“I wanted to make my character have no feelings from the very start but I found that giving him feelings make for so much more awesome asks and funnier situations he can be in.” -ask-klaviare-the-ninetales
Confession 38
It took me almost a year to become comfortable with something again and that’s simply because of one person. It’s sad. Never let people destroy things for you with what they do to you.
Broke Workouts: Confession →
Last week was extremely stressful. My mother in law was in the hospital and my father in law can’t care for himself so we had to step in and help. My hubby and I don’t get along with his brother and his wife. It that isn’t enough, our fertility treatment failed again and we weren’t sleeping. On…
Confessed by: music-is-our-soul
May 15, 2013 at 11:31am
“The Sharp Hint of New Tears”
I noted in the “Screaming Infidelities” post that early Dashboard relies on variations in intensity and pace rather than wild instrumentation or arrangement, and “The Sharp Hint of New Tears” makes really fine use of said variations. The strumming in the verses comes in forceful waves separated by abrupt pauses; this reminds me of driving in the middle of a busy downtown or in really heavy traffic, surging for a few hundred meters and then being forced to a stop. It’s an appropriate tactic for a song that takes place within a car during a frosty commute home. In the chorus, the pattern mutates into a constantly shifting, seasick bed of acoustic guitars. The melody seems to change note by note, rather than in big gulps of chords, and it sounds like it’d be well suited for large-scale orchestration. That aforementioned shifting quality is calling out for a group of string musicians. One of the lines in the chorus is, “My sighs, they ring victorious / and fog this tinted glass.” Until I looked up the lyrics fifteen minutes ago, I was positive Carrabba was singing, “and fuck this tinted glass,” which always made me chuckle. It would’ve been a funny grain of anger, the narrator realizing the futility of his sulk session and taking it out on his windows. Alas, it was a harmless mondegreen, and “fog” makes much more sense within the context of the song anyway. There isn’t even a bit of anger here, just sadness and uselessness and resignation. I want to start a feature where I highlight the most awesomely emo line of lyric in every song, but I can’t for the life of me come up with a name - if you’re reading, can you leave some suggestions in the reply/askbox? I’ll probably go with “Best line:” or something equally awful until a better alternative pops up. Anyway, best line: “You’ve been asking me to bleed / it seems these kinds of questions / they come too easy to you now.”
9:07am
“Living in Your Letters”
This is my second-favourite song on The Swiss Army Romance, and I think it’s one of the best examples of Chris Carrabba in “intense, naked self-examination” mode. This song is ruthless in its depiction of a narrator who’s crippling himself and his partner with callousness and ignorance born of fear and hesitation, and this ruthlessness is paired nicely with rumbling, relentless strumming that’s anchored by surprising low-end weight. The song hinges on a really clever lyrical turn that’s created by Carrabba’s command of phrasing. He sings, “Breathe deeply from this envelope, it smells like you / and I can’t be without that scent, it’s filling me”; in this form, it’s obvious that he’s soaking in a solitary memory. When sung, the line is completely transformed: “BREATHE! / deeply from this envelope, it smells like YOU and I / CAN’T! / BE! / without that scent, it’s FILLING me.” The transformation forces the listener to consider the history between the two, and conveys the narrator’s crushing desperation. He ultimately overwhelms his fear and doubt, takes the plunge, and then describes his depth of feeling in a single great line: “‘Cause turning to you is like falling in love when you’re ten.” I like to think that when real love strikes, the sensory overload feels the same way whether you’re ten or thirty-five or eighty; if that holds true, then it’s a good sign for the future of this song’s pair.
I already mentioned the best line, but here it is again: “Breathe deeply from this envelope, it smells like you / and I can’t be without that scent, it’s filling me with all you mean to me.”
