| Morrissey – Spring-Heeled Jim Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
The film the song samples is "We are the Lambeth Boys"a 1950s documentary about the young men (and women) who hang out at a certain youth club in london (it is *not* about the last men to be hung in the UK). The film is a deliberately sympathetic account of a certain demographic who were often looked on, and feared, as delinquents in their time. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=232669605535093695 Morrissey, however, has chosen the parts of the dialogue which represent that side of their personality which the film is trying to soften - i.e. the aggressive gang culture. He also emphasises the repressed homoerotic aspects of their relationships. |
|
| Rilo Kiley – Love and War (11/11/46) Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
Regarding the date... 11th November was the end of world war I as someone mentioned, hence in america it is celebrated as veterans' day (not just for world war I). 1946 would have been the second one after world war II, which ended in July 1945. The relevance of this to the song is pretty clear. Why 1946 then? It would seem that the date must be relevant to the character in the song, or something private. The only historical event I could find through google from 11/11/46 (I tried 1846 and 1746, too) was a speech given by president truman (a democrat), on the occasion of the republicans gaining a majority in congress - the senate and the house of representatives (nb this is hard for an english listener to grasp because the UK prime minister always comes from the majority party and isn't elected independently). Truman says: "I should be less than candid, however, if I omitted to state that the present situation threatens serious difficulties[...]I do not claim for myself and my associates greater devotion to the welfare of our Nation than I ascribe to others of another party. We take the same oath of office. We have at one time or another been equally willing to offer our lives in the defense of our country." Perhaps the date is a reference to the fact that America is a divided country, and the leadership is not unified either, so, in some sense, it is in a state of 'civil war' (politics is war by other means, to paraphrase clausewitz). Overall, the song seems to be an exploration on the theme "all is fair in love and war", in the context of a society where people aren't really in agreement about which wars are justified. Compare the moral consensus behind WWII as opposed to Vietnam and Iraq. But while there is a tradition of disillusioned Vietnam veterans, WWII veterans are generally expected to have more pride and less ambivalence in their historical role. Hence the disturbing nature of the grandpa character in this song. |
|
| Rilo Kiley – Portions for Foxes Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
I came on here to find what the title of the song meant, and was fascinated to find it's a psalm reference. One of the first things that struck me listening to "More Adventurous" was the in-your-faceness of the religious themes. One of the main lyrical motifs of the album seems to be loss of faith as some kind of general cultural malaise, specifically as it leads to a failure to face up to mortality, the fact that death is *really the end*... different songs suggest that this might be hypocritical, or perhaps just a forgivable denial in the face of a truth that's unbearable? e.g. in "It's a Hit", after the lines about capital punishment, there's the line "it's only a switch, a syringe/exempt from eternal sin/but you still wear a cross and you think you're going to get in". The song is an an attack on supposedly religious political leaders. "The Absence of God" - "I'm not my body, or how I choose to destroy it", touches on a similar theme about whether there is life after death. And then of course the final song "It just is" - "this loss isn't good enough for sorrow or inspiration[...]afraid of this life/that is just is". (I read elsewhere that this was about the death of elliot smith). So I think Portions for Foxes is another way of looking at the same theme, of coming to terms with mortality in a world without religious reassurances. It's similar to the line from John Donne (famous religious poet): "Thy beauty shall no more be found,/Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound/My echoing song; then worms shall try/That long preserv'd virginity,", i.e. it's a kind of sexual carpe diem thing, dressed up in religious overtones. But if you look at the psalm, the speaker is saying "*they* shall all be portions for foxes". Whereas the speaker himself feels safe because he believes in (the true) God. And his belief takes a sublimated sexual turn... "my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips./If I have remembered thee upon my bed". If you accept the argument that "More Adventurous" is, among other things, trying to argue that people should accept their mortality, without consolation of God, then I think the fact that Jenny sings "We'll all be portions for foxes", could mean one of two things - if we take "We" in the exclusive sense, she is referring just to the group she belongs to - i.e. atheists or agnostics, people who have forsaken the real god. If she means it in the inclusive sense, i.e. everyone, she is implying that there is no God, so everybody is going to end up the same way. Of course, the rest of the song is very straightforward, and I think you can also interpret "portions for foxes" in the metaphorical sense of "prey to sexual predators"/other people's sexual appetites (man is a wolf to man - the idea that there is no real altrusim and everyone is out for their own interests, or using each other). But I think the religious overtones of the album as a whole give this a different resonance. I've heard people talk about rilo kiley's albums as being conceptual, and I think this is the key to "More Adventurous". Then again, the same themes crop up on the execution of all things too, so maybe it's just a preoccupation of theirs. |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.