| Local Natives – Mt. Washington Lyrics | 7 years ago |
|
Someone lying on their bed staring up at the ceiling, seeing a stain there that looks like a face (doesn't everyone do this, making patterns from marks on the ceiling?) Song is about a desire for a person that the songwriter is trying and failing to bury. Likely a relationship has ended, songwriter likens this to a death (like digging a grave for a dead body: "Digging like you can bury / Something that cannot die / We could wash the dirt off our hands now"). The relationship won't die for the songwriter though, as they're being plagued by thoughts about it, even as they try hard to repress it - psychologically, repressing something painful doesn't work as the pain you're trying to ignore ends up infecting your life ("Keep it from living underground" - i.e., buried in the soil, in the subconscious) The weirdness of that opening lyric, a stain on the ceiling that looks like a face and the face is repeating something over and over and over to you - this is all about the subconscious mind, something preying on your mind, to such a degree that your mind is pattern-seeking from random shapes like a rorschach test. This is a person in denial. I think the line about "lazy summer goddess" matches the vibe of the song at large which is mounting to a breaking point the whole time, even while the song is quite dreamy, much like the mindset of someone just passively lying on a bed, whose mind is nonetheless swamped with trying NOT to think about seeing someone you very much want to see but you're telling yourself you don't HAVE to, to give yourself a sense of control. I love how beautifully the song ends back in the sort of deceptive peace and quiet of the room with the curtains moving a little in the breeze, that's what it makes me feel. |
|
| The Kooks – Sway Lyrics | 7 years ago |
|
I agree with the comments that this is about their former bandmate. Song about unconditional love for a person who is essentially good and beloved, who is going through a bad time and being transformed into something bad due to drugs ("I know you never meant to but you did"). Becoming "a reactionary" when loved ones try to intervene. Becoming a "recluse about your house, come out" - can mean literally, or can be read as being locked into your own mindset, perhaps telling yourself a lie about the severity of your addiction. The recurring point in the song is - "I know you never meant to, but you did." That's the key. The songwriter knows the addict did not mean to hurt loved ones, did not mean to transform into this person who is an addict. I find this message in incredibly humane and sensitive, and something I've never encountered in such a way in a song about addiction. The songwriter loves this person and sees how worthy of love this person is, and instead of railing against the addict or attacking them for their behaviour, the songwriter is saying "I won't judge you, I know you never meant to be like this, I will always love you and however you need to work through your emotional problems, through singing something, saying something, doing something - I will be there - you are worthy of love". This is often not an attitude directed at addicts. It's often easier for someone who has never dealt with addiction themselves to get upset or angry and blame the addict for lacking control, not understanding the nature of addiction. This song feels like a goodbye, but it's also like I said about something unconditional, like "I need you, I'll always long to have you around / long to have your heart in my life because you are such a big-hearted, loving person". There's no personal recrimination-style blaming or anger in the song whatsoever, that's what's remarkable about it, for how simple its lyrics seem, it conveys this emotion of open-hearted statement of fact, just "I'll be waiting for you, you're worth waiting for". This song touches my heart so much. Couple stray bits: -I love the 3 key words in the chorus: sway, heart and soul. The heart is in the right place, the person is soulful capable of deep feeling and expression (in a band, a creative relationship like this is a profound bond with somebody else). And "sway", a sort of enigmatic word that's at the core of the song tying it all together - sway is a rhythm, for a musician what they bring to a band like their soul, their voice, this is fundamental - but sway can also mean the influence a person exerts over us. Again, a big deal in the creative process when you let someone in and make a personal pierce of art together. -It may seem like an odd connection to make, but the strangeness of the word "sway" actually reminds me of bits from 2 Beatles' songs: "the movement you need is on your shoulder" from Hey Jude (also a goodbye/forgive type song between musical partners), and "my heart is like a wheel / let me roll it to you" from Wings. |
|
| Fleet Foxes – Oliver James Lyrics | 10 years ago |
|
