| The New Pornographers – The Electric Version Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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Newman thinks a lot about his work. He's very self-conscious about how he executes an almost apathetic, before-and-after, wildly free-association songwriting technique, and about the very crucial role his audience plays in what's (in theory) a work of art that stands on its own ("The card you're dealt by the crowd goes wild" - significant, yet seemingly written from a mood of detached caprice) A car-accident, or a crazy mechanical machine fueled and powered by electrical blood which comes suddenly crashing into your life, strikes me as suitable for the ethos he's going for, and also as a suitable characterization of the band itself. It's a phenomenally over-powered, well-produced album by a super-group from Vancouver that got huge at a time when Americans were reacting to the artificial excesses of the late 90s by fixating either on ostentatiously "Indie" groups like Death Cab for Cutie (who ultimately insisted that they never claimed to be "indie" in the first place) or relapsing into gritty Garage-revivalism (starting with the Strokes and leading to the early Black Keys and White Stripes). His message is that you sort of half-consciously assign your own significance to the words based on whatever it is you need to get out of the songs, maybe something that you're missing in your life ("make believe you are an only child; here are the clothes, please put them on") and he and the band just channel that shit straight at you for all they're worth. That's their job. You bought the album and you're responsible for the consequences, which is empowering, and yet you'll only be able to enjoy it "just as long as it sounds lost, streaming out of the magnets" :) More importantly: every time they sing "Still To Come" it calls to mind "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" for me. What can you say? It's just totally perfect. |
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| Elliott Smith – Half Right Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Yeah I'm pretty sure it's "doctor yourself" as opposed to "talk to." You all ever have a girlfriend/boyfriend who doctors his/her own pictures (and sometimes, when you're in them, your image gets a sweet little touch-up as well)? "Well you shouldn't doctor yourself, well I pictured somebody else - Someone that looks like what I look like" The first couple verses go toward a theme, something like the difference between the perceived essence of a thing and the reality that we grasp for. "You shouldn't talk to yourself," doesn't seem to make any sense in context. Doesn't bother me that songmeanings gets a lot of stuff wrong - but it does kinda bother me that no one EVER fixes it. Didn't no this was a Heatmiser holdover, gonna go check that shit out! |
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| NOFX – The Decline Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Yeah punkey, seriously, hahaha! But actually it's called "auto-erotic asphyxiation" only when someone does it to get sexy, otherwise it's just called suffocation or asphyxiation... I know, right? Who does that? Remember the guy who played Raiden in the first Mortal Combat movie, and Bill in Kill Bill, yeah? He did that. His name was Christopher Lambert, you may want to look it up, if you have some spare time! Anywho. "A dime" refers to a dime-bag (yes, of weed), a "twenty-year vacation" would almost certainly refer to a prison sentence (who the hell actually goes vacationing in Michigan, besides ICP?). I think it took real moxy for that guy back in 2003 to convince himself that the lyrics were actually suggesting that "Jerry" actually managed to induce asphyxiation by smoking too much weed - I mean, all those studies about how that can't actually happen!... 'sok, he was probably high when he wrote it. This stanza almost certainly suggests that Jerry killed himself in despair and humiliation over having been raped in a federal penitentiary, on conviction for a petty narcotics charge. And yes, it is very funny that this story arc comes in at 4:20, if that is true. The disposition of this kind of protest is not Republican or Democratic - members of both parties have sat home nights - 'don't think/ drink your wine,' moralizing their own alcohol-use and dependance on pharmaceuticals, while at the same time feigning horror at the less-socially-acceptable methods that all those poorer and darker-skinned people have of getting high. Doesn't it kind of piss you off? Some thirty-something professional, sitting home, high as hell on vicadin, nursing the ulcer he got dealing with his sh1tty boss and his sh|tty life, thinking how great he is for having waited til he was in his mid-to-late twenties to get addicted to drugs that his mom and dad would never be able to yell at him about, rather than just experimenting when he was younger, when he was just as frustrated, but only saw his spite reflected in his parents and in the other kids who seemed to be naturally happy and well-adjusted (who were also high as hell at the time, but were unreproachable because they were on the football team or speech-and-debate or whatever)... Sorry, getting carried away! The point is, the lyricist here is not advocating that we elect more democrats to the Senate or House or Presidency or judgeships. Republicans and Democrats are both scum. Just because Pat Kennedy got thrown out of the catholic church does not mean you and he are both totally punk-rock. Democrats tend to go for more "socially responsible" policy, but the fact is that we, the American polity, republicans and democrats and others, have our heads way up our asses. We act like our system of government is great because we read into it that we have the power to change it, but we absolutely refuse to actually get up and change anything. