Wow, this song has always seriously fucked with my mind in the most glorious way... I prefer the version on the live single/EP Cotton Crown/PCH but the studio version from Sister is amazing too.
What gets me is the juxtaposition between the lyrical portions of the song, which are so urgent and tense and raw, and the instrumental part in the middle, which is so grand with woozy, disorienting beauty that it makes my brain spin. I've commuted on the PCH for 14 years and there are days that I feel that beauty, my head like a balloon, making me nearly laugh out loud - how can I be seeing the sun sparkling on the water like this, like a painting, like an advertisement for that idea of California that we all know isn't true but we still want to believe in... mountains rising to the east... you could almost reach out and touch the Farallones... and is that a fucking WHALE?!??!
And then there are days I don't really see anything at all, head down with the stress of life... "COME ON GET IN THE CAR!", nothing but the raw shit of mundane existence.
So what's the narrator of this song going through while she's singing? Abduction? Seduction? Where is she when pure, instrumental bliss washes over her? To me this song is about those highs and lows, their strangeness, their purity, two sides of the same coin. Recently a few cars have gone over the edge of my little stretch of the PCH with much debate in their wake. Was it an accident or a suicide? Do we need a guardrail or barrier, better access to mental health care?
Instead I wonder, as they plunged, were they uttering clenched, angry words or awash with gorgeous chords straddling harmony and dissonance as the sun set beneath the fog, lighting up the sky? It's all there on the PCH.
Wow, this song has always seriously fucked with my mind in the most glorious way... I prefer the version on the live single/EP Cotton Crown/PCH but the studio version from Sister is amazing too.
What gets me is the juxtaposition between the lyrical portions of the song, which are so urgent and tense and raw, and the instrumental part in the middle, which is so grand with woozy, disorienting beauty that it makes my brain spin. I've commuted on the PCH for 14 years and there are days that I feel that beauty, my head like a balloon, making me nearly laugh out loud - how can I be seeing the sun sparkling on the water like this, like a painting, like an advertisement for that idea of California that we all know isn't true but we still want to believe in... mountains rising to the east... you could almost reach out and touch the Farallones... and is that a fucking WHALE?!??!
And then there are days I don't really see anything at all, head down with the stress of life... "COME ON GET IN THE CAR!", nothing but the raw shit of mundane existence.
So what's the narrator of this song going through while she's singing? Abduction? Seduction? Where is she when pure, instrumental bliss washes over her? To me this song is about those highs and lows, their strangeness, their purity, two sides of the same coin. Recently a few cars have gone over the edge of my little stretch of the PCH with much debate in their wake. Was it an accident or a suicide? Do we need a guardrail or barrier, better access to mental health care?
Instead I wonder, as they plunged, were they uttering clenched, angry words or awash with gorgeous chords straddling harmony and dissonance as the sun set beneath the fog, lighting up the sky? It's all there on the PCH.