Quick Escape

[guitar_davey]

If they made a whole album sounding like this and DOTC, everybody would fuckin' shit their pants.

I shart a little just thinking about it!

Throw in some Seven O’Clock and I’d have full blown diarrhea.

Yikes! Guys, you need some probiotics with your Gigaton!

[RockPusher]

Has anyone talked about that awesome guitar low growl/snarl at 4:23? It's a highlight for me every time. I've assumed it's Mike interrupting his own solo.

[guitar_davey]

Has anyone talked about that awesome guitar low growl/snarl at 4:23? It's a highlight for me every time. I've assumed it's Mike interrupting his own solo.

Sounds like maybe a whammy bar trick? Agreed - sounds awesome.

[evenslow]

The last few minutes of this thing are the best Matt has sounded with the band since the fucking '98 tour.

[PHATJ]

The last few minutes of this thing are the best Matt has sounded with the band since the fucking '98 tour.

[VinylGuy]

The last few minutes of this thing are the best Matt has sounded with the band since the fucking '98 tour.

2005 tour

[VinylGuy]

Im fucking loving those...keyboards? in the ¨Crossed the border to Morocco Kashmir to Marrakesh¨ part

and the NIN piano, those fucking great guitar sounds...that voice...amazing.

[Leatherhead]

A couple of the "Quick Escape!" parts of Ed's vocals are fuckin' amazing.

[Ms Harmless]

A couple of the "Quick Escape!" parts of Ed's vocals are fuckin' amazing.

agree! these are where he would've been screechy in prior (recent) albums but here he hits them bang on and sounds like vintage Ed because they're not out of range

[Jorge]

I like that they left in Jeff's little timing mishap near the end. I feel like on LB they would've quantized or re-recorded the part for precision, to the song's overall detriment

[guitar_davey]

This outro and the Alive outro have a lot in common (I mean besides the guy playing the solo).

[VinylGuy]

A couple of the "Quick Escape!" parts of Ed's vocals are fuckin' amazing.

agree! these are where he would've been screechy in prior (recent) albums but here he hits them bang on and sounds like vintage Ed because they're not out of range

yeah, he is very good on this one.

[RockPusher]

I like that they left in Jeff's little timing mishap near the end. I feel like on LB they would've quantized or re-recorded the part for precision, to the song's overall detriment

It's kind of a weird highlight for me as well.

[Kevin Davis]

Picking this up from the "Retrograde" thread after reading the "Trump" vs. "we" debate -- I just read the lyrics to this song for the first time, and am actually pretty convinced that the Trump reference is specifically intended to "date" the lyrics, as the song is written from the perspective of someone at a future date deliberately using a political moment (or, at least, some fictional but not completely ludicrous variation of it) as a touchstone or reference point. This feels like a common science fiction trope -- jumping into the distant or semi-distant future in order to illustrate a point about the present, but using some imagined "turning point" in the immediate future as a plot anchor, i.e. Trump instigating some event that has such drastic implications for the world that one has to specifically seek out places that have been unaffected by it. Clearly the lyrics betray Eddie's own views, but that sense of agenda dissipates within the murky timeline of the song -- the Trump reference here becomes similar to how someone in the present day might mention Nixon or Churchill, maybe with an element of political charge but also simply as a stand-in for a particular historical moment.

Also, reading the lyrics, I was struck by what a well-phrased song this is -- there are a lot of odd word choices in it, but there is such a "music of words" effect to Eddie's delivery that the simple aesthetic presentation ends up winning the day. "Queen cranking on the blaster/And Mercury did rise" is a pretty silly lyric (apparently Freddie Mercury is from Zanzibar, so of course Eddie would symbolically "crank" to his music while "aeroplaning" into his homeland to escape the apocalypse), but he just makes the words sound so good.

[Ms Harmless]

Picking this up from the "Retrograde" thread after reading the "Trump" vs. "we" debate -- I just read the lyrics to this song for the first time, and am actually pretty convinced that the Trump reference is specifically intended to "date" the lyrics, as the song is written from the perspective of someone at a future date deliberately using a political moment (or, at least, some fictional but not completely ludicrous variation of it) as a touchstone or reference point. This feels like a common science fiction trope -- jumping into the distant or semi-distant future in order to illustrate a point about the present, but using some imagined "turning point" in the immediate future as a plot anchor, i.e. Trump instigating some event that has such drastic implications for the world that one has to specifically seek out places that have been unaffected by it. Clearly the lyrics betray Eddie's own views, but that sense of agenda dissipates within the murky timeline of the song -- the Trump reference here becomes similar to how someone in the present day might mention Nixon or Churchill, maybe with an element of political charge but also simply as a stand-in for a particular historical moment.

Also, reading the lyrics, I was struck by what a well-phrased song this is -- there are a lot of odd word choices in it, but there is such a "music of words" effect to Eddie's delivery that the aesthetic presentation of them ends up winning the day. "Queen cranking on the blaster/And Mercury did rise" is a pretty silly lyric (apparently Freddie Mercury is from Zanzibar, so of course Eddie would symbolically "crank" to his music while "aeroplaning" into his homeland to escape the apocalypse), but he just makes the words sound so good. I don't think every Gigaton song is as successful at this, but there's something about the combination of the melody and the inflection in the delivery that really works in Eddie's favor here.

I agree, good post

and I also like how "Mercury did rise" is a fun pun on Freddie, and "the planet Mercury out of our windows" - so the archaic "did rise" feels like a War of the Worlds type Englishism

[Kevin Davis]

If nothing else, I think it's clear that the Freddie Mercury and Sitting Bull puns on Gigaton were Eddie's attempts to woo back the wayward RM fanbase via its most beloved form of wordplay.

[Ms Harmless]

it worked for me

[stip]

I did not like the ‘sleep sack and a bivouac and a Kerouac sense of time’ line that was cited repeatedly in reviews but it flows beautifully in the song

[Ms Harmless]

I expected like a Ghost type Riot Act song when they quoted that line

[evenslow]

I did not like the ‘sleep sack and a bivouac and a Kerouac sense of time’ line that was cited repeatedly in reviews but it flows beautifully in the song

amazing that a phrase like that actually does play within the song, but it does.

also like "green grass, sky and red wine."