Some deep lyrics in our final episode of the year:
Sudan Archives uses her hair anxiety to hint at deeper self-doubt:
Okay, one time if I grow it long
Sudan Archives
Am I good enough, am I good enough?
About time I embrace myself and soul
Time I feed my selfish soul
Jenny Hval is concerned that getting married wasn’t just “signing the papers” but that she might have betrayed her principles.
“It’s just for contractual reasons, ” I explained
Jenny Hval
Signing the papers
As if I truly believed that a contract was further
From the institution than the industrial happiness complex”
It’s not entirely obvious what Florence Shaw from Dry Cleaning wants to tell us, but it sounds like it could be important.
I don’t want to empty your bank account
Florence Shaw, Dry Cleaning
And give you nightmares
But we’re in the middle of what they call ‘three financial eclipses’
Is it still okay to call you ‘my disco pickle’?
Emily Sprague of Florist has created a beautiful tribute to her father, now that her mother is no longer there.
I’ve seen photos of the living room, we didn’t have a lot
Emily Sprague, Florist
And the house needed some work done, so you did it all yourself
For a feeling of family, a place we could call home now
So comes another year now, did you ever even think
We’d both be back here looking out at this beautiful place?
Seeing nothing, but the glow of memory
And a void in our vision where she would be
Earlier in our rundown The Beths introduced a brilliant metaphor from academia to describe the end of the affair, when just one of the two protagonists curates the relationship in their minds: an expert in a dying field. In Superstar, Victoria from Beach House uses the imagery of quite literally a super star.
When you were mine, we fell across the sky
Victoria, Beach House
It may be out of sight, but never out of mind
Out there on the run, you’re not the only one
Shadow from the sun, backlit up against the wall
Superstar / Shining far
And finally B J Lenderman critiques a pursuit of materialism not with barbed vitriol, but with a world-weary acknowledgement that things can stave off an existential crisis, for a short while at least. Then, of course, we’ll be back where we were.
It’s plain to me to see
M J Lenderman
You have bought yourself a boat
Since the last time you and me spoke
Your laundry looks so pretty
Soft threads hanging and relaxing in the wind
You’ll feel so much better when you wear these clothes again
That’s it for another year. I hope I passed the audition.
