"See You Don't Bump His Head"
The first line of the album, which is a symbolic summation of the entire album: "While plucking feathers from a swan song," serves as both a reminder of Walker's own impending mortality (he's getting up there in years, and this could be the last album he makes) and a nice grotesque image of a swan, a symbol of beauty and purity, being defiled. The album itself features multiple beautiful musical compositions which become morphed and warped over the course of the songs.
The title is a cut line from the movie
From Here To Eternity, where Montgomery Cliff is cautioning soldiers who are loading Maggio's corpse, played by Frank Sinatra, into a truck. You can draw parallels from Walker to Sinatra, or maybe even see Walker in this album emulating what he views as a decomposing zombie version of Sinatra.
Corps de Blah
The funny fart song.
However, the flatulence isn't the only bit of odd instrumentation, as the sound of someone chipping away with a chisel at something or other can be heard.
Lyrically, it reminds me of Bowie's Blackstar in weird ways, which this album can be seen as a demented precursor to. As Walker gets up there in age, he loses control of his body, and his bodily functions as well. In terms of historical references, we've got Sterzig, a bolthole for Nazi war criminals in the aftermath of the Second World War, which can be compared to an old persons' home, or the elderly body itself. As we age, our bodies constrict on themselves, forcing out memories and feeling straight through the sphincter.
Phrasing
Now that we've got that out the way, let's discuss the lyrics. This is one of the shorter, more minimalistic tracks on the album. More references to bodily functions and pain and protein. Klu Klux Klan in the South. Khrushchev-led communists to the east. Pain and suffering in all directions. "Here's to a lousy life" would make for a hell of a ringtone.
SDSS1416+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)
This massive, imposing, utterly hilarious centerpiece concerns two dwarves. One, the coldest sub-stellar body in the universe discovered so far; the other, Zercon, was a real-life Moorish jester at the fifth-century court of Attila the Hun. Zerco, or Zercon was short, had shoulder humps, twisted feet and a flat nose revealed only by the two nostrils. He was enslaved and passed around by many different Hun officials, and was forced to perform as a part of a motley, despite his many desperate attempts to escape. While a part of Attila the Hun's court, he made everyone except for the Hun himself laugh, which as you can imagine, caused Zercon a lot of anxiety.
The track starts with Zercon performing for the Huns with the desperate patter of a stand-up in the middle of crashing and burning. Generic heckler put-downs, basically. He then moves onto his routine, which combines stereotypical crude stand-up zingers with historical references to, among other things, Lavinia, (a character from the Aeneid) a gynozoon, (an obscure Roman mythological beast trained to have sex with humans) Diogene's masturbation habits, (a Greek philosopher known to jack off in marketplaces) the sky god Jupiter's testicles, the Tizia, (a Hungarian river) the Papiria, (an ancient Roman patrician family) and Simeon Stylites, who climbed atop a pillar and stayed there for thirty years.
This is interrupted by Scott yelling out a direct quote from Louis B. Mayer, co-founder of MGM studios: "DID YOU EVER THROW YOUR OWN MOTHER'S FOOD BACK AT HER!?! DID YOU EVER TELL HER 'TAKE THIS FILTH AWAY!'?!? WHAT KIND OF AN UNNATURAL SON WOULD DO THAT TO HIS OWN MOTHER!?!"
Then, Zercon climbs up a flagpole, which was a trend in 1920's England, in order to escape the horror of his surroundings and achieve some level of peach.
At the end of the song, he transcends his physical form, and becomes the dwarf star SDSS1416+13B. (
https://phys.org/news/2010-01-astronome ... space.html ) A cold, dying star outside our own solar system, only seen by infrared.
Epizootics!
This is probably my favorite song on the album, musically. I think Zercon is the best lyrically, or at least the song I'm able to extrapolate the most from. Whereas this is just a damn good track.
It features a "tubax" which a combination of a tuba and a saxophone, of which there are only two of in the country.
Lyrically, it tracks a nightmare about Hawaii into a idiosyncratic world of 20's era hipsters who snap their fingers on grimy street corners. The song itself seems to be focused on conjuring a specific atmosphere more than a specific lyrical story.
And yes, the video is awesome.
Dimple
This is one I don't really have a solid pulse on. References to Denmark, and the peninsula of Jutland are plentiful, but I'm not entirely sure of their intent. Walker did live in Denmark for a time, so I consider this to be a synthesis of his experiences there.
Here's a quote from the man himself:
“I read somewhere no matter how much your face descends with age, the dimple remains in the same place. In this case, I’m using it as a metaphor for a constant presence, and building a kind of mythological face throughout the first part of the song.”
http://thequietus.com/articles/10908-sc ... -interview
Tar
For all the hullaballoo it's stirred up over the years, the Bible ain't entirely spotless when it comes to continuity errors, which is what this song concerns itself with. Contradictions in time of day, and numbers of family members of certain figures, and the overall message of the book itself is what Walker is confronting on this track. It also gives him a chance to shout out "Bilge!" "Hogwash!" "Booty chatter!" and "GTFO!"
Instrumentation on this track includes two four-feet-long machetes loudly banged together. Why not.
In addition, you can find references to Colombian Neckties, Franglais, ancient Greek currency, and Pilates punk in the lyrics.
YMMV.
Pilgrim
This is the closest thing to a ridiculous, fanciful lark Walker takes on the album. I'm sure he has his reasons for singing about rooms full of mice, but they're damn near incomprehensible to me.
The Day The "Conducator" Died (An Xmas Song)
As Rico stated in his stellar review, this track is about Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu who was executed along with his wife on Christmas Day 1989. Nicolae believed his people loved him and bought into his own propaganda. The song is set up as Nicolae questioning himself about who he truly was on the day of his death. He's unable to come up with a solid answer, so warped is his self-perception.
"Nobody waited for fire" is a reference to the firing squad shooting him before an order was even given. Naturally, the song ends with the intro to Jingle Bells.
'Tis the season.
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