Newborn
I'll be the corpse in your bathtub
Useless
I'll be as deaf as a post
If you hold me like a newborn
Whisper what you feel
My badly strung declaration
To You
You'll spend the end of your days
Gently smiling like a newborn
Love not by degrees
Press your lips
To my eyes
Taste my tears
On your tongue,
Pull the blinds
Play our song
Nothings changed
Nothing could be wrong.
Scream in the night
Kick and skrike
Like a newborn
Holding me shaking
Awake in the dark
All of these promises
Kept and unbroken
Tracing the scars
Tracing the scars
Even and cold
As we both become older.
Your arms bound about me
The hush in your voice.
The warmth of your fingers
Entwined around mine
In the eve of our lives
Never a choice.
I had an absolute infatuation with this album circa Sophomore year of high school... Like Radiohead, Elbow has this way of setting ambiguous lyrics to haunting music. In Newborn above we begin with the line: " I'll be the corpse in your bathtub, Useless, I'll be as deaf as a post, If you hold me like a newborn" shocking and metaphorically honest - yet set to Guy's floating voice and the band's flowing arrangement. Elbow, because of their lyrics, is a hard case to deal with. I want the voice to be another instrument in the 'sonic stew' (note: I've been trying to conjure that phrase for weeks!! And instead I've been saying music chutney!) but I CAN'T, the lyrics strike me down like I got hit with a pipe to the back of the head... They dumbfound me- I keep on asking questions: what is the original context, and why? What is going on here, how does it effect me and my connection to the music? I suppose when lyrics become brutally honest, when they pull the mind and heart into different places they effect me on a meta level where I have to think of what the voice is saying instead of considering it as just another instrument in the ensemble. To sum that up: the words have meaning and have an effect on me. I guess my biggest question is what every song writer strives for - how do the lyrics balance with the music perfectly to signify a certain meaning while not becoming just another instrument? I don't know, i guess this is the topic I am willing to delve into.
I've been reading a lot of critical/literary theory over the past year and a half. Semiotics, the signs, etc. My question is how do the sound patterns of words combines with music, and fits into the 'sonic stew'? This question has really got me thinking. But, I will leave this post hanging. Lots to think about before next time; how language/words become signifers and being signified in music.
