Vegas Lyrics

Lyric discussion by iLikeIt 

Cover art for Vegas lyrics by Big Thief

Not about gambling in Vegas but loss. So maybe kinda bout Vegas. But it’s not loss or winning but lost or accepted. But line by line she meets a guy she thinks tough as nails and he says “hey let’s go to this auto show”. Then it kills him and he breaks down worse than any car, outta nowhere. Because of memories of past loss and trauma. Maybe they worked on cars together maybe anything. A pushed down feeling. We all have them. That’s the greatness of this song. The ambiguity mixed with concrete. The dad drove away into what may as well have been the ocean. Ocean, o shun. My step too far but she says it twice and I like the syllables. He cries in the lights of everything at the expo and Vegas, strip. Naked as one can be. And goes through the motions listening to the cars in the blazing lights of Vegas. A weird Elliott smith rose parade of loss. He admits in the hotel room His father left him at thirteen. He left for the land or the ocean, at some point what is overstatement. If you’re here now, then gone, not dead, never see you again, you’re just somewhere. After the admission they did things together. Then they’re the usual bedroom philosophical. Like David berman in the silver Jews song “random rules” “I asked the painter why the roads are colored black, he said steve it’s because people leave and no highway will bring them back.” The whole song is full of opposites which join them together. Because at the end the thing that brings them together is the ocean taste but in its accepting form. And he explicitly said she’s “a woman to keep” and she called him “a man” . The salty ocean is a tripled meaning throughout the song. Just made me think of a movie I’d say to watch cause few have. On Netflix. “Mustang island” “Macon Blair” is an amazing everything. Type his name into streaming services. And buy tickets to every big thief show! Seriously. They are so amazing.