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has been co-opting and adapting it to work better than we have since the days of Alexis de Toqueville's long-ass boat-ride. And they're trying to tell us, "dude ur doing it wrong." Marijuana has been considered (by the federal government, and we LET THEM KEEP SAYING SO) more socially destructive than cocaine since the creation of the federal narcotics schedule, and yet you can't make crack out of marijuana (that I'm aware of)! We can't even get the AMA to rally a change in a back-asswards drug schedule without taking less than 40 years to do it. We think that our state governments are a joke, that states'-rights advocates are just angry because of desegregation, and that the only way anyone knows to challenge the federal government's policy is to wait until the next presidential election and then turn around and vote for the other guy. And the sad thing is, we are generally not far off in these assumptions. Our bald ignorance of our political process (of everything, really), combined with our refusal to overcome our own moral inertia, is going to do us in, liberal and conservative alike. We assume we are safe just as soon as we own property, even when our sophisticated system of mortgages breaks down and leads to the collapse of our whole economy, and we absolutely refuse to stick our necks out because we are too heavilly invested in this house of cards - or, if we are renting, because we are unwilling to give up on the pipe-dream. "I'd like to introduce you to our host/ He's got his, and I've got mine/ Meet the decline." It's not about "the Government," or the Republicans or Unions or the "jew-run media" or any particular institution - what makes it punk rock is that it makes us take responsibility for what we have built with these tools and institutions. If you don't like what the schools teach your kids, don't just blame the federal government (that's what reactionaries do), go out and do something about it - or at least supplement the schooling by actually talking to your kids about it. If you think abortion is wrong, don't get one (or, if you are a man, then just stfu); if you think executing poor, black and retarded people is necessary as a deterrent to criminals, that's fine, but don't take these two thoughts in your small, ambivalent head and decide that the most significant thing you are is "pro-life." It's just words, and words only get work done up to a point, that point we are way beyond. The rhetoric about government brainwashing (the word "brainwashing" is not used in the song, not once!) is just what you use to reassure yourself that the "the government's" actions, and not your own inaction (or your shitty genetics) are why your kid is an ineffectual, whiny moron. I went to a public school, and so (probably) did you, so stop being so defeatist, "I was brainwashed by my free public education, that's why I watch TV instead of reading books!" Lobby your state government, write your congressman, plant a tree, stop driving yourself absolutely everywhere, yada-yada-yada, try and actually stick your neck out for once. Promise, you won't regret it when you're living in a cardboard box in a minefield, the dollar has dropped to the value of the peso, and America is a scary bedtime story Chinese yuppies tell their kids. And stop encouraging Glenn Beck! I'm serious u guys, he's gonna start a race-riot!! |
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| NOFX – Kill Rock Stars Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Wow all the controversy!! I might listen to some Bikini Kill or Le Tigre someday, but I have got to buy this album right-f*cking now! I want to hear their cover of Les Champs-Elysees by Joe Dassin, possibly the craziest-sounding idea for a punk re-hash of any I've ever encountered. The impression I get is that the title, Kill Rock Stars, is probably lyrically more of a taking-off point for the criticisms of Kathleen Hanna than a dig specifically at the label (which is kind of un-assailably cool anyway). But then, if you assume that they actually are taking a shot at Kill Rock Stars, idntfcklosers, then it seems stupid to go and label the band Emo-punk. Peace-punk, maybe, they do refer to the Reagan Youth in the song "Franco-UnAmerican"... but this album certainly doesn't sound anything like Jawbreaker or remotely post-hardcore to me. |
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