| Scott Walker – Epizootics! Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Gosh I wouldn't know where to start with this one. All I know is that "Haunted Jacuzzis" is brilliant, and that an Epizootic is much the same as an epidemic but affecting the animal kingdom... But in any case it seems to be more about beauty becoming putrified and the inevitable union of what is pure with what is gross and base, than simply a horror show. Definitely watch the video if you haven't. Even after watching a lot of horror inspired music videos recently (Demdike Stare, Gaslamp Killer) I think this one still gets the (maggot covered) rosette for most terrifying. I love how SW uses sparseness to make the mood heavy--something I've tried to learn from--listen to my track "Nothing Stirring" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZOkKS1Y1xA | |
| Thom Yorke – Atoms For Peace Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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Having just cited this song in a post about Leonard Cohen's Avalanche couldn't help but post something (even though it seems the last post on this one was 5 years ago! Scary: can remember listening for the first time like it was yesterday). Like I say there, Yorke has a great ability to synthesize ideas, even merging serenity with anxiety, and love with fear, which is just what I think this song does (I wish I could do this more in MY music--if you'd like to listen to some, please go to: https://twitter.com/BertrandBezula). So I love that people pick up on the duality in the lyrics, and how the song is eery AND beautiful all at once. Someone below mentions the Eisenhower link, and it seems there's little doubt that Thom has the whole idea of nuclear power/warfare in mind. In recent interviews about his new band of the same name, he talks about his Dad's role as a nuclear physicist, and the almost scary acceptance people had for nuclear power back in the old days, and yet at the same time the persistent sense of fear inspired by the Cold War (my own dad has talked about how these were frightening and anxious times--anxiety, that wiggling squiggling worm inside--especially for a child). It's amazing how Yorke picks up on all of this in the music. For me I can almost hear in the soft fuzzy tones of this song, and the chiming repetitive melodies, something of Boards of Canada: they of course sample old-fashioned public safety videos and things of that ilk, so it's not surprising Thom has this sound in mind, albeit subtly, to get across this idea of giving into something which has the potential to be deadly, making it domestic, and almost evoking a sense of nostalgia for those days when nuclear power was the warm fuzzy energy source of the future, lighting model 50s houses, full of pipe-smoking dads and apron-clad moms (it's retro sci-fi, the stuff of flying saucers and Dr Who). So I think this focus on all things nuclear is a backdrop to the song that is hard to ignore. And moreover, it follows a familiar idea in Yorke's songwriting: people being duped into taking what isn't healthy, left with only the bad options, the duff politicians, the clogged up streets etc. Resigning oneself to a comfortable, even if morally or hygienically dubious life, has always been something which Yorke has focused on as one of the more unnerving aspects of modern society ("I'll take the quiet life, a handshake of carbon monoxide"). In this song, the exhortations of Eisenhower to live by clean nuclear energy are no less unnerving. The was a plea to forget about the "old days" of a-bombs and Hiroshimas (you can imagine the wide eyed-horror, the flying saucer eyes, of those who looked on at this atrocity) and instead have something great. But subsequent nuclear disasters have shown Eisenhower's words up to be lies: and yet people still are wedded today to the idea of Nuclear power--that same cozy comfort, snuggling up to the bomb and all the like: "feel the love come off of them and take me in your arms". So what does Thom want to get out of? Clearly there is a nuclear disarmament and anti-nuclear message in the song. But someone below rightly talks about the subjectivity of Yorke's songs, and this is in no way a one-sided peace. What's interesting is that much of the love, comfort and affection that comes through feels genuine, and his voice is absolutely at its most achingly beautiful in this track. There are several layers (just like Mr Artichoke) and like most of the time with Thom Yorke there is an oil painting approach taken, with various layers added, eventually welded into one another. So I've always felt this is just as much a relationship song as anything else. "I want to make it work" sounds like a heartfelt plea to carry on with someone (we've already touched on that domestic feel to the song, and the brilliance is that it slots into both the relationships context, and the nuclear backdrop we've talked about above. I've always seen the artichoke heart as quite a blatantly sexual image, but equally there's something domestic about it (a theme I've already touched on), and it can be about stripping someone's character bare to see what they're made of as well. This is just what we try to do to exorcise someone's worries, whether about nuclear disaster, or relapse into a drugs habit. Nothing is quite ruled out in a Thom Yorke song, and all of these ideas work together. Although not a favourite track musically, I always liked Skip Divided which seems to simultaneously be a 'stalker's ballad' a la Climbing Up the Walls, and a comment on the Bush/Blair relationship, and protest against the increasingly intrusive presence of Big Brother following the mooting of ID cards during the latter's premiership. What is really touching about the Atoms for Peace