Shine a Light

i think actually that it is very obvious. we just live these lives of work and plans, which never eralise, we just plan, dream about something at night, which never arrives, but we still feel quite confident, that it will just happen one day. but it won't. that's the dilemma - how to fight it?

This song is one of the easiest Wolf Parade songs to understand. Obviously it is about struggling with life and the eventual and inevitable end of life.

We "spend boring lives" in an office tower, a meaningless life we are "chained to." So what happens in the end? We die, that's it? According to the singer, "no one gets out alive." He is at peace with death, singing "I'm content to be quiet." A lovely song overall.

instead of "something's flowing, someone buried alive" i hear "some folks float some are buried alive."

it's an incredible song though. i love the accordion.

I heard an interview with Spencer, the singer. It was like that; He once worked in "office towers". All day working on the same thing, talking about the same things. The monotonity drives him into a kind of desperation but without loosing his head. That really worn him out, making him writing this song!

Sorry - http://www.cokemachineglow.com/feature/interview/wolfparade.html

This song carries the same theme that Modest Mouse does in their song "One Chance." Both pessimistic yet feeling fatalistic in the sense of life's destiny. Anyway, I totally feel the song, I've been philosophical these days and songs like this are totally attracting my attention. It gives me an channel to what I'm feeling about life.

This song reminds me of the movie Ikiru by Kirosawa. For those who haven't seen it it's about an old beaurocrat who's wasted his life accomp[lishing nothing in an office who finds out he's got stomach cancer. He starts staying out every night trying to live and feel the joy that he's lacked for so long. This song reminds me of that persuit for life as we all get closer and closer to death.

Oh yes, and go see the movie. It may not be in English or in color, but it made me cry, and think (a lot), and any movie that can do both those things is pretty damn good in my book.

I think this song relates to Kafka's "Metamorphosis." People spend their whole lives worried about plans and routines and they don't realize that they aren't really living, or "barely alive." Before they know it, they get turned into giant bugs. Or in the case of this song, they die.

this song feels like it is about working the night shift. at least it reminds me of that because i work in an office from 10pm-6am every night, make my plans at night, bus back home barely alive, and don't sleep till it's light.

literal... but personal...

This is the least depressing sounding song I've heard by them. Listening to it I could not get over how different it sounded from the others and it took a while to realize why. Still I enjoy every second I listen to it. And the whole "our hearts beat time" is just so how I've always felt. And the part about not sleeping til it's light was just SO the spring/summer I started listening to them. It affects the way you feel about life doing weird stuff like that for a longish period of time.