Omaha

Cool to see a lot of mine overlaps. Wrote this for a paper just now. Rock on Crows/fans.

This song speaks wonders to me. It indirectly confronts the fear of wasting life on a monotonous, everyday job, as paralleled by the various descriptions of setting up a mill–a factory, essentially a machine–in a town in “Middle America.” Each verse advances these steps of constructing a mill, almost lamenting on the process of carrying out a strenuous task in order to begin the same cycle of production over and over again. The chorus echoes sentiments concerning this fear, with the feeling that the “heart” matters more than the “heart of matters” (the mill and life), showing a lack of connection between the speaker and society–detachment. As evidenced in the chorus, the speaker feels that the spectator (listener) should go somewhere else, because there is nothing of worth to be seen by his accomplishments–“turn your ticket in and get your money back at the door.” As each verse compounds on the previous one with the building of a mill, so is the idiom “turn a new leaf over” expanded to cover various topics. In the first verse the speaker feels that he is doing what others before him have done countless times, as he “tear[s] the old man down” so he can feel that he is on the forefront of his occupation. When he rolls a new leaf over, he is actually not doing anything of the sort, just repeating history; likewise, when he says to “roll a new life over,” he is doing the same. The speaker also feels that he is failing with relationships, when he “turns [his] girl into the ground” and “roll[s] a new love over.” Other themes are present in this song, such as the theme of inferiority and fear of trying. This is exemplified through the repetition of the speaker fearing old and young men “walk[ing] all over [him].” He feels that no matter what he does, he will still be outdone by others that are seemingly “walk[ing] on water.” This also is a reference to God, and the speaker feeling inferior to him. This recurring use of water and rain is transformed in the third verse with the line “come up through the summer rain,” signifying an epiphany, a redemption of sorts that is later finished at the end of the song. There, the speaker concedes his fight with life and his conflicts, and accepts his fate–coming home, accepting his ordeal.