Language City

It's a great song. This seems to be a common theme through a lot of his songs. Wikipedia says he is from Lake Cowichan in BC, Canada, it's only a small town, so it may describe some of his anti-city sentiment.

But I have been full of shit before so I don't know. :)

Maybe it's

"When I interfere, it's best to avoid the law"

But...it's really hard to tell with Dan. Oh, and this song is dealing with the same hate of modern cities that Dan is always talking about. Modern World, Soldier's Grin, Handsome Furs Hate this City, etc.

Whatever this song means, its amazing no matter what. The only comment I can think of while listening to it, is yes. I like it. I like that they take lyrics to another level by just giving blunt messages about issues. Like the crowded cities that are always runing lives and the society. Amazing.

I started by wondering what Language City is, but I had no idea so I decided to come back to that.

The most apparent theme seems to be the observation of the repitition and meaninglessness of the modern life. Lines like "All this working Just to tear it down" demonstrate the perpetual cycle of building and rebuilding finite structures who's greatness never seems to last. This contributes to the sentiment among the workers that they're just "counting the hours" watching the clock go by at their unsatifying job.

This brought me back to wondering what Language City was, we know it is a "bad, old place" "Where eyeballs float in space."

I'm thinking it is the tower of Babel he is referencing - the biblical fable where man set out to build a structure to reach the heavens as a testiment to man's greatness but where God confused their common language in to many dialects to prevent them from completing the project. Eyes float in space might be referencing man's ambition to build into the stars and certaintly the biblical babel was "old and bad" in God's eyes.
Not saying this song has a Christian meaning or that the band is religious. but I think he is taking God as representing objective good and man's ambitious and perpetually failing effort to build the greatest city as being an empty pipedream that attempts to defy that objective good.

So the song traces the evil/pointless/unfulfilling nature of modern life back to biblical time saying we've come nowhere and gained nothing despite the civilization we believe we have built.

From an interview with Dan:

"Language City is about a coke party, where 'language city' is a metaphor for the pointlessness of staying up all night talking about nothing, and there’s also a bit of my trip to Russia in there too because there’s a pretty heavy party scene in Russia – something I found pretty terrifying…and fun."

Source: http://www.nightlifemagazine.ca/magazine/view/1108

"Language City is about a coke party"

Frank Booth just got owned.

/facepalm

Oh well, wild stab, I prefer my metropolis version.

I just discovered the one and only thing that bothers me about Dan's songs, in almost everyone there's a reference to stuff meaning nothing or only one thing. Has anyone else noticed this?

I have a feeling that a lot of songs are a lot simpler than we make them. They have more to do with day to day struggles and some extended biblical allegory.

when I saw them perform Dan mentioned that this song is about "Eastern European politics....and coke"

which makes sense. 'We are tired, we can't sleep' (coked out and talking pointlessly, and always about the same garbage)