Setting Sun

[ABNorman]

Though maybe he's talking about Trumps hairpiece.

Combing through the wreckage

[Gigalogy84]

This is easily the best closer since Inside Job. Maybe even the best closer since All Those Yesterdays.

[RockPusher]

Heard Parting Ways on PJ Radio after this one and at first was really feeling it, but then as it got to the ending, I realized how much i like the Setting Sun ending better. No relying on strings, just PJ epic goodness.

[darth_vedder]

Am I crazy for liking the first half of the song better? The first bit really reminds me of something Wilco would do, and I love it. I also really like the soaring back half of the song, but something about that quiet but bopping guitar riff and Ed's vocals just do it for me.
I'm still processing this album n'all but so far Setting Sun, React/Respond, and Dark Matter are my favorites.

[stip]

Am I crazy for liking the first half of the song better? The first bit really reminds me of something Wilco would do, and I love it. I also really like the soaring back half of the song, but something about that quiet but bopping guitar riff and Ed's vocals just do it for me.
I'm still processing this album n'all but so far Setting Sun, React/Respond, and Dark Matter are my favorites.

I love the first part. It's amazing. Like a totally different song

[darth_vedder]

Am I crazy for liking the first half of the song better? The first bit really reminds me of something Wilco would do, and I love it. I also really like the soaring back half of the song, but something about that quiet but bopping guitar riff and Ed's vocals just do it for me.
I'm still processing this album n'all but so far Setting Sun, React/Respond, and Dark Matter are my favorites.

I love the first part. It's amazing. Like a totally different song

I'm obsessed with that guitar riff and need to learn it. It's been in my head all weekend.

[Kevin Davis]

The Springsteen vibes coming off this song (and a few others) are palpable to me, specifically in (a) the way Eddie's voice takes on a sort of whispery quality in the verses, presumably to navigate a certain loss of depth/resonance to the voice that would feel more evident in a fuller-bodied delivery, and (b) the way the melodies sort of curl under themselves at the end ("fix a love gone wro-o-ong," "someday I'll be let ii-i-in" -- each of those hyphenated breaks representing a new syllable, all rolling out in a similar falling melodic shape). This makes me think of songs like "Dry Lightning" from The Ghost of Tom Joad ("dry lightn-i-ing") that have melodies which descend and resolve in a similar fashion, and some others off The Ghost of Tom Joad, Western Stars, etc., songs in that corner of Bruce's songbook that I'm struggling to perfectly place and name at the moment. I hear this influence more directly in Eddie's later-era writing than I do any other artist, in a way that is very generalized and cosmetic ("Got To Give") but also really technically particular like the examples here (the melody to "Wreckage" has many of the same qualities). He hasn't always sounded completely comfortable in this skin, but on DM he manages to pull in some of the hard-won wisdom and grit that seems to occur more naturally in those Springsteen songs that he's drawing from; songs like "Wreckage" and "Setting Sun" feel like Ed is authentically embodying this particular artistic/personal space for the first time, rather than just admiring it and trying to emulate it.

That said, I hope the guy's marriage is okay. Some of these lyrics are pretty heart-wrenching.

[4/5]

Gorgeous and absolutely heartbreaking. I love everything about this song.

[Strat]

We could be one last setting sun, or the sun at break of dawn.

let us not fade


ugh. Me = dead

[stip]

Am I crazy for liking the first half of the song better? The first bit really reminds me of something Wilco would do, and I love it. I also really like the soaring back half of the song, but something about that quiet but bopping guitar riff and Ed's vocals just do it for me.
I'm still processing this album n'all but so far Setting Sun, React/Respond, and Dark Matter are my favorites.

I love the first part. It's amazing. Like a totally different song

I'm obsessed with that guitar riff and need to learn it. It's been in my head all weekend.

it sounds quietly festive and yet its the bed for some complex emotional spaces. great part

[worldwithyourheart]

This has a Zeppelin vibe to me, as elsewhere sprinkled throughout the album.

Upper Hand has a little Ten Years Gone to it.

WFS - there's a little Moby Dick solo at the end before the interlude.

Still digesting this album after about a half dozen listens.

I may be jumping to conclusions, but this could be a best all time closer, even better than Release and Indifference. I know it's crazy talk, but this has that potential in due time. I can't believe I just wrote that and I truly think that.

Unreal.

[RockPusher]

I may be jumping to conclusions, but this could be a best all time closer, even better than Release and Indifference. I know it's crazy talk, but this has that potential in due time. I can't believe I just wrote that and I truly think that.

To me, hearing this song feels like hearing those songs when they came out. It is gut-wrenchingly beautiful and soul-stirring. Will it ever be better than them? The fact that they are all cut from the same cloth is a miracle. I don't even know if I can conceive of "better."

[Jaeti]

"I'll hold the pain, release me"
"I will scream my lungs out til it fills this room"
"May our days be long before kingdom come"

[RockPusher]

"I'll hold the pain, release me"
"I will scream my lungs out til it fills this room"
"May our days be long before kingdom come"

[VinylGuy]

This has a Zeppelin vibe to me, as elsewhere sprinkled throughout the album.

Upper Hand has a little Ten Years Gone to it.

WFS - there's a little Moby Dick solo at the end before the interlude.

Still digesting this album after about a half dozen listens.

