| Lady Lamb – Bird Balloons Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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The singer is feeling drained by a relationship with someone who has done nothing but give her pain to sing about. Now she carries around the broken pieces of a friendship while her ex-Muse bottles her blood, keeping the singer's pain as a sordid souvenir. Their friendship has been waning for so long that you can see its ribs _almost_ escaping its skin to search for warmth and shelter until spring like birds. Even in the winter of their love, the ex-Muse stands naked as a newborn, demanding to be cradled and suckled and coddled, sacrificing nothing in return. Now this frigid newborn's love is writing words on the wall with the meat of a nectarine, a reference to the "angel" (a.k.a. vandal) at Belshazzar's feast, heralding the fall of an empire. The nectarine, sweet fruit, is symbolic of spring. Has the hurtful friend moved on, leaving the singer alone amid the ruins of a soured friendship? Perhaps it's best to fly south and start over, but that's easier said than done. The singer wants closure, and her ex-Muse is ignoring the parade of skeletons and bird balloons shuffling past on the dreary streets, refusing to take ownership for the past, which is - as far as the singer's friend is concerned - dead and gone, as flightless as bird-like balloons. Something as beautiful and vital as the moon is suddenly sickening, tainted by the pain of a ruined relationship, and it casts its wan, sickly light over all like a serpent abandoning its skin. This fixation on the past isn't healthy, but even still the singer longs for what she cannot have. She wants to be on a team again, playing music with her friend and nesting together like a family of real, live birds. She is not wanted, but she yearns for companionship anyway, casting aside all care for herself to try and salvage what has been lost. Swept away by tumultuous emotions, aswirl in her vindictive bitterness, the singer gasps, surprised by a pleasant memory: a rare moment of balance between the two friends, teetering beneath a glistening expanse of stars that stared blank and tranquil back at them as they unveiled themselves like newlyweds. This is what has been lost. As the memory fades, the song returns to its steady, inevitable rhythm, and we are wrenched back to the present. That moment of vulnerability is gone, and whatever the singer gave in good faith to her friend is lost like a limb that's been severed. Now the singer is just a ghost, haunted by the friend that failed her and haunting that friend in return. She will sever herself from the past as swiftly as snipping her hair, and when all is said and done, the needy, newborn friend who didn't give jack is left shivering in the cold, discovering all too late that the singer was meaningful after all. Now this callous friend will carry the curse of regret and loss like a locket, constantly reminded of their failure by the singer's deserted lock of hair. |
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| Swans – A Piece of the Sky Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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The whole thing is the denouement of the search that was instigated in "Mother of the World". The singer is searching for the Goddess - or, in less polarizing terms, the nourishing, nurturing, redeeming, and (in the mystical sense) feminine aspect of the Will that lies behind the world, and in this song he comes to the understanding that this replenishing facet of the divine diamond is manifested in all of the objects he rattles off in the first half of the song's narrative (i.e. crumbling stairs and pools of oil). The writing becomes less occupied with the sheer beauty, wonder, terror, and mystery of the world during the second half and instead makes profound statements about the nature of our existence: In the then that was now In the now that is not In our names we forgot In a thought we just lost We become what we choose We are stumbling fools Who are not there Here Gira masterfully illustrates the slippery nature of time and of our very identity, but also of the responsibility we carry for all of our decisions and, ultimately, the fact that we are fools who know nothing and are nothing. He comes to a mature understanding of the nature of life as both beautiful and painful, and is capable of seeing the "Mother of the World" in all experiences. This is spiritual peace that we should all strive for, and this song is without a doubt one of the most powerful works of art I have ever encountered. |
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| Swans – She Lives! Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| This song is incredible. I think that Michael Gira is singing to himself, after realizing that his mind isn't really there. The brutal sarcasm is an expression of the detachment, terror, and fury that comes from so complete a disassociation with the illusion of ego (in the sense of an individual, self-defining 'I'). He's coming to understand his animal nature, and in doing so he's losing his grasp on the ambiguous concept of a spirit or a soul, which is a devastating experience. It could also be descriptive of an abusive relationship from the abuser's perspective, which would make sense given later songs such as "Song for a Warrior", but I like the thought that it resonates on a spiritual level. | |
| Bedhead – Lares and Penates Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| Thank you! How they messed these up I have no clue... | |
