Owen Pallet just announced that he's giving up the FF name, because squeenix finally made the ":/" face long enough to convince his label that continuing under that name would be "unwise," specially for the album's release in Japan. "My name is Owen Pallett." Yes it is.
I guess that might represent a new direction in his songwriting style. The lyrics for heartland have been released for ages, and they definitely show a distance away from some of his past themes. Has a Good Home and He Poos Clouds both had heavy fantasy influences while being starkly, often disturbingly, realist, but the later album, plus the 3 EPs since then (counting X) showed even more wild imagery while being even darker; yet the video game references have died away. Yeah, I shrieked when I heard the Link's Awakening in "He Poos Clouds," but the "Into the mouth of Final Fantasy" was the last direct reference I've heard and can decipher. He is a tricky man, quiet in an aggressive way.
Anyway, my purpose is to do a post by post lyrical analysis of Heartland, anticipating it's 2010 release. I'm happy to say I'm daytripping up to Montreal to catch the end of his release tour. I bet I could find a bridge to sleep under, but I'll find a 10 dollar hostel near the Outrement and stick around after the show. So to the lyrics: let's go line by line
Cross her off the shortlist.A lot of the album's themes have to do with masculinity, in relation to violence and sexuality, and they start planting their seeds here. The "her" to remove, very likely Lewis' wife, floats in and out of the narrative, like a specter of conscience or the like. But just as in the narrative, the violence supersedes that femininity: you can imagine the sharp movement of the pencil (a la Death Note) cutting her off from his "shortlist," an odd choice of word that probably highlights the way he's objectifying her into a list in his life.
My blood is a red-winged bird.
The way will be lit by the bridges we burn, oh.
He sees his life as dull, grounded; only through cutting her off and steeping himself in violence ("red") can he obtain any sort of freedom ("bird"). Lewis' blood boils and takes flight away from her, like a grand adventure. There's a paradox in the third line: "by burning the path behind us, we light the path before us" or even more directly, "kill the past to open the future." Lewis is making huge gestures that isolate himself from what he has, going through some darkness (otherwise, what need is there for light?) on his wild purpose. Burning, killing, trying to create light in what he sees as a dark world.
And come, tornado!
Carry me away from the croft.
Ruffle my hair, bear my body aloft, oh.
Speaking of the world about, it's the 14th century land of Spectrum, and apparently there are...tornadoes. There are two kinds of violence in Lewis' world: that within him, and that without him. The call upon nature to bear him up and treat him personally is a prayer to nature, to a cosmic unity and sense. But the world is already dark, the world already has tornadoes in him; the cosmic order that Lewis wants is just as violent as he is. "Croft" is an enclosed field area, and it makes reference to Lewis' profession as a farmer, a life he's actively rejecting.
As the cutlass came down on a Saturday night,The chorus (repeated once later) sets definitely the thematic stuff in the first verse. Feeling a sense of adventure and youthfulness from (a) romanticized violence in a cutlass, and (b) a romanticized "night" on the Saturday, Lewis abandons his responsibility at home, both to his work and his (female) family. Two interesting notes on that first line: there's no need for the cutlass to have a wielder, all that Lewis seeks is his adventure; and there are possible religious connotations in Saturday.
Left an un-planted field, left my daughter and wife.
Called away into service, for a clerical life.
Left an un-planted field, left my daughter and wife.
The repetition of the fourth line only amplifies the leaving as a consequence of what he calls a "clerical life." The God-figure in the rest of this story is named Owen, aptly. Lewis sees his violence, and the violence he's seeking, as ordained from God. It's a duty! There's a solipsism in that. The implications of Owen as god sorta stretch out over the entire work, but there's a little bit of a play on the nature of fantasy (as one who focused his first two LPs on, bore the name of, and seemed to have been influenced by, fantasy works).
Thought I was a sad-boy.Lewis rewrites his past. The quip about "saturday night" above, implying a sort of youthful debauchery, also implies that Lewis is returning to a previous lifestyle/mindset. You could call it regression, but the main point is that he's rewriting the past. The supposed grown-up development that made him settle down confined him, and he's finding release in something he had already surpassed, or so we think. He needs to repeat the "I know" just to keep the momentum going (or Owen just needs to fill a line...). The "you" can't be anything but Owen, the greater sense of cosmic violence that he's returning to. He calls his pat "content," as if his soul has calm and unity in destruction. That's a bit of a contradiction in itself, but it'll be contested. It's also kind of fun to think of Owen swooping Lewis up romantically, but the role of sexuality/human-to-human stuff comes later. Right now, Lewis is freeing himself from the present.
Now I know, I know, I know I was wrong.
Since you came along, I can see how content I had been.
It'll drive a man crazy to age from the outside in.
But I have a plan, it's a trick with a prick of a pin.
"Age" and youthfulness, yeah. Think of "outside-in" aging as feeling your body crumble and decay, weaken, stiffen, and fade while your mind clings to a past ideal. It's...watching everything fade away from you as you're totally lucid, rather than "inside-out" ing, becoming sedentary in mind and then in body. The former is too much for a man who idolizes his youth, so he rebels not only against the life he's created, but from age itself.
The second line is a bit vague, but has some elements. Lewis' method is destruction and cutting ties with the past; what is the plan? What is his purpose? I see two possible answers: 1) Pain -> reality. I will place a pin through things, create pain to call back to the "real world." 2) Deflating and reducing. I will take a pin and reduce life down to its bare essentials and truths, away from all hot air (haaaa). 3) Gay sex. "Pin" has a long history, dating back to Shakespeare, of meaning the penis, and "prick" has one too. The distance from femininity, coupled with the sense of being swept away and a bit of knowledge beforehand that Owen is putting themes of his own sexuality into the work, all make it somewhat plausible that Lewis is finding his youth through some sort of interaction with a penis. The artistic implications of gay sex here aren't exactly clear, especially in the strange context of religious life; but it could symbolize a return to pure masculinity (think the Greeks).
For a man can be bought, and a man can be sold,A "man" (always a man) can be reduce down to his barest elements and controlled by his fuel. Lewis recognizes, in some capacity, that his trip back to his past through god/Owen. Just as he made his wife into an item on a "shortlist," he's just an input/output machine. This part is a bit tricky, but the second line help. For those who are wilting and "unwatered," needing sustinance, give them the objects to fuel fires and animals. Lewis is becoming an animal, I guess. Or equating himself with one, because he sees no worth in man beyond this. Everything in his current life is stale and objectified; so in his escaping, there's an ironic element of becoming the ultimate animal or object. Again, a little bit of outside information: the last three lines are sung like flute trills, like a wild and giddy curse.
And the price of a hundred thousand unwatered souls
Is a bit of meat and a bit of coal.
It's a bit of meat and a bit of coal.
It's a little bit of meat and coal.
I'll try to finish this over break, to escape my grandmother.
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