I may be jumping to conclusions, but this could be a best all time closer, even better than Release and Indifference. I know it's crazy talk, but this has that potential in due time. I can't believe I just wrote that and I truly think that.

Unreal.

yeah, this has to be the most Zep album for the band right?

[daft twat]

“if could see what I see now you’d make your way to stay somehow.” I fully admit it’s the use of the word somehow, but it reminds me so much of the best part of Hard to Imagine.

[VinylGuy]

Gorgeous song

[EJ]

This has a Zeppelin vibe to me, as elsewhere sprinkled throughout the album.

Upper Hand has a little Ten Years Gone to it.

WFS - there's a little Moby Dick solo at the end before the interlude.

Still digesting this album after about a half dozen listens.

I may be jumping to conclusions, but this could be a best all time closer, even better than Release and Indifference. I know it's crazy talk, but this has that potential in due time. I can't believe I just wrote that and I truly think that.

Unreal.

I may get there too. Right now, it is just crushing me. Just an amazing song that I'm just shocked they could make at this stage. I haven't had a PJ song hit me like this one has maybe since the first few times I heard Given To Fly.

[mikejasond]

What do we think about the book-ended setting sun lyrics?

Scared of Fear:

I hear the voices calling, hear the voices calling
All around my head, all around my head
Hear the voices calling, oh, again they're calling
All around my head, have I lost my friend?
Is this what we've become? One last setting sun
I'll give, but I can't give up, I'll live, not long enough
To stop these voices calling, stop the voices calling
All around my head, as if you never left

Setting Sun:

May your days be long till kingdom come
May our days be long before kingdom come
May our days be long until kingdom come
We can become one last setting sun
Am I the only one hanging on?
We could become one last setting sun
Or be the sun at the break of dawn
Let us not fade
Let us not fade

In the first song he seems upset about being one last setting sun, while in the last song he seems to beg for it.

My interpretation, if you take the album as an album about a breakup, is in the first song, the breakup is still fresh (maybe ongoing). The narrator is upset about their significant other's self-destructive behavior, the tumultous relationship, he feels like they are just another fading romance (setting sun), and it upsets him. (In fact the first two songs seem to take place in this fiery and raw period, until Wreckage when the narrator fully realizes what he lost and becomes resigned, realizes what he lost, and no longer cares about the anger)

By the end, in Setting Sun, he frames the setting sun metaphor more positively, he would give anything to be together with the other. Even being one last setting sun now is desirable if it means they are together, and maybe he views the metaphor through a different lens, a more positive and romantic one. It's the two of them together, even if they're the last on earth. And maybe they are not a setting sun but a rising one. He refuses to give up "(I wait on the porch hoping someday, I'll be let in
They say in the end everything will be okay
If it's not okay, well then, it ain't the end") believing that if they are not together, then it isn't over yet.

You can choose to interpret it as romantic and hopeful, or you can see it as pathetically desperate and clinging onto somebody who has moved on from him. That is your choice how to see it, and if you sympathize with the narrator or not.

But I do think the first and last songs show a change in his opinion, probably the difference between a breakup that is happening now, and one that is in the past and suddenly none of the fighting seems important at all.

[Jaeti]

What do we think about the book-ended setting sun lyrics?

Scared of Fear:

I hear the voices calling, hear the voices calling
All around my head, all around my head
Hear the voices calling, oh, again they're calling
All around my head, have I lost my friend?
Is this what we've become? One last setting sun
I'll give, but I can't give up, I'll live, not long enough
To stop these voices calling, stop the voices calling
All around my head, as if you never left

Setting Sun:

May your days be long till kingdom come
May our days be long before kingdom come
May our days be long until kingdom come
We can become one last setting sun
Am I the only one hanging on?
We could become one last setting sun
Or be the sun at the break of dawn
Let us not fade
Let us not fade

In the first song he seems upset about being one last setting sun, while in the last song he seems to beg for it.

My interpretation, if you take the album as an album about a breakup, is in the first song, the breakup is still fresh (maybe ongoing). The narrator is upset about their significant other's self-destructive behavior, the tumultous relationship, he feels like they are just another fading romance (setting sun), and it upsets him. (In fact the first two songs seem to take place in this fiery and raw period, until Wreckage when the narrator fully realizes what he lost and becomes resigned, realizes what he lost, and no longer cares about the anger)

By the end, in Setting Sun, he frames the setting sun metaphor more positively, he would give anything to be together with the other. Even being one last setting sun now is desirable if it means they are together, and maybe he views the metaphor through a different lens, a more positive and romantic one. It's the two of them together, even if they're the last on earth. And maybe they are not a setting sun but a rising one. He refuses to give up "(I wait on the porch hoping someday, I'll be let in
They say in the end everything will be okay
If it's not okay, well then, it ain't the end") believing that if they are not together, then it isn't over yet.

You can choose to interpret it as romantic and hopeful, or you can see it as pathetically desperate and clinging onto somebody who has moved on from him. That is your choice how to see it, and if you sympathize with the narrator or not.

But I do think the first and last songs show a change in his opinion, probably the difference between a breakup that is happening now, and one that is in the past and suddenly none of the fighting seems important at all.

I think "being the setting sun" would be resignation, failure. He's trying to shout down that potential resolution.