If you have not yet seen the official video for the Fleet Foxes song "The Shrine/An Argument," then I would highly recommend it. Surprisingly for a band as generally gentle and melodic as the Fleet Foxes, the video itself contains quite a few disturbing images. Of course, if you know the song, especially the "argument" part of it which starts around 2:30 or so, you can see how there is room for some disturbance.
Anyway, in watching the "argument" section I mentioned above, going from about 2:30 to 4:22 I couldn't help but think of some other songs that I love quite dearly and think are, at the very least, spiritual ancestors of this song. This is the quite unmathematical sense in which I am claiming that this song is the sum of the other two.
Anyway, on to the first song, XTC's "Sacrificial Bonfire," which is off of their best album, Skylarking (which is also what this blog is named after, as it had a huge influence over my musical interests, acting as a sort of gateway album to all kinds of other harmonious pop sounds). The link between these two songs lies in those human (?), marked (?) figures dancing around the fire in the Fleet Foxes video, which so remind me of these lines from "Sacrificial Bonfire":
"Assembled on high
Silhouettes against the sky
The smoke prayed and pranced
The sparks did their dance in the wind.
Disguises worn thin with less and less skin
And the clothes that were draped
Was all that told man from ape."
Against the stately drumbeat and melodic arpeggio that give the song a measured thrust, "Sacrificial Bonfire" is about the various kinds of imaginative practices throughout history humans have directed at promoting renewal, be it the renewal of the seasons, or of generations and societies (the disjunction between the joyous renewal of the world in spring and the much more anguished and fraught human potential for renewal led Eliot to remark that "April is the cruelest month," although he was by no means the first to dwell on this). The rhythm to the song is important because like the seasons, its power comes from cyclical renewal.
I see the quasi-animality of the human figures dancing around the campfire as a sign primal nature of their participation in this practices of renewal, and as a sign of the quasi-animality that remains with us no matter how civilized we think we have become. Likewise, in portraying this in the context of the memorial practices of the deer (?) in the video (at least that's what I assume is going on with the stakes), it reminds us that animals participate in some of the same activities even if in different and less elaborate forms.
At this point I would like to digress for a moment and discuss Skylarking itself, if for no other reason than to introduce my namesake a little more. The album itself is a playful "concept album" tracing the cycles of the seasons alongside the various developments of human life albeit loosely. Beginning with youth, freedom and love in their height with summer ("Grass" and "The Meeting Place" most clearly, though of course "Summer's Cauldron" starts everything off), the album moves on to the the doubts and disappointments of life and love with its autumnal tracks (from "That's Really Super, Supergirl" to "Big Day" or so), to the coldness of final loss and separation ("Another Satellite" to "Dying"). "Sacrifical Bonfire" is the official final song of the album (the later inclusion of the surprise hit and atheist anthem "Dear God" onto the album tends to mess up the track order somewhat, though thematically the song surely belongs in the "Winter" section given its relative negativity). The significance of this position is that it makes it the only spring song on the album and that is indeed fitting given its subject matter.
Ok, I've rambled enough about these songs (there's nothing precise in these mathematics) and would like to turn to the last one by The Flaming Lips--"The Gash (Battle Hymn for the Wounded Mathematician)," but will do so in the next post.
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