Arcs and Coulombs

Your candy apple lips keep sinking all my ships, And you're the one who sang for Lusitania But somehow don't register its pain at all. With your serum in my veins To help me not not remember the Maine.

So if we let our backbones slip Let the arcs spit from our fingertips Till we've become a hazard in the rain. Yeah we'll get charged out in the rain.

And there's a 60-cycle hum. Go ahead say something dumb, boy, there's no shame. There's no shame. Go ahead say something dumb, boy, there's no shame.

This song is freaking amazing.

The Lusitania was a British ship sunk at the beginning of World War I, and the Maine was the ship whose sinking was catalytic in the beginning of the Spanish-American War. The slogan, "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!" became a rallying cry for anti-Spanish sentiment.

There are references to electricity run throughout the song. The title is a play on words; it refers to electrics arcs (a discharge of electricity through air between two electrodes) and Coulombs (the unit for electrical charge, named after Charles-Augustin de Coulomb), but also brings to mind architectural arcs and columns. This gives new meaning to the lines, "Let the arcs spit from my fingertips/Till we'll become a hazard in the rain./Yeah we'll get charged out in the rain." They're a "hazard" because the metaphorical electrical charge running between them is conducted through all the water. The "60-second hum" is a reference to the Mains hum (yet another play on words--the Maine sounds like Mains). The Mains hum is the sound electricity lines make, which oscilates at 60 Hz (Hertz=cycles per second).

This is obviously an early version of the song "Lusitania" from Andrew Bird's album Break It Yourself.