"The Rip Tide" as written by and Zach Condon....
And this is the house where I
I feel alone
Feel alone now
And this is the house where I
Could be unknown
Be alone now
Soon the waves and I found the rolling tide
Soon the waves and I found the rip tide
This is the house where I
I feel alone
Feel alone now
And this is the house where I
Could be unknown
Be alone now
Soon the waves and I found the rolling tide
Soon the waves and I found the rip tide
I feel alone
Feel alone now
And this is the house where I
Could be unknown
Be alone now
Soon the waves and I found the rolling tide
Soon the waves and I found the rip tide
This is the house where I
I feel alone
Feel alone now
And this is the house where I
Could be unknown
Be alone now
Soon the waves and I found the rolling tide
Soon the waves and I found the rip tide
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Give me some feedback..I hope this song get's more comments. This was my first favorite song off the new album. Twitter: @Neskrov.
I came, I saw, I conquered. me, myself, and I
well said.
I identify with it and maybe interpret it as such, but I get the feeling of revisiting "home" after many years. It's the feeling you get when, after leaving the place where you grew up for several years, you come "home" to find the place only vaguely familiar, and find the loneliness that comes with being somewhere where you only know a few people, as most of your old friends have either drifted away or moved on with their lives. I would get a minor sense of it when I lived overseas and would return over the summer, and then would return again after moving away after college (now there's virtually no connection), but someone recently related it well to me, telling the story of going into a bar in their relatively small hometown and finding that they knew no one there, and that was the sign that this was no longer their "home" but, instead, just a place that they knew, as if it were a place where they had never lived but only knew it from visits.
There's a peaceful loneliness at these vaguely nostalgic and vaguely comforting places, and that's what I think this song is talking about. The "house" is a somewhat literal "home" reference, while the "rolling tide" is the general flow of life and moving on.
From : npr.org/2011/09/10/140318038/…
"Now 25, Condon has just released Beirut's latest album, The Rip Tide. The title comes from an experience Condon had on the road in Brazil last summer — though, for once, it had nothing to do with the local music.
"During a quiet moment at the beach between shows, a rip tide took me out pretty far — I was struggling to get back in," he says. "As I came back in, a wave crushed me and actually punctured a hole in my eardrum.
"It just got me thinking: These last five years of my life, me and everyone I'm close to have all been taken by this bigger force that's mostly out of our control," he says. "And I spent the rest of the year trying to find a home and settle down. I'd spent too many years living out of a suitcase. I guess calling [the album] The Rip Tide was saying goodbye to that sort of lifestyle.""
To me, The Rip Tide is about feeling at peace with being alone. I am so passionate about music but I’ve never really had many friends who share that passion with me and this song just pours all of those feelings out for me... because yes, I do feel alone and misunderstood but I also tend to embrace that feeling of loneliness because it’s what makes me me and I am proud of my individuality. I’ve learned to be content with that feeling of loneliness...
So, the literal meaning would probably be this: in some random interview I came across a couple of days ago, zach Condon said he wrote this album when he finally felt like he settled somewhere for the first time in his life after his adventure in Europe (where beiruts previous albums were written in). And this song and the central meaning of the entire album is about just that, finding the rip tide and just finally finding a true home. I'm pretty sure he settled in new York, and that's where the song "east Harlem" comes from, which is also from this album.
However, I'm pretty sure Zach Condon nor most artists want the lyrics of a song to be confined to their own personal experiences, but instead want the listeners to relate to the lyrics in their own unique way--that's why most lyrics are so obscure. So, I feel like it's especially important to make your own personal meaning when listening to this song, since the lyrics are so open-ended. Mine would be feeling like I've finally found an internal meaning or purpose in life. When he talks about feeling alone in a house, I personally take it as a non-literal manner since I literally do feel alone everyday since my sister left for college this year. And, you know I have a history of chronic depression and I have been feeling down for a while now. But when I first listened to this song and felt his vocals just seep deep inside of me, I felt an odd peace of some kind, like I knew something more. And that's what the rip tide is for me, that internal place of knowing.
but that's just me.
also, on a side note, I'm pretty sure some of lyrics are wrong: it's supposed to be "so the waves and i....." not "soon the waves and i....''