Execution Day

I think this song is all about dread. He woke up today knowing full well that it was execution day, but it didn't make it any easier. The early verses call to mind lots of images of regret. "Oh blast, I drank the wrong draft down" "We promised to play fair" "What a cinch it would have been had we been there" and then the end seems to be saying that even though you dread the end, you can't slow it's coming. True to form it's always going to be execution day. Dreading it won't stop it.

I love the nod to The Who..."When you claim to see for miles..."

It's about someone breaking up with the person who wrote the song.

This is the only New Pornographers song I've heard with this uneasy tone in it, and I'm only missing their Whiteout Conditions album.

To me, the song's about feeling quite uneasy, and a day (or period of time, or just "time") started; it began in terror, and it ended in terror. It might have advertised itself as salvation, but it ended as it truly was.

The singer's involved; "Oh blast, I drank the wrong draft down." In other words, he got involved. It's an old way of speaking, like that Bible verse of Jesus' disciples asking to drink the cup Jesus drinks - not the same cup that the singer here drinks, mind you.

I'm not sure why the names "Madrigal" and "Marigold" are used here. I refuse to blindly believe that they're irrelevant, though. But why don't they come out and play, or help, or whatever?

Some of the words are about having faith in a false prophet, which causes anxiety and terror and uneasiness. The prophet's smiles are exaggerated, and they're all for show. They're painted on, and what's behind the mask? Nothing of loving, considerate, Christlike kindness. "When you claim to see for miles, you don't, but I believe that you do."

Also, the "Two sips from your crown" line is very similarly repeated in a later New Pornographers song, "Use It" from their Twin Cinema album, released in 2005.

In this first song released in 2000, it is this:

"Oh blast, I drank the wrong draft down Two sips from your crown The drops you left for me Am I so easily appeased?"

Taking the whole song in context, it's about the singer realizing, "I drank a measly amount of a not life-sustaining solution; mere drops, all from the 'crown' of 'royalty.' I need water, but this is not only not enough, it's poisoning, adding insults to injury."

Now, back to the later song released in 2005. In "Use It," the line is "Two sips from the crown of human kindness, and I'm shit-faced."

This one sounds like getting drunk off either kindness, or false kindness. Either way, it's drunk, so it's not the clearest thinking, and it can be over-confident and stupid. However, I'm only taking the one line out of the entire song, without context of that song. I'd like to analyze that song, too. Maybe I'll have thoughts posted about "Use It" by the time you see this.

This a great song, but: On this day which began as execution day, And sure enough became execution day.

On this day which began as execution day, And true to form became execution day.

seems kind of lame to me.