Clara

I always thought this song was Chris talking about his unborn daughter. This song is basically just one big dream and the potential of love and he's just imagining what his future might be like with his unknown wife and child. He's waiting for the day that he meets them both, and he admits it may never happen, but he realizes that until he's found peace and love within/for himself, he won't find his true love and perfect family.

"Go back to sleep my daughter Go back to sleep my wife I'm waiting for you there"

these 3 lines are him letting the dream or wish go, and he is waiting for the world to bring them to him at the right time.

Also the line:

"Clara once upon a time your mother didn't love your father the best but he made believe that she did and one day it was true"

This is him talking about manifestation, or as more may be familiar with it as the law of attraction, which in this line he describes one of the steps to making your dreams come true, which is visualizing, or acting as if. He wants the woman he loves to love him too, and to want a family and one day she does. This is still all a twinkle in his eye though, and in the end just a wistful string of thoughts put into a beautiful song.

I saw him play this song at a show and he said it was about his future daughter or possibly Clara Bow, he was being coy, but that was all he said about it.

This is a complex, beautiful song.

Based on the yearning, minor chords, and Chris Thile's keening vocals, I think the song is about a small, young family of husband, wife, and infant daughter, told from the perspective of the husband.

The daughter appears infant or very young because of the line, "Someday if she's hungry I'll bring her to you" -- she must be carried and fed by the wife; usually infants are breastfed.

Some lines are ominous, and my opinion is they refer to death and suicide: "Someday don't wake up" "It's gonna be a long night" "And the sun may never shine"

My hypothesis is that this song is about a young husband who is tormented by the belief that his wife doesn't love him ("Clara once upon a time your mother didn't love your father the best" and "Clara once upon a time your father knew he'd scare your mother away"). However, as he looks into her eyes "one-way mirror to my soul" he also realizes the truth, that he doesn't love himself, and scares himself.

"Singing lovers live in a dream that keeps coming true" - this line suggests to me that the husband of the song attempts to kill his wife and himself, likely with sleeping pills. Or maybe he just tries to kill himself. He says, "Go back to sleep" to both his daughter and wife, so perhaps he was alone in bed, had taken the pills, and wanted to be found.

In any case, the man writes the song for his daughter Clara, and makes references to how she will understand it when she is older "she's still a song to play/Someday but you're ready to hear it's for you".

Frontman Chris Thile sings "Douglas Fir" about five years later. There's a Clara in that song too:

"No sooner does the Fir grow tall In Clara's dream Than we lose our little girl And gain (and gain) a sugar plum fairy"

Clara is a daughter who's already died. He's sining to her. He's not asking her to come back ("Someday don't wake up I want you to get some rest").

But he's talking to her all the same and possibly struggling with suicidal thoughts in the wake of the tragedy.

Bottom line, there's a lot of himself that can't be separated from who he is in relation to her: her father. And there's a lot he wants to tell her regardless of whether he'll make it out of his grief ("It's gonna be a long night... your eyes are not a window, they're a one-way mirror to my soul")

But he still ends with trying to let her go. "I want you to get some rest."

This song is incredibly complex and I've been trying to decipher it for some time now. It's important with music from complex artists like Chris Thile to lean hard into the choice of chords, and this song is a great example of how the musician uses chords to tell the story in how to feel and sense the message, beyond just what the words might be.

Thile loves to play with dichotomies and contrast in his music. The song is predominantly major chords with a playful, light melody, until at the end of each verse it turns dark and the chords jump to minor.

This is the bait and switch approach, the listener trods along with a mostly harmless and happy message until the message turns from innocent to maleficent.

I'll break this down by verse:

"Someday don't wake up I want you to get some rest Someday if she's hungry I'll bring her to you Clara once upon a time your mother didn't love your father the best But he made believe that she did one day it was true"

This is an active perspective from that of someone looking over another person, specifically a conscious person overlooking an unconscious person (it's only later in the song we realize that "unconscious" means "dead", bait and switch). The "didn't love your father the best" is the nod to a selfish motive. The interesting thing is the "made believe" line where it seems the father is looking to get something out of this new relationship without the mother in the picture. This plays well into the next verse.

"Someday I wake up and she's still a song to play Someday but you're ready to hear it's for you Clara once upon a time your father knew he'd scare your mother away Singing lovers live in a dream that keeps coming true"

This feels like a confession. Whether in this life or after death (see chorus). "a song to play" is manipulative, controlling. "ready to hear it's for you" is redirection of the first verse, which leads me to think at this point the father is at least considering killing the daughter. And the next two lines are his justification for his actions, contributing to the confession.

I skipped the chorus on purpose, because I think it changes meaning as the father decides to take his own life, and as Thile uses it first as an innocent statement, moves on to maleficent, and concludes with suicidal. Each line has a weight that changes with the context of the previous verse and the listener's thoughts to the father's intentions.

The patterning of the last verse is incredibly interesting to me. The repetition suggests a look back at the fathers actions, as if recounting what he has done in killing both his wife and then his daughter. The last lines break the cycle of 2-1-2-1 to 3-1, the third in the last is the self-realization of the father of his actions. The first eyes that are not a window are his wife's. The second his daughter's. The third his own, a one way mirror to his soul.

And he takes his life with the same words he's used to justify the taking of the lives of his family. "someday don't wake up I want you to get some rest", but this time the context is that of somebody who can no longer live with themselves and their actions, rather than that of a loving father figure.