"On the way to your brother's house in the valley, dear," Song's protagonist & a woman (his wife or lover we assume b/c of later lines about motherhood) walk to her brother's house. They find a cradle in the river, the child inside is dead (larger context of the song suggests the child is dead). The woman takes the child home, the song's protagonist looks on as she washes him. "you will remember when you rehearse the actions of An innocent and anxious mother full of anxious love" Possible that the woman has lost a baby in the past (i.e. miscarriage or ), there are quite a few allusions to loss and the past throughout the song, and the woman is not merely carrying out the action of bathing the child, she's 'rehearsing', another indication the child is dead, and her act of lovingly bathing the child alludes to i) that the child was once alive, ii) that the woman is performing the role of mother, acting out the part, there's a sense of a double reality, that the child is dead yet her actions are as if it were alive, and the double reality of her having once cared for a child in the past. She 'remembers' these actions from the past, and an innocence from the past (her first child--also the innocence of Oliver James, the baby that has died) That the baby, Oliver James, was washed in the rain, and found in a cradle in the river, seems to suggest he didn't fall into the river, he was sent floating down the river. The contrast between neglect that led to the death of the child, left to the elements, is symbolized by the rain washing him, VS the maternal care of this woman, who washes him by hand, as love, as a mother. "Walk with me down Ruby beach and through the valley floor Love for the one you know more" I'm confused by this line 'love for the one you know more', it sounds almost like the writer wanted the pun / double meaning in the limited syllables of: 'love for the one you know NO more", i.e., love for someone who has died. "Back we go to your brother's house emptier my dear The sound of ancient voices ringing soft upon your ear" Again, sense of the past, loss, death, and 'ancient voices' suggest people who have died, perhaps children who have died. The subject of the song is unusual in talking about discovering a dead baby, but the larger idea of an infant's death and a mother's mourning, are captured in these lines, that evokes a sense of history, human history stretching back and the many, many infants that have died while still babies. Very tragic song, but it's a human reality that's always been with us. "Oliver James washed in the rain no longer Oliver James washed in the rain no longer" Essentially the struggle to deal with the death of infants, who symbolise life & care of baby, a role which has long defined womanhood. So a song from a man's perspective about a woman with a kind of 'surplus' of mother's love, she cares lovingly for a dead child who died from neglect. |
|
| Everything Everything – Come Alive Diana Lyrics | 11 years ago |
|
I'd only add that the line about directing a hunt in the chorus is likely a reference as well to Diana the Huntress from Roman mythology. The idea of Diana at the head of a hunt in this song could refer to a press endlessly whipping the public up into a frenzy looking for someone to blame for her death, and the 'hunting' of Diana by the paparazzi in France which led to her death as her limousine driver sped to evade the photographers (burst tires are referred to in the first verse). The repeated image of a disembodied head, a portrait endlessly plastered on newspapers, also connects to the idea of a hunt, as the head of the hunted animal is mounted on a wall. It's a gruesome parallel to draw, but the dehumanisation of celebrity figures does mean the person is decapitated from their public face, their 'image', when they're made into a figurehead. The grotesque reanimation of Diana to sell newspapers and whip up nationalist sentiment is exactly that. |
|
| Everything Everything – Kemosabe Lyrics | 11 years ago |
|
Play on the relationship between iconic figures of the Lone Ranger and Tonto (Kemosabe), his faithful sidekick. Song's protagonist paints himself as the Lone Ranger, here a fallen man who is supposed to be a hero / cultural icon of America, reflecting on how he has done terrible things. It's implied Tonto is gone, likely killed in the scene described in the end of the second verse ('You wasn't there when I orphaned that boy, / (NO!) Your body was, and the white of your rollin' eye / I saw some terrible things on that night'). Without Tonto, the Lone Ranger is confronted again & again with the fact that he's really 'alone', plagued by it, and this line -- 'Nobody checking on all of my deeds, I need a checker for all of my deeds', and the wail that carries throughout the song that he's alone and crying out for his lost friend, likely points to the Lone Ranger as symbolic of America, having either lost any 'sidekick' would could have exerted a moderating force on the country's behaviour, or, more likely, having never really had any such sidekick to begin with... (The extermination of the indigenous people of the Americas by the settlers: 'a string of genocide campaigns by Europeans and their descendants...the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world'--author David Stannard, 'American Holocaust') See how the song itself references holocaust, also a trilobite (fossil of extinct marine animal), and the violent imagery throughout. The Lone Ranger fears himself as an unchecked force, but the song casts him as both a present-day figure ('reaching for my phone') and a figure out of history trapped in time reliving memories on an endless loop ('But there's no silver bullet for a memory I, / Field dress every moment but you're telling me that Tonto say / I've lost my way!') The song ends after the dreamy reflection over the dilemma, before finally it's all cast aside (lost and drained, enough genuflecting in a penitent way) and it's 'Yippee-kayay!' and 'Hi-O Silver away!'--he's riding off into the sunset alone, he can't help himself. |
|
| Everything Everything – Choice Mountain Lyrics | 11 years ago |
|
