| Lifter Puller – Math Is Money Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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A lot of geographical hyper-spacing going on in Craig Finn's lyrics, as well as shifting between mythic & real geography...so trying to apply a literalist interpretation with LFTR PLLR folklore overall is a fruitless exercise...and probably missing the point of it all anyway. Anyway, the references in Math Is Money seem to shift between Finn's twin hometowns of the Boston Metro area and Minneapolis...there's the Crabs (or Crab Dudes) with their booming narcotics enterprise on Jefferson Ave in NE MPLS (music1994's interpretation coincides best with what I know about the MPLS gangs situation)... Shifting then to seeking amnesty in New Bedford, Mass and "...peter panned back into Springfield, Mass..." (there's actually a Peter Pan Bus Lines servicing most of northern New England, HQ'd in Springfield) That's as literal as I'll get...Finn's facile wordplay (with nods to Springsteen & Dylan & Keroac) just hits me right between the eyes...vivid, pointed & brutally stark, leaves me seeing stars sometimes ...and he's still got it...eagerly awaiting the fifth Hold Steady record, which is in the recording process now. |
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| The Hold Steady – One for the Cutters Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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When I first listened...check that...BEFORE I listened to this song for the first time, I thought by its title that it was referring to young people (usually adolescent girls/young women...though surely not exclusively) who are compelled to cut themselves. Unfortunately I am acquainted with too many who, or at least used to, do this... Of course, after the quarry reference in the first line, the long-buried recollection of the film Breaking Away came to me... Listening to The Hold Steady (and LFTR PLLR) is sometimes overwhelming, they're so rich in cringingly evocative & sometimes brutal imagery...evocative of my own painful & self-destructive rites of passage..."and the 80s almost killed me, let's not recall them quite so fondly..." |
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| The Hold Steady – Joke About Jamaica Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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"Hot CHILD in the city...," perhaps (Nick Gilder song reference)? ...and "FLIRTING with the boys with all her charms...," (reference to Don Gibson's "Oh, Lonesome Me." Neil Young covered this song on "After the Gold Rush.") |
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