Lyrics like, "something gets to die when something lives" are functionally meaningless, yet when thrown into the right type of sky-riding rock song, they can be later justified as a kind of pitch-perfect emotional fodder. Deportees, a band we posted about a few weeks back, do just this on older single, "Islands and Shores". Recalling a less bombastic Temper Trap, the down-cast guitars are set against a swirling mixture of synths, backing vocals and strings. The climactic lyric, the chorus, risks being just as un-utilitarian as the the one about living and dying. This time the band intones, "looking out for this love, looking out for us," as a choir of voices rise in the background and the arrangement reaches its high-water mark. Accomplishing meaning in reverse, Deportees build an architecture that gives weight to the lyrics inside it, even if those lyrics struggle to find to find the same weight at their center. When done right, and this qualifies, these moments and couplets can be recast as desperately important. A line like, "if it was up to me I'd give you all the oceans" pulled off the yearbook page and thrust, improbably and incredibly, into your short term memory.
No comments:
Post a Comment