Cold Brains

I think he's using metaphors about death as a larger metaphor for something else. Perhaps he's making a "Pink Floydian" wall around himself or perhaps he's just depressed and drifting through life like a corpse. When you're depressed, everything loses its appeal and you go where you're pulled and drift aimlessly if left alone. Your mind as well as the rest of you can just feel empty and fail to appreciate any aspect of life (meaning that I interpret the "evacuated heavens" as his mind and the "bird of song," "heard no longer," would refer to complete loss of interest.

Weariness, boredom, apathy, decay, putrefaction, death: isn't Mutations a cheerful LP?

(Yes I'm being ironic, somewhat. But it's my favorite Beck LP. Which probably should make me at least a bit concerned.)

I love the way Beck sings the words "it doesn't matter," as if he's so apathetic he doesn't care whether he pronounces them quite correctly.

Sounds like death. Sounds like Beck's a ghost, waiting for some final death to take him either to heaven or hell. In the meantime, he's disowned by both, and it's as if death is mocking him and heaven is closed off to him.

What a great way to end life: lying for eternity.

Alone at last I wish i was!!! :)

Yeah, I think it's about death and being in limbo not knowing where he's going to go after he dies. I like the way Beck has with imagery and words. Definitely shows a different side to Beck from Mellow Gold.

I like the maybe weary or tired feeling of this song. Makes me think of a vagrant dragging his heels through a desolate desert. I think this song is also about both despair and a feeling that your brain is decaying from idleness. Beck's way with word images is super.

Obviously its about death in general. Alone At Last - In the ground just alone obviosly. We ride disowned - Riding in the herse to the graveyard ect. Very deep song. one of his bests.

)

...forgot to close my parenthetical note.

I agree with the previous comment. Not in that Mutations is my favourite Beck LP (that would be Midnite Vultures - I know, but come on... it's a damn fun album), but in all those themse and emotions one gets from not just the lyrics, or indeed from the music, but from a combination of the two. The lazy guitar strumming on the verses compliments the lyrical content, while the odd heavily-wah'd guitar in the background and the airy keyboard on the chorus give a sense of antipathy or absurdity when these more light-hearted instrumental aspects are paired against lyrics referring to hearses and corroding to the bone. Again, I must also agree with the former comment in their enjoyment of the apathy with which Beck delivers a lot of the lines, particularly the "hangman's rope," which is sung with a small measure of awkwardness, perhaps surprise even. Great song, reminds me very much of Sgt. Pepper's era Beatles, in a strange way, which is never a bad thing.