Alien Landscape

orphans, prostitutes and whales.

The Mariner's Revenge Song is probably the Decemberists' best track. a full eight minutes of a mariner's journey of fulfilling his dying mother's last wish of making her former lover suffer and then die. it showcases the band's lyrical and musical genius perfectly! how bout that sailoresque accordian interlude eh! and the part where the song tremble and shake at the appearance of the whale! and that ending! this song is raw, rhythmic and salty.

i would recommend almost all their songs. from Leslie Anne Levine, an anguished cry of an abandoned child, to Red Right Ankle, about muscle and sinew in symmetry, to On The Busmall, a love song about runaways, to the wry A Cautionary Song about a boy's mother who was a prostitute, to A Bagman's Gambit, a sweet tale about an anarchist and a government officer being in love:

And at the gate of the embassy
our hands met through the bars
as your whisper stilled my heart:
"No they'll never catch me now.
No, they'll never catch me,
no they cannot catch me now.
We will escape somehow.
Somehow."

personally, this one is my favourite song of theirs. it's wistful, daring and epic; the description of my idea of a fairytale love.

my doomed girl, my discarded boy,

if i were to write a song, it would be about how randomly and carelessly we loved.

And I am a writer,
writer of fictions,
I am the heart that you call home.
And I've written pages upon pages
trying to rid you from my bones,
my bones, my bones.
Posted by NHJ 1/04/2007 12:45:00 pm

Thursday, January 04, 2007