Put It Off

Love Tara is the name of an album released in 1993 by a band called Eric's Trip. I guess Gord Downie and his mates thought the album was cutesy or something, but it affected them enough to bury it in one of their more obscure songs. Oddly enough, Eric's Trip was signed in or around 1990 by Subpop Records, which is the label of another one of my favorite artists, Iron & Wine.

The cosmic connections we define for ourselves sometimes.

By the way, great tune.

i love this song

Downie's first child was born the same year the album was released. I always thought this song could be about him relating to the birth of his child. I figure that he may have been dealing with some type of creative block over what was good enough on the day his child was born. Even though he had an incredible creative flow, nothing lived up to what he wanted so 'he put it off.'

Yes, it's about the birth of a child. Gord's trying to find a way to "feel" about the whole father thing. All of the verses are juxtaposing his actions in opposition to what he knows or thinks he "should" feel about a new born. In the first verse, Gord is challenging his love for the written word versus the power of parenting. "Sure babies might be cute, but words can be more nasty than babies can be cute" he suspects, but after he's done writing he's torn/unconvinced by the experiment. The second verse is a similar comparison in that I'm pretty sure Gord would have a pretty strong dislike for religious extremists, but he is testing the waters by creating some distasteful art in their genre. Once again, he's unconvinced by the test. Lastly, is a final effort to convince himself once and for all that his new baby really is amazing. Everyone else I'm sure would have been telling him about how "gorgeous" the new baby was (cuz that's what you're supposed to say) but he's unconvinced by all the intentionally systematic flattery. He's like "it's just a crying and pooping organism, I don't see what the big deal is. It's kind of unadorned." I believe Gord also sees the album "Love Tara by Eric's Trip" as kind of a blah piece of work lacking in depth and meaning. The album was pretty highly regarded at the time, but he just couldn't find anything cute about it. It was unadorned as are most babies in their first couple weeks. In the end, I don't think any of the experiments helped as the outro seems to perpetuate the lack of ultimate solution on the subject.