About innocence / the state of pre-birth, thoughts about what a pre-born mind is thinking. The ocean works to mean a womb, a lot of references to drifting and swimming and shifting between forms--i.e. unfixed identity or state of being. Finally the more concrete unromantic description of the unborn fetus or fertilized egg ('now organs in a glassy globe / and cloudy with potential / muscle mass and vertebrae begin'). A song about life in potential, but also with a dark side as if looking back having been hurt by the world (in romance? 'you never call back'), or in expectation of a cycle repeating where innocence gets destroyed or abused ('cherub in the ashtray', 'you don't look impressed', 'delete me, repeat me') The idea of trying to return to a state of innocence ('wriggling back to the source') or searching the world's oceans to get back there ('inching up to the pole / only to be lost among the white')--is sad, and the voice of the song seems disembodied and always on the move, I like the way the instrumentation echoes this going between a sort of restless monotonous metronome-type droning like 'ticking' or toiling away at a long task, that feels like searching, and then the release in the chorus puts you in mind of a coral reef with fish scattering away or bubbles rushing up underwater. I've read this song criticised for the concept failing to come together with the absurd animal imagery, like switching from fish to a lioness and hyenas, a pterodactyl at the end--I don't mind so much as it feels a little like the voice of a child that's speaking in the song, or someone trying to recapture a child's view. The song for me is about wishfully thinking back on innocence that's gone and can't be recovered, and also I think how we reflect back on ourselves when we were younger, something very sad about the human condition of wanting to rush ahead into the outside world without knowing what's out there and how it's going to change us. |
|
| Everything Everything – Schoolin Lyrics | 11 years ago |
|
I think it's about the general state of being a human in the modern age. Broadly, the song returns to 3 ideas: 1. Man in relation to grander structures -- i.e., repeated references to the sky (colossal dome), stars, man's small streetlights vs. the stars -- I get a pessimism out of that or a sense that modern man is overwhelmed, kind of animal stupidity that still thinks itself beyond it all, doesn't want to think about himself as small and actually not knowing very much, e.g.: 'Right above my head a miracle the sun erupt forever I barely ever raise my eyes' 2. Modern man living in 'developed world' with feelings of conflict and denial over where humanity has come from and destructive past & present (e.g., reference to the Flintstones, 'I don't wanna think about the 3rd world hunger or whatever', 'I wanna make the peace / Maybe I can sit here and do nothing clever', 'Gorilla limb swipe and beat, and I learn dick about Earth')–the protagonist wants to push away thinking about bigger things, is in a turmoil trying to distance themselves, keeps getting drawn back to man vs. the rest of the world, and not being able to deal with it. 3. Fallacy of forward progress of mankind & ultimately failing to find absolute meaning for man's existence. So, the cerebral undertaking of academia as a means of man understanding the world, the frustration of the modern age conflict with the two sides of man irreconcilable–man as an animal, and man as animal that has consciousness and is alone and cut away from the rest of what we observe around us & endlessly perplexed by that Overall, I think the "schoolin" aspect of the song and the allusions to learning makes sense best combined with the repeated references to the stars vs. man-made streetlamps. It's about the obvious contradictions in the notion of human development and progress. We think we know a lot, but all around us we're reminded that we're, a) small in comparison to what's outside us, and b) mammals with the capacity to be self-aware like no other creature we've come into contact with. Or to put it like Christopher Hitchens: 'Evolution has meant that our prefrontal lobes are too small, our adrenal glands are too big…' The modern state of being is one which lands us in a state of conflict, denial and confusion, makes for a lot of mental turmoil and discomfort, because we're told (by the world that appeals to the mind, school, academia) one thing, but our existence and the reality of being the human animal in the modern age results in a lot of contradiction and torment for someone trying to come to terms with 'why are we here' and 'what is my purpose' type questions. I think this song and a lot of this band's output shares common ground with the ideas explored by Radiohead, OK Computer-type modern angst, but I feel Everything Everything's stuff has a playful note and free-association that prevents it from being tied down (despite me trying to do that here--there are whole verses that I get the feeling are there for 'mood', not to be penetrated really, and the style of the singer's delivery makes it pretty impenetrable just listening to it and so the words and meaning are swept away in the music or just a sound to accompany the music and create an overall effect that's really jumped up and technicolor) Other songs by this band I've heard that mesh with the meaning here would be: 'MY KZ, UR BF'--about a petty argument going on while a nuclear bomb drops 'Torso of the Week'–a counties housewife obsessively maintains her body while her life has no meaning |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.