A Guided Tour of Lightning Bolt: Infallible

[epilogue]

I already regret posting that I'm just cranky.

Eat a candy bar, it helps. My favorite is a Whatchamacallit.

Well, what's it called?!

What?

His favorite candy bar.

What about it?

I want to know what it is.

What what is?

[Norah]

I already regret posting that I'm just cranky.

Eat a candy bar, it helps. My favorite is a Whatchamacallit.

The commercial was great.

[Wendy Carlos's Twin]

I love you guys.

[PHATJ]

...but the real star of Sleight of Hand is the soundscape. The delicate, mournful sound of the guitar, the lost, wistful fills, the crazed feedback of the chorus, the uncertainty in the drumming, the distant sadness in Eddie’s voice. Sleight of Hand works best at this elemental level.

Well said, and this is exactly why I love SoH so much. It has the perfect sound to my ears. I love every second of it's dark and haunting drone. I still think it is the best song PJ has ever written.

[stip]

Getaway


It’s easy to see Getaway as a ‘been there/done that’ mixture of a typical pearl jam ‘escape’ song plus some substance free cracks at religion, but I think that interpretation misses the point. The song does take its shots, but the religious references reflect more of a stereotypical conflation of conservatism and religious fundamentalism. It’s a real target, and at least part of what the song is aiming at—but religion and conservatism are not the same thing (I would presume Eddie doesn’t have that many issues with the anti-poverty/environmental stewardship message of the current pope, for instance).

Instead, Getaway shares important thematic connections with Mind Your Manners and Infallible. These are ultimately songs about resurrecting the social and political optimism necessary to confront and defeat the challenges facing our wounded world These are future oriented songs (inspired, at least in part, about concerns any parent would have about the world they are leaving behind for their children) that challenge the self-congratulatory complacency or pessimism that prevent us from responding to a world in crisis and engaging solutions to solvable problems.

Musically, Getaway is an appropriate way to begin the discussion. The music is bouncy and playful, its sharp edges sanded down. There’s something almost conversational about Eddie’s delivery, a desire not to alienate the target as they’re being shown the door. Yet the seemingly lightweight presentation is occasionally punctuated by hints of mounting frustration and rising urgency (the transitions into the chorus, the way the drums start to gallop during the same, the harsher guitar tones that kick in during the ‘Simon says’ sequence, the exacerbated ‘for god’s sake’, and the siren sound of the outro’), all of which adds into a logical and appropriate transition into the much more aggressive ‘Mind Your Manners’.

As I mentioned above, I think it’s a mistake to see this song primarily as anti-religion, with the religious language serving as a stand in for, alternately, a non-reflective and self-satisfied conservatism or a sense of powerlessness and futility (all we can do is hope and pray). Eddie is not really condemning faith or belief (elsewhere on the record he embraces that same language). He is condemning inaction justified through faith broadly understood—faith in our own righteousness as a society/species (depending on how much Daniel Quinn you feel like reading back into Eddie’s writing 15 years later) or the weird way surrendering to your own powerlessness is liberating insofar as it absolves you of any responsibility for your actions (it’s on God’s hands now, since there’s nothing we can do).

I think that message is pretty clearly delivered in the first and third verses. Everything is falling apart and we just either sit there letting it happen or, at best, look backwards for people to blame, rather than looking forward to solutions. Granted the ‘science says/simon says’ verse goes after the fundamentalist assault on reason and science, but I think that also needs to be understood in the context of the song’s larger message about embracing the possibility that our failing world can be saved(and that the principle underpinning science—that the world can be comprehended and controlled—needs to be defended and embraced).

That may be one of the reasons why the song couches its message in these terms. Religion provides the cultural vocabulary necessary to talk about redemption and salvation. But no one is going to save us. We’re going to have to save ourselves.

And that’s the message of the chorus. The ‘I’ve got my own way to believe’ sentiment is not just a simple anti-religious sentiment. This is, after all, a song about belief. It’s a larger statement about having faith in yourself and your own ability to change the world rather than assuming that you’re weak, powerless, and there’s nothing else you can do. In this context putting all your faith in no faith means putting your faith in yourself and the people beside you—an emanant, rather than immanent, faith. We just need the people who say it can’t be done to get out of the way.

