In regards to the meaning of this song:
Before a live performance on the EP Five Stories Falling, Geoff states “It’s about the last time I went to visit my grandmother in Columbus, and I saw that she was dying and it was the last time I was going to see her. It is about realizing how young you are, but how quickly you can go.”
That’s the thing about Geoff and his sublime poetry, you think it’s about one thing, but really it’s about something entirely different. But the lyrics are still universal and omnipresent, ubiquitous, even. So relatable. That’s one thing I love about this band. I also love their live performances, raw energy and Geoff’s beautiful, imperfectly perfect vocals. His voice soothes my aching soul.
I'll be the grapes fermented
Bottled and served with the table set in my finest suit
Like a perfect gentlemen
I'll be the fire escape that's bolted to the ancient brick
Where you will sit and contemplate your day
I'll be the water wings that save you if you start drowning in an open tab
When your judgment's on the brink
I'll be the phonograph that plays your favorite albums back
As your lying there drifting off to sleep
I'll be the platform shoes and undo what heredity's done to you
You won't have to strain to look into my eyes
I'll be your winter coat buttoned and zipped straight to the throat
With the collar up so you won't catch a cold
I want to take you far from the cynics in his town
And kiss you on the mouth
We'll cut out bodies free from the tethers of this scene
Start a brand new colony
Where everything will change
We'll give ourselves new names, identities erased
The sun will hear the grounds
Under our bare feet in this brand new colony (this brand new colony)
Everything will change, ooh, ooh
Everything will change, ooh, ooh
Everything will change, ooh, ooh
Bottled and served with the table set in my finest suit
Like a perfect gentlemen
I'll be the fire escape that's bolted to the ancient brick
Where you will sit and contemplate your day
I'll be the water wings that save you if you start drowning in an open tab
When your judgment's on the brink
I'll be the phonograph that plays your favorite albums back
As your lying there drifting off to sleep
I'll be the platform shoes and undo what heredity's done to you
You won't have to strain to look into my eyes
I'll be your winter coat buttoned and zipped straight to the throat
With the collar up so you won't catch a cold
I want to take you far from the cynics in his town
And kiss you on the mouth
We'll cut out bodies free from the tethers of this scene
Start a brand new colony
Where everything will change
We'll give ourselves new names, identities erased
The sun will hear the grounds
Under our bare feet in this brand new colony (this brand new colony)
Everything will change, ooh, ooh
Everything will change, ooh, ooh
Everything will change, ooh, ooh
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"Fast car" is kind of a continuation of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run." It has all the clawing your way to a better life, but in this case the protagonist never makes it with her love; in fact she is dragged back down by him.
There is still an amazing amount of hope and will in the lyrics; and the lyrics themselve rank and easy five. If only music was stronger it would be one of those great radio songs that you hear once a week 20 years after it was released. The imagery is almost tear-jerking ("City lights lay out before us", "Speeds so fast felt like I was drunk"), and the idea of starting from nothing and just driving and working and denigrating yourself for a chance at being just above poverty, then losing in the end is just painful and inspiring at the same time.
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This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
Cajun Girl
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Overall about difficult moments of disappointment and vulnerability. Having hope and longing, while remaining optimistic for the future. Encourages the belief that with each new morning there is a chance for things to improve.
The chorus offers a glimmer of optimism and a chance at a resolution and redemption in the future.
Captures the rollercoaster of emotions of feeling lost while loving someone who is not there for you, feeling let down and abandoned while waiting for a lover. Lost with no direction, "Now I'm up in the air with the rain in my hair, Nowhere to go, I can go anywhere"
The bridge shows signs of longing and a plea for companionship. The Lyrics express a desire for authentic connection and the importance of Loving someone just as they are. "Just in passing, I'm not asking. That you be anyone but you”
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This song is written as the perspective of the boys in the street, as a whole, and what path they are going to choose as they get older and grow into men. (This is why the music video takes place in an orphanage.) The seen, and unseen collective suffering is imbedded in the boys’ mind, consciously or subconsciously, and is haunting them. Which path will the boys choose? Issac Hayes is the voice of reason, maybe God, the angel on his shoulder, or the voice of his forefathers from beyond the grave who can see the big picture and are pleading with the boys not to continue the violence and pattern of killing their brothers, but to rise above. The most beautiful song and has so many levels. Racism towards African Americans in America would not exist if everyone sat down and listened to this song and understood the history behind the words. The power, fear, pleading in RZA and Ghostface voices are genuine and powerful. Issac Hayes’ strong voice makes the perfect strong father figure, who is possibly from beyond the grave.
The theme of this song is pretty straightforward as a message of loving. This has been my favorite of Postal Service's songs for some time and I mainly liked it due to its frankness and bald sentimentality.
One particular point which catches my eye now that I read the lyrics again is that this song really matches the great poetry of the English Renaissance.
The lyrics start out with a load of awesome metaphysical conceits (is Ben Gibbard our modern Donne?), personifying himself in the roles of such absurd yet poignant objects such as the platform shoes and the phonograph. This reminded me of Donne's Renaissance masterpiece of a poem "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning" in which he compares himself and his wife to the legs of a compass.
Then there is a shift where the speaker begins to speak more of dreams and the future, which matches perfectly the pastorals of seventeenth and eighteenth century England. Just as the pastoral poems idealized life out in the country, Gibbard romanticizes the notion of taking his lover "far from the cynics in this town" to a place where they can feel "the sun... heat the ground under [...their] bare feet".
In addition to the rural setting, the song also expresses itself in an idyllic, flighty fashion. Of course, I must also mention the other quality which can be matched up with Renaissance poetry, the fact that it is a wooing call from a lover.
This song alone stands as great proof that Ben Gibbard is indeed a poet with his songwriting, crafting a charming, yet modern, pastoral for this generation to enjoy.