’s to say? I can’t decide who reads my novel or buys my record. Look what that did for Jonathon Franzen, who snubbed Oprah for liking his book. It’s an arrogant, imperialist motive to try to determine who will receive you and who won’t." http://www.adequacy.net/2006/09/interview-with-sufjan-stevens/ |
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| The Dodos – Fables Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I'm thinking: We spoke today to a jury You could see the doubt in their eyes our words are trained to the living there was nothing left to change there minds remember when you were my accomplice now we forget why we started this, ah-a-a-a-awww i don't want to go in the fire, i just want to stay in my home, i don't want to hear all the liars, i just want to be with my own, i don't want to go in the fire, i just want to stay in my home. hey we took today what we buried you just hope to pass, thats why you hide it i held your weight, now it holds me a cowards way to be inviolate you will protest what you ask your blessing till you accept them into your nest ah aww i don't want to go in the fire, i just want to stay in my home, i don't want to hear all the liars, i just want to be with my own, i don't want to go in the fire, i just want to stay in my home. hey we call them in, we call them out we call them in, we call them out we're coming, we're coming home we're coming, we're coming home |
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| Wolf Parade – Kissing The Beehive Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| There's a lot of meaning behind this from lots of different arcs, but one thing I glean is a woman being involved with a very dangerous love, wanting escape, trying to force herself into a marriage she's unhappy with, eventually breaking down and trying to start an affair or liberate herself, and being spurned by the man she went to. | |
| Beirut – Elephant Gun Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I've always thought it's about memory. In the music video, a moustachioed Condon sings in a room papered with old photographs and memorabilia, and he and his dancers pirouette with a host of ever-changing young women. Towards the end, when he is wading along the coast, he has lost his moustache - become a younger man, you could say - and the decoration of the room slowly fills in the image of the coast behind him. I see this as developing memories, memories that surround you and entrap you. Not to mention the fact that elephants are rumoured to have terrific memories, amirite? |
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| Neutral Milk Hotel – Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2 Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I'm reflecting on it and it looks like this song - in the context of the Anne Frank analogy - is about Peter van Pels and about the duality of adolescence ("two-headed" boy) between melancholy and anger. About how tragic it was that Peter's anger kept him from realizing how imminent his death was, and how he missed the chance to have a brief-lived romance with Anne. "She is all you could need." I also think am beginning to wonder if it's "bless the police" instead of "blister, please". After all, the Gestapo's arrest of the Franks led Anne Frank to Bergen-Belsen where she died, and in some religions death makes you angelic: you might grow "wings in your spine". I think it also might be talking about a personal experience of Mangum's. He's using the story of Peter to persuade some angry sibling or close friend not to let his outrage get in the way of much more important things like family and love. |
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| The Mountain Goats – Lion's Teeth Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| "Long sharp tooth" = a knife, maybe? Or he could be choking him? | |
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