| Braids – Plath Heart Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| I'm pretty sure the line "and beating in like thin air" is actually "and eating men like thin air", which is a reference to the final line of Sylvia Plath's poem 'Lady Lazarus'. | |
| Pavement – Give It a Day Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Just have to say, I love this song, and it's probably the most well-constructed Pavement lyrics, up there with Shady Lane. Here are my thoughts: The first verse concerns the Salem Witch trials, and actually Increase was Cotton's father. This really makes the first few lines confusing. If you ignore the fact that Increase was insanely Puritan and believed in witches, he was a rad dude, because he protested that the witch-burners were burning innocent civilians, and tried to get them to cut it out; whereas his father Cotton was a bit more zealous. The "smallpox in the Sudan" parallels Cotton's surprisingly progressive support of the new-fangled smallpox inoculation, at a time when smallpox was spreading throughout Boston. The most annoying discrepancy in the lyrics as transcribed here completely alters the whole message. It should read: "But today the gods CAN'T make us quake" - the crux of the song is that man has less romantic notions, and everything is too real and un-magical nowadays... Times have changed, and we're far more scared of real things like terrorism, than evil spirits. That's not to say people aren't still evil, just a less exciting form of evil. The last verse is also confusing, but it rolls off the tongue really well, in typical Malkmus style. I think it's just going back to the real world with its petty squabbles; juxtaposed next to the historics of the first verse, it's supposed to seem banal. It tails off exasperatedly. |
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