| Interpol – The New Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| This is definitely about a relationship. It starts off with an expression of this man's faith in his love, and that someday they will spend the rest of their lives together and everything will be okay. Their relationship is symbiotic, both of them making mistakes and both of them supporting each other, and that's what has made it so special. But things start changing; when you care about someone so much, they have the potential to hurt you deeply, and they become kind of like a weak spot, taking away your edge and making you vulnerable. Things start getting messy because the man is so honest and so vulnerable, and even though he's told his share of lies, he is still at the mercy of this woman that he loves so much and stakes so much on. The end completely falls apart with the lines, "You're looking alright tonight/ I think we should go," which is kind of difficult to interpret but sounds pretty sinister, like the guy is tired of sacrificing himself and is ready to make this girl his own in every way he can. Great depiction of the way love can completely invert itself throughout the course of a relationship, like a flower blooming in reverse. | |
| The National – Wasp Nest Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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Everything has pretty much been said concerning this song, except I think for the broken bottles line. Your eyes are broken bottles And I'm afraid to ask For all your wrath and cutting beauty You're poison in a pretty glass When I think broken bottles, I think of the kind of glass you find on the beach. It's beautiful and it glimmers in the sun like stained glass, but it's sharp and dangerous, too. Matt Berninger is brilliant. |
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| Why? – Gemini (Birthday Song) Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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It starts with you on a mattress in your parents old room Clipping your toenails into the room like the room will fade And you will move onto other rooms And you will go to other places This foreshadows the end of a relationship. It also speaks to how Yoni feels when someone he has gotten so intimate with just leaves him, kind of like the room she carelessly clips her toenails into. Then the wedding then the woman passed out In the drivers seat at the order board at white castle We woke her up and she went round to the pick-up window Like she knew exactly where she was They were best man and best woman at a wedding, and that was the foundation for their brief relationship. But Yoni was serious about it, as we see later in the song, while the woman was not so serious. Then I wept with my face in your nightshirt Trying hard as hell to say until death separates us Loosening the skin on your breastbone I painted your nails and you sleep while I write all this down Yoni even wants to marry this woman, that's how serious he is about their relationship. Even the ridiculous memory of the woman at White Castle is something he wants to hold onto, because this woman is so precious to him. When we're on different sides of the globe I thought we'd keep our veins tangled like a pair of mic cables And if there ain't enough slack to reach That we'd solder them together across oceans they'd stretch Our faces reflected in separate windshields And all our body hair pricked up an elephant eyelash Should we be tempted by thief or by saint It seems I leave and you stay to crawl the cage and curse But don't regret the done dirt, there is no life plan set You just swallow the cold and follow your breath until death Now even if the will to sleep persists I can't cause a harsh cloth, it grazes my blisters When the two of them parted after the wedding, Yoni struggled to maintain a long distance relationship, but it seems the woman wasn't interested. She didn't make the effort to solder their veins together, even over oceans. She seems to be chasing other relationships, short-term ones, "following her breath" and just living by fleeting desire. Yoni had big plans for them, but this woman never truly loved him, and now her memory is keeping him awake. Today I fell asleep in a bath of hair Hair that once sprouted from my own wet white chalk follicles I swallow the coal and follow my breath Then I did it with the grapefruit soap thinking of you Bathed shaved and oiled your legs are two skinny dolphins swimming Between the mattress and the layers of bedding Turning in your drug dry sleep Here he compares her beautiful body to his not-so-beautiful one. He is trying to distract himself from the pain of their separation by doing the same as her, pursuing short-term relationships and living for the moment, but he can't forget her. My favorite line, concerning her legs, is so tender and enamored it is absolutely heart-wrenching. Those words perfectly capture Yoni's heartbreak. When I ask you to kiss my pulse You offer to start the shower I want a verb and you give me a noun What do you dream up while I tongue you down? This line is about how the only thing this woman was concerned with was physical intimacy and lust. When Yoni wanted to be genuinely close, for this girl to "kiss his pulse," all she was concerned with was showering together. He wants her to love him, but all she is concerned with is their shallow acts of love, and even then it seems her heart isn't in it. There was a moth caught in the soapdish laminated in lye Would you still remember me well? If I don't get to 0-0-5 My dead line Gemini The image of the moth caught in the soapdish is absolutely masterful, a great depiction of the passage of time and Yoni's own state of paralysis. She is a "dead line gemini" because she never picks up the phone or calls him back. You know my build you know my size The degree to which my eyes are astigmatic This is a very subjective interpretation, but I think this line refers to how the girl knew how much Yoni really loved her, and she still took advantage of him. This is Yoni explicitly saying, "This is your fault, you knew EXACTLY what you were doing." Absolutely beautiful song, Yoni is a brilliant lyricist, and he captures these emotions perfectly. |
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