is the obvious lengths two people will go for each other: following people down wormholes and such reminds me of those hyperbolic protestations about love in classical poets like Catullus: love as deep as lakes and so forth (poem 68). But here the image, while still bringing out the depth of an individual's affection, is wrapped up in the sleepy harmonies of the song, and is much more like the semi-automatic, real-life commitment we have to people who we live with, not the slightly removed hyperbole of the old poets. So this is what is ultimately so great about this song. It's got layers and multiple meanings. On the one hand the affection captured is that misguided attempt to nestle up snugly to nuclear power. But if this is true, then why does Yorke make the song drip with such GENUINE affection? Because at the same time it dwells on the real connections possible between people, and how no phenomenon like nuclear energy can really be thought of in the absence of a human backdrop and human interaction. Ultimately there's a kind of John Lennonesque message: I don't care about the bomb, just take me in your arms, even as everything around us is vaporized into dust. So in summary I think (like Avalanche) this is another great song where everyone's comments so far have teased out something true in the lyrics. It's as much about relationships and self-doubt as it is about nuclear energy and disaster. What is great, and typical of Yorke, is that the attitude to none of these themes is simple, but various emotions and impressions are mixed up together in a few simple lines. Which is, really, how we go about real life, and this is why Yorke is such a great artist. |
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| Leonard Cohen – Avalanche Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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First of all, I hope in return for my thoughts on this song you'll be so kind as to listen to my cover of it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYDqWbX2tsU Not ground on the original, but then I've made it a little different. And if you like it, look out for more of my music at https://twitter.com/BertrandBezula :-) I love the number of themes people have picked up on this song: mental illness, the holocaust, classical mythology, Christian symbolism, relationships of a passionate and artistic nature etc. etc. Sometimes the diversity of comments on this site seem only to show how many people have got it wrong, but in this case it feels like all tap into something relevant, and to me there is nothing below which is too far from the mark. In my view this has long been the most salient part of Cohen's genius as a lyric writer: his ability to master a flurry of images and juggle a horde of ideas, and yet still arrive at something meaningful and defined. What counts as a mark of great genius in a songwriter, is something we expect from the best poets--just think of Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent"--and this is why, like Dylan, Cohen's work is rightly seen as poetry in its own right. And so, as you would for any other poet, I like to approach this song from some of Cohen's other work, and out of everything else he's written, the song bearing strongest resemblance to this one is Master Song: the idea of relationships based on servitude, ill health/deformity, and the contrast this has with perfection and wealth (the picture of gold appears in both, as does the notion of perfection: whether explicit as in Master Song, or implied by the work of art on the pedestal), are common to both. So there are so many ideas, but I feel this is already getting long so will simply say that many of the interpretations make sense in light of what I say above. It is about relationships, yes, and the way we focus a great deal on perfection when in them (often the other person can represent an ideal we strive for), and how sensations of inadequacy are sometimes the other side of the coin. Any artist knows the scale of perfection to ugliness is constantly in mind, and Troutmasked is right to remind us of Hephaistos who created beauty despite being imperfect himself. It is only natural then when thinking about these scales of perfection, that Cohen's brilliant associative mind should have thought about the Holocaust (or the other way round, it doesn't really matter) which I think Victor Jan very rightly picks up on. Perfection and ugliness after all had so much to do with the more extreme and horrific parts of Hitler's agenda. The bitter resentment which inspired this terrible programme fits well with "Your pain is no credential here, It's just the shadow, shadow of my wound", and remind us how far we are biased to our own emotions and desires over the suffering of others. But I almost hate to go into specific points of reference, because, as I may have laboured by now, the brilliant nature of this song is its power to present us with many narratives in order to show the multifaceted manifestation of abstract ideas, and the many ideas which spring from specific events in history. I can't help be reminded by Thom Yorke's "Atoms for Peace", which, in a way that is so typical for him, manages to effortlessly mix together the sensuality of a sexual relationship with thoughts of nuclear politics and disaster (and quite probably a few other things). I also think of "Vultures" by Chinua Achebe as a point of comparison for this kind of treatment of genocide (and this link is itself another testament to how for Cohen employs a poetic technique). But while Achebe dwells on the perverseness such association of ideas can bring, Cohen's treatment is more delicate and balanced, and I think, more powerful for it. |
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