| The Shins – The Celibate Life Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I've been a huge fan of The Shins for about four years now, during which they've become my all-time favourite band. For some reason, while I go through phases with others of their songs, this one has constantly grown on me the whole time I've listened to them. I'm gonna agree with Satchel that it's that one verse that always grabs me. However, I've always heard "remember the girls in the middle / are always the first to follow." Does no one else hear this? No idea what the song's actually about, mind you, but it's so damn beautiful that I don't really care. P.S. - Oh, Inverted World turns 10 on June 19th! Celebrate by giving it a good, long listen that day. :) |
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| Ezra Furman and the Harpoons – Take Off Your Sunglasses Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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A couple corrections: I'm almost 100% certain it's "And left me all ALONE for a couple of weeks." Also, just for clarity, it might be a good idea to put the parts 'spoken' by the girl in quotes, because that kind of has an impact on the meaning of the song. In the daytrotter version, if not elsewhere, Ezra speaks certain parts which are associated with the girl. These spoken parts would be a good indicator as to what to put in quotes. It's the difference between understanding: Well she called me up, she said "I love you" in the middle of the night and Well she called me up, she said "I love you in the middle of the night" |
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| Sunset Rubdown – Apollo and the Buffalo and Anna Anna Anna Oh! Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Taktak's mention of the Montreal Cross makes perfect sense. Being a Montrealer as well as Spencer Krug, I got the reference immediately. "Anna Oh!" is probably a reference to Bertha Pappenheim, an important client of Sigmund Freud's and a major case study in hysteria, who was referred to in Freud's writing under the pseudonym "Anna O." |
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| The New Pornographers – All the Things That Go to Make Heaven and Earth Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I understand this song as a celebration of man's prosperity. The first part seems to refer to the old (I believe medieval) belief that this world doesn't matter and that you should focus on the afterlife ("with matter removed of divine dimension/our time reduced to an honorable mention"). They then go on to reject this old belief by stating that not only are Heaven and Earth not separate (classically considered completely separate), but that their very building blocks are "here", within human reach. This essentially means that there is nothing that man cannot do. The bit about success as survival "gone too far" implies that success - in this case progress - is in human nature, that as humans it is part of our very being to succeed. Our successful survival has provided us with new challenges which, in order to survive, cause us to succeed even more. Thus the chain of success in unending. The perpetuity of our success, our progress, is evidenced in the line "crashing into horizons on the brink of success." It is impossible to "crash into a horizon", because the horizon is by definition distance. That is to say that we are constantly moving rapidly and recklessly towards complete success, which I suppose would be an end to our progress, but we will never reach it. |
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