[Kevin Davis]

I enjoyed the read, Stip. Unfortunately this is a song that I find too grating to listen to with enough focus to formulate thoughts nearly as coherent as yours, otherwise I'd reply to your analysis with one of my own. But thanks for the write-up

[LetMeSleep]

Seconded. I can't say I've spent enough time with this song to agree or disagree. But I will listen later today or tomorrow.

[daft twat]

I wish this album went MYM into Getaway.

I hate to be so cynical, but I think Stip's effort in analyzing these songs will be far greater than Ed's was in writing the lyrics. I just don't think Ed spends a lot of time in the deep end of the pool.

[stip]

It takes me about 30 minutes to an hour to write one of those posts, so that's our benchmark.

[stip]

And I'm pretty confident Ed has a point he wants to make in each of his songs. Some of it may be instinctual rather than calculated, but that doesn't change the fact that there is a meaning

[digster]

These songs strike me as being quite a bit more pessimistic/cynical, particularly Mind Your Manners. Getaway doesn't seem to be as much about changing the world as much as it is at least making sure you're on a good path.

[E.H. Ruddock]

just makin' love like the lizards

[Kaius]

I really wanted stip to touch on that verse, but he didn't. What does not mean, huh?! WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!!

[Norah]

I really wanted stip to touch on that verse, but he didn't. What does not mean, huh?! WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!!

he could use a sedative right now

[Kevin Davis]

I really wanted stip to touch on that verse, but he didn't. What does not mean, huh?! WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!!

I thought I had written about this before, and sure enough:

"Science says that we're making love like the lizards.

This is such a strange lyric--lizards are hardly the member of the animal kingdom that come to mind when you think of mindless, rapid-fire procreating.

Perhaps Ed is trying to bring a new elegance to the purely biological side of reproduction, trying to move it away from the skittish, almost aggressive pleasure-pounding suggested by the far cruder "fucking like rabbits" and towards the more curvacious, almost dancelike motions affiliated with the reproduction of certain reptiles, from whose leisure we can reasonably assume do not merely "fuck" but rather "make love."

I wonder if this is a throwback to "Faithfull," where he says "like geckos, that nobody hears"--perhaps he's implying the quiet, private manner in which these creatures repopulate the world with their own kind, the whole circle of life regenerating itself in private while we "upstairs" remain oblivious, distracted by "all of this noise."

Eddie really likes mentioning reptiles in songs about religion.

[E.H. Ruddock]

I'm so into everything Kevin Davis it is sickening.

[darth_vedder]

I really wanted stip to touch on that verse, but he didn't. What does not mean, huh?! WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!!

I thought I had written about this before, and sure enough:

"Science says that we're making love like the lizards.

This is such a strange lyric--lizards are hardly the member of the animal kingdom that come to mind when you think of mindless, rapid-fire procreating.

Perhaps Ed is trying to bring a new elegance to the purely biological side of reproduction, trying to move it away from the skittish, almost aggressive pleasure-pounding suggested by the far cruder "fucking like rabbits" and towards the more curvacious, almost dancelike motions affiliated with the reproduction of certain reptiles, from whose leisure we can reasonably assume do not merely "fuck" but rather "make love."

I wonder if this is a throwback to "Faithfull," where he says "like geckos, that nobody hears"--perhaps he's implying the quiet, private manner in which these creatures repopulate the world with their own kind, the whole circle of life regenerating itself in private while we "upstairs" remain oblivious, distracted by "all of this noise."

Eddie really likes mentioning reptiles in songs about religion.

"Like geckos"

[E.H. Ruddock]

yeah I really laughed at that.

[stip]

These songs strike me as being quite a bit more pessimistic/cynical, particularly Mind Your Manners. Getaway doesn't seem to be as much about changing the world as much as it is at least making sure you're on a good path.

There's certainly more of an individual focus on getaway, but I think MYM and especially Infallible are significantly more universal, and since these songs are all on the same album it makes sense to interpret one in light of the others. Getaway certainly became a more interesting song for me (conceptually) when I did so.

It also helped when I realized the 'now make your getaway' is directed towards the people the song is criticizing--not the subject. I'M staying right here. YOU need to get the fuck out.

[McParadigm]

I'm not sure I know what the impetus is for investing so much analysis in a piece that has none of the following attributes: subtle, interpretable, mysterious, clever, distinct.