Navigating Flood Regions
It was suggested after my last post that I had missed one obvious flood-related song: "Navigating Flood Regions" from Guided by Voices' Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia album. As I admitted, I simply did a search for the term flood in the lyrics of Robert Pollard's songs, and came up with three. "Navigating Flood Regions" didn't come up because the word "flood" doesn't appear in the lyric. No surprise, as Pollard's titles are just as likely to refer to the lyric as not.
If I chose to look for a rallying cry in Pollard's lyric that would sum up the feeling around here as we continue to deal with flood damage and impact, it might be this line from early in the song: "The ship floats but it won't float away." Substitute "Our town" or even "our state" for "the ship" and you might have something worthy of a fundraising T-shirt (better by far than what has appeared to date).
Other key lyrics include "And you're doing a wonderful job shaping up this incompetent mob," as fitting a description of the way disparate groups came together to fill and deploy sandbags as any, and "It's as long as wide and just beginning," which accurately captures the sheer massive stretch of the water as it broke across river banks all across the state.
Beyond that, I've always gotten the feeling that this is Pollard's version of a sea shanty, telling a pirate tale. There's little to point to this in the lyric (though "cast your soul into the jagged sea" feels like it ought to be followed by a hearty "Arrrrgh!"), but I think it nonetheless. Beyond that, it's really among the early songs in the GBV catalog almost entirely carried by a fantastic yet terribly easy-to-play riff (see "Postal Blowfish" et al). Pollard wisely rescued the tune