Caribou

This is a great song. I believe that it is about a person who resents the fact that he lives in a concrete jungle, a world where he bought into the materialism and capitalism that was spoonfed to him as a child. He now feels as though he has abused his role as a human and feels compelled to repent for this. He wishes to simplify his life by getting back to nature and remedying some of the harm he's done. This is only a guess.

A werewolf languishing in the streets of a large city wishing he were in the frozen northland hunting suitable prey, the caribou. Check out the howl on the word "caribou." It's shivery. Doesn't it make you think of werewolves?

Shouldn't that be "Cobain's void reminds me of him"?

Kurt was a huge Pixies fan, he said that when he wrote Smells Like Teen Spirit he was trying to write a Pixies song. The Pixies are so underrated - even now they are ahead of most 'alternative' bands, they pioneered grunge way before it was cool and before bands like Soundgarden and Pearl Jam turned it into an over-bloated monster. I mean, they had basically finished their recording career before Nirvana had even written Nevermind... sometimes I hate the music industry. Why can't people recognize good music? Why does so much f&*^ing s%^ get published and a band as great as the Pixies gets largely ignored?

First, to the person who posted that Smells Like Teen Spirit was patterned after Gouge Away, it was (per Cobain) patterned after U-Mass. Listen to both, the similarities are striking.

About Caribou, I think it is clearly about reincarnation.

I live cement, I hate this street, Give dirt to me.
(this life sucks, wish i were dead)

This human form, Where I was born, I now repent. (i was born human, but i wish i weren't)

Caribou (my choice for my next form)

Give me white, Ground to run, And foregone. (carefree life of animal, nothing is expected)

Lets me knife, Knife me lets, I will get What I like (either the knife will get me or i will get the knife (suicide)) (either way, i will get what i like (death))

I don't believe that its absolutely clear that he's a human reincarnated from a caribou, though. It sounds more like he's lamenting his lack of caribou-ness, not reliving some former life glory as a caribou. But it could be either I suppose, I could be wrong, it happened once before.

The song kicks major ass.

What it means, I have no clue, does

A caribou is the same thing as a reindeer: an artic-dwelling deer.

Yay Pixies are back again! I thought Kim Deal wrote Caribou, but that seems in question. The first lines are simple enough for Kims earth mama pleading vocals to grasp, but the later "knife" references are probably where, Black - as previously noted - often ad-libs lyrices into the tune, where he "intuits" a phrase - seems out of place. Unless ... suicide is the means to obtain that "transmigration of Soul" into the wide roaming, teeming free thundering herds of Caribou. Dirt. I will get what I want. Otherwise its a simple yearning for me, to escape this street. I live cement.

BTW "Teen Spirit" was supposedly modeled after "Gouge Away"!

there's this jeepney driver in manila, or maybe a pedi-cab driver in San Juan, Puerto Rico who believed he used to be a caribou, he figured he'd rather be plowing fields and swatting flies off his ass than hauling a bunch of american sex tourists around the red light district, so he goes to the fields and slashes his wrist. Humanity is a bitch. I'm sure Black Frances meant none of this and the song was just the impressions of a rich white boy baking in the hot third world sun.

I think Pixies songs the real meaning is conveyed by Black's amazing voice. Brings to my mind that maxim about how singing is really just sculpted screaming. Also, my college roommate, who commented once that "this guy must have had a seriously F**ked up childhood." True.