| Beirut – Nantes Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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You know, I read all the different interpretations, and mine is different, almost entirely. It sounds to me as though the narrator's lady friend left him a while ago, and he's reminiscing about her smile. He's dealing with the breakup by gambling and living indulgently hoping that eventually he'll be in a better place. But I also am taking my cues from sources outside of the song too. The whole "nobody raise your voices- just another night in Nantes" part sounds a lot like that line, "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown." Which make me feel like this isn't a hopeful song at all. And, if this song can be at all connected to the feeling of the take-away show and a few other songs on the album, and the french film quoted in the song, it seems like the lady might have left him for his bad behavior in the first place. The whole trope of the drunk, womanizing french sailor, gambling away his money and time. Also, in one live version, he very specifically changed the line "gambling away my fright" to "gambling away my friends", which leads me to feel even more as though he was messing with the idea of a man in a sort of downward spiral. |
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| 31Knots – Beauty Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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It seems like a few of the lyrics are a little wrong, and you missed the whole breakdown where he sings anymore, everything is everywhere what a bore who's to tell you what to wear?(?) (?) I'm a whore when everything is everywhere (?) Beauty is a whore I'm everywhere. And that's the part I most wanted to figure out! Also he ends with repeating "There's beauty if you see it." |
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| Joanna Newsom – Peach, Plum, Pear Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I am definitely thinking that was a brief acquaintance, not a full relationship. The narrator is completely smitten with a boy that she's just met. I think the "markedly more" bit is about how he seems to have *more* going for him than she, and she's thrilled (oozing surprise). This is a golden moment. That is diminished by floozies arriving on the scene. When she seems him interacting with these ladies, she's taken aback enough to realize that he's "knocking her down with the palm of [his] eye", (which to me sounds like a dismissal). He acts differently with the other girls around. Disappointingly and hurtfully so. What a let-down. It's a song about being wrong about a guy, ending with her questioning herself. I don't understand the "am I so dear?" part, although it sounds like she's questioning the difference between importance he'd shown her earlier, and the current disaffection. "Do I run rare?" makes me both think of her earlier sensitive bore comment. I think it's a double metaphor. One part is the imagery of meat (her heart) oozing blood (emotions). And the second part is that rare meat is undercooked, which is easily a parallel for naivity. Sensitive and naive. |
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| The Antlers – The Universe Is Going to Catch You Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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It seems pretty straightforward to me. It sounds like a depressed (or manic?) person "hollowed out shell" who's been edging away from family and friends and, frankly, sanity for a while. "the universe is going to catch you" sounds like the catchphrase of a really apathetic person who thinks it's not worth the effort to try to stay grounded and anyway, it's not like anything truly bad can happen. Tbe song is his family's plea for him to just come home, and knock his shit off. It's implied that it wasn't the universe catching him all this time, but his family. The voice calling him home. The last little bit could be a metaphor for this guy facing real consequences for his actions for once. It sounds, at least, more like a metaphorical death than a literal one. |
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