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Carrion Lyrics
Carry on inside of your heart
Under the brine you won't notice the dark
Can stone and steel and horses heels ever explain the way you feel
From Scapa flow to Rotherhithe, I felt the lapping of an ebbing tide
Oh the heavy water how it enfolds
The salt the spray the gorgeous undertow
Always, always, always the sea
Brilliantine mortality
So irrigate your heart until you know you're complete
And you're draped in kelp, below by 8,000 feet
"My soul," she cried, "I thought you'd died, amid fumes of formaldehyde
You have been gone for so long I felt the lapping of an ebbing tide"
When this Corpus Christic isle became a land of ocean blue
Again she cried, "You turned my eye,
Amid fumes of formaldehyde."
And in the end, an August sun,
And one by one we blew
Until the devil screamed in the evermore
In envy of the grace we saw
Oh the heavy water how it enfolds
The salt, the spray, the gorgeous undertow
Always, always, always the sea
Brilliantine mortality
Oh the heavy water how it enfolds
The salt the spray the gorgeous undertow
Always, always, always the sea
Brilliantine mortality
Under the brine you won't notice the dark
Can stone and steel and horses heels ever explain the way you feel
From Scapa flow to Rotherhithe, I felt the lapping of an ebbing tide
The salt the spray the gorgeous undertow
Always, always, always the sea
Brilliantine mortality
And you're draped in kelp, below by 8,000 feet
"My soul," she cried, "I thought you'd died, amid fumes of formaldehyde
You have been gone for so long I felt the lapping of an ebbing tide"
Again she cried, "You turned my eye,
Amid fumes of formaldehyde."
And in the end, an August sun,
And one by one we blew
Until the devil screamed in the evermore
In envy of the grace we saw
Oh the heavy water how it enfolds
The salt, the spray, the gorgeous undertow
Always, always, always the sea
Brilliantine mortality
The salt the spray the gorgeous undertow
Always, always, always the sea
Brilliantine mortality
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I'm sure it should be Carrion inside of your heart...
Beautiful song. I'd love to know how they did that background noise that sounds like a mix of strings, choir and guitar... gorgeous.
@ReActor don't know if it's too late to reply to this or if you'll even see it but their guitarist makes the noise you're referring to by screaming onto his guitar strings...if you don't believe me look up a video of them preforming the song live it's crazy and awesome
@ReActor don't know if it's too late to reply to this or if you'll even see it but their guitarist makes the noise you're referring to by screaming onto his guitar strings...if you don't believe me look up a video of them preforming the song live it's crazy and awesome
Is this song about the break up of a relationship? The references to drowning and the reteating tide all seem to be about loss.
This is amozing. it's uplifting i think. you know what it sounds stupid but its all like symbollic isn't it with references to the sea, but if you've ever been sailing on a proper sailing boat or if your posh a yacht and you're going quite fast and the boats keeling over cos there's enough wind and all the suns reflecting off the water and theres like a chilly spray at you but it's happy then it sounds a bit like this song. i know it sounds like , oh she's a bit silly, jsut cos theyre called something to do with the sea its a sea song, no i know its not but thats what it sounds like to me and it's uplifting. or if you're going really fast on your bike in the sunshine where there's dramatic scenery. do you know what i mean?
i,ve just brought their second album and i think it's uber. i heard their first album is better though is this true. i can't believe how many posts there are for this band . P.S. t1nKerb3ll have you posted a comment for maximo park because i have jus gone straight from that to this lol.
Yes, their first album, The Decline Of British Sea Power, is excellent and is worth buying if you liked Open Season. I love every track on their first album; through Carrion is probably my favourite on it.So beautiful....
lovely song, epic guitars and understated and yet dreamy vocals, 2nd best song on album behind remember me.
To me this song is the essence of what British Sea Power are- it is something timeless and powerful like the sea- stone and steel and horses heels images from the depths of history and to me this is a song about British and particularly English identity in the face of our long and dark history. An island is defined by the sea and so the sea is strong in this lyric. At the same time history is a dead thing, it is carrion, a weight that should be able to throw off if we are to build the new Jerusalem, something which the reference to this "corpus christic isle" in the final bridge seems to allude to. The bridge is missing from the above transcription:
When this Corpus Christic isle became a land of ocean blue Again, she cried, you turned my eye, At mentions of, no matter why, And in the end, an August sun, And one by one we blew Until the devil screamed in the evermore In envy of the grace we saw Oh the heavy water how it enfolds The salt, the spray, the gorgeous undertow Always, always, always the sea Brilliantine mortality
Brilliantine, as I understand it, is a hair styling product very popular during the second world war- an era that BSP refer to in various ways throughout The Decline Of...
"The battle of evermore" is a track of Led Zeppelin's famous fourth album, which featured guest vocals from Sandy Denny, one of the greatest english folk singers of the last century.
Scapa flow is in the Orkneys off the north of Scotland, it was the base of the Home Fleet in WW2 and a major naval base in WW1. Rotherhithe is one of the major areas of docks in london.
Throughout the song we have the past and the present - the enfolding heavy water perhaps alludes to the fact that much of Britain's nuclear capability is in the form of submarines, deep beneath the sea. Through out the past and the present we have the fact that the British Isles have been preserved (or defeated) as a result, at least in part, of british sea power...
^breakfast, i never would have picked up all those historical references in the song without you!
This is my favourite bsp. Its simply amazing. The lyrics are beautiful. I think i agree about the sea references, intertwining with the passing of time.
Breakfast pretty much spot on although in the bridge the lyrics are:
Amid fumes of formaldehyde
not as mentions of no matter why.