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Okkervil River – A Girl In Port Lyrics 11 years ago
I think this song about "girls in port" Will meets while touring. As he says: "Though I'm not sailing just for sport I've come to feel out on the sea/These urgent lives press against me I'm just aghast, I'm not apart."

I think he means that when he is sailing (touring) and he often meets girls in port (residents of the town he is playing in) he has mixed feelings about just having sex with them and moving on as is the kind of typical rock-star thing to do. I think he is saying it is because he sees them more deeply, lonely maybe, and with real complicated issues and stories ("she don't know who she wants to be" and "she's got a story you can see"). He's just not the "lady killing type."

In the end, though: "These several years out on the sea/Made me empty, cold and clear/Pour yourself into me/Let fall your soft and swaying skirt/Let fall your shoes, let fall your shirt/I'm not the lady-killing sort/Enough to hurt the girl in port." I guess this is him coming to terms with this lifestyle and his own needs and urges and trying to approach it in the right way...maybe...

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Pavement – Carrot Rope Lyrics 14 years ago
on the priest theme, "they got everything they will need stored under the chair" could refer to the Bible, which is often stored in a little shelf under the seat of a chair in a church

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Yuck – Suck Lyrics 14 years ago
I think it is, "I am not a catholic but I know what it means"

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Brand New – Bought a Bride Lyrics 14 years ago
Alright, my attempt (at the meaning, not individual lyrics). Don't hate, I'm not claiming to have any special knowledge, but I have listened to his song about 200 times.

Trees will make a forest
Trees will make a bow
These are all the harder
Words you have to know
If everyone's a structure
Where their own savior sits
I'm a little red house
But no one's living in it

--Trees makes both good and bad things.
--He has no savior, no faith.

Cars are little blood cells
We are oxygen
City is the airways
Suburbs appendages
She was feeling lonely
Tired of the hive
Rented out a family
And he bought a bride
Bought a bride
Bought a bride
Bought a bride

--The city is our lifeblood. She wanted something more than this. She rented out a family and bought a bride. The bride is the Church, perhaps, a rough Biblical reference to John saying Christ is the bride of the Church, or something like that. Thus this person went to Church and made new friends (renting them out by tithing, essentially - in a way, this is like paying for a group of supportive friends).

Little cities' names on very lonely maps
They tied her up and laid her on the train tracks

--Little cities could be where all the Churches are? The Church members she "rented out" have not accepted her and laid her on the train tracks?

Where are all the seedlings
We grew for violins?
Down in Jersey lumber
Still in prosthetic limbs
Should've been a soldier
I could've fought and died
There's no revolution
So I bought a bride
Bought a bride
Bought a bride
Bought a bride

--All the good things we did for beauty and happiness (violins) have been misused for other tragic things (prosthetic limbs). He could have given his life meaning by fighting in a war and dieing for a noble cause, but there is no revolution, no cause, that is worth fighting for. Thus, he rented out a family and bought a bride (tithed and thus had new church friends)

Coming down the aisle while the horns play Taps
They tied her up and laid her on the train tracks

--The marriage between himself and the church - his new way of life - is like, for better or worse, a death of his old self. Thats why the horns are playing taps, which are what play at a funeral (especially military funerals). Again, the church has killed the person (tied her up...).

If somehow I was new and everything was unsaid
I'd go and buy a hammer, never sing again

--Not sure..a hammer to build something new (a new self?), never be this lonely person he has become?

Sleeping on a stairway
Dreamt I had a boat
Sailed it out the harbor
Shot it full of holes
Folded up my prayer book
I couldn't see the lines
Drowning in a kelp bed
I bought a bride.

--Sleeping on a stairway - He is stuck between stages of life - belief and non-belief.
--The rest (which is only in the Daisy Sessions version on Youtube), is confusing. I think he could be saying that he is drowning himself why holding on to a prayer book as a way of dieing and going to Heaven? Or perhaps he is drowning, and since he "couldn't see the lines," its more a rejection of faith...but I don't know what buying a bride would be..a new worship without a prayer book? More mystical in nature? Fuck, this song might be even be about religion at all.

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Heatmiser – Cruel Reminder Lyrics 15 years ago
and "caught" not "got" and "driver was" not "drivers"

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Heatmiser – Cruel Reminder Lyrics 15 years ago
I think its actually: "Sick of having my heart write all over my face" - so he's saying his sick of showing his emotions so obviously.

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Brand New – Bed Lyrics 15 years ago
I could be taking a way too fucked up interpretation of this song, but here goes anyway. I think its a man killing his wife/girlfriend when a fight goes too far.

"My head is lead, I don't ever wanna go to bed.
Your hair is on fire.
You snuff the blaze, turn to vapor, then you float away.
We got into a bad fight."

The narrator's head is heavy because he just did something regrettable - hes having trouble sleeping.
The hair on fire could be a reference to blood mixed in with the hair that gives it an appearance of fire or just messed up hair (after a fight) that gives it the appearance of flames.

Snuffing the blaze I interpret as the girl in this song getting a taste of the fight, which is the metaphorical fire. When she "snuffs the blaze," or gets into the fight, she turns to vapor and floats away (dies).

Next, it says "we got into a bad fight" - the structure of these verses is almost backwards, so that the last verse of each stanza is a summary of the first few in many cases

"Laid her on the bed"

- He is laying her dead body on the bed

"My eyes are lungs.
I'm a prophet and I speak in tongues.
I know how you'll die."

- My eyes are lungs is some reference to the fact that he breathes or survives through his site...I'm not too sure what this means. The next line is reference to killing her again - "I know how you'll die" - which of course he knows because hes going to kill her.

"Your sister groans, "A usuper to the holy throne."
To me she's just a dead spy."

- This lyrics is masterful. The girl who the singer is going to kill's sister is saying that the singer is "a usurper to the holy throne." This means that the singer is unjustly taking power from the holy throne, God. He is playing God by killing her and deciding who is fit to live and die. The singer counters with "to me she's just a dead spy," meaning that he'll kill her too for getting involved in the relationship of the girl he kills.


Laid her on the bed.
Lie to all your friends.

-Pretty simply here. He's lying to all her friends about how he killed her.

"I don't know what you feel like.
Ambushed on a road, stole your gold.
You're a rose and you're laughing now."

- Not really sure what this means. It could be ambushing her on a road and stealing her gold is a metaphor for stealing her life, which is the gold - what is most precious to her. I don't get the rose reference.

"Everything that I own starts to pile up like bones.
Make the walls of a prison."

- All his possessions that remind him of this girl he kills are starting to metaphorically trap him in a prison of his actions.

"Laid her on the bed.
Laid her on the bed."

"I don't ever wanna go to bed.
He stayed up for the fight.
The champ goes down like a clown in the second round.
I wish we'd had a better goodbye."

- He doesn't want to go to bed because of the guilt he feels (and not wanting to sleep next to a dead body he has laid there). Now he is saying that he stayed up for the fight (not sure the use of 3rd person here..possibility using it to separate himself from the actions he just committed), killed her ("the champ goes down..."), and then wishes that that he and the girl he once loved had a better goodbye

"Lie to all your friends.
Laid her on the bed."

That's my take...it might not be right but let me know what you think.

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Brand New – In a Jar Lyrics 15 years ago
The chorus is definitely, "no one saved me, so i'll save...". This verse is preceded by "..now it has to end," so basically he saying that his relationship with God has to end - God didn't save him, so he is taking matters into his owns hands, choosing not to live in a jar - an altered state of reality - but he doesn't now where to go from here. And like SLT said earlier, it appears that God is becoming less important in a world where man is making more advances on his own, hence the electic kite reference.

As for the rooster crowed twice and your kissed me goodnight, I think the narrator is essentially Peter from the Bible. Jesus said Peter would disown him three times before the rooster crowed twice. So the narrator is kissing God goodnight - abandoning him or disowning him - just like Peter.

All in all, the jar is just an metaphor for the fake world that the narrator believes Christianity/Religion can create for believers - hence the stones blocking all of our sense (sight, hearing, taste) from what really is.

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Built to Spill – Liar Lyrics 15 years ago
It's "A piano's weeping tune" not "While the pianos were being tuned"

You can tell when he plays the acoustic version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shIpwQSH_T8

Plus, that makes a lot more sense.

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