| The Decemberists – Calamity Song Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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Let's keep in mind that the very first line is "HAD A DREAM". So stop fact-checking and Wikipediaing. It doesn't matter. The song is about a dream about an apocalyptic war. So I thought the sigh of relief when people died because of the fault lines was because people everyone were going to die anyway, but more brutally. Except for the people who build an underground civilization. Basically this song is a silly guess at how the world will end, with lots of clever references thrown in, but nothing to take too seriously. I can't find any deeper meaning than that. |
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| The Decemberists – Down by the Water Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I haven't seen a comment here that I entirely agree with, so I thought I would just like to give my two cents. I think this song is about fond memories and the melancholy that comes with the realization that things past must stay that way. It might also be about regret, it might not (Is the "Leda of Pier 19" the one that got away?). The narrator, visiting the town where he grew up, relives a summer during his adolescence to which he would give anything to return. ("I would bear it all broken just to fill my cup/Down by the water.") Some people might think the narrator is saying that summer "rubs [him] wrong," but he is actually talking about any other season beside summer. Anon=soon: "This season annoys me, but it's ok because summer's just around the corner, and summer brings back these amazing boyhood memories!" The narrator reveals his love for the quaint seaside town, as well as a girl he may or may not have had a relationship with, after all, she was "Queen of the water, queen of the old main drag" and he was "just some towhead teen". I definitely do not think this song is about rape or organized crime. I think Decemberists fans tend to jump to conclusions when it comes to song themes, because with songs on any other Decemberists album they probably would be right. "The King Is Dead" is, at least thematically, something drastically different for the band. On no song in this album with you find gratuitous violence or rape, which is not necessarily a good or bad thing. I love their old albums, but I also appreciate when a band can evolve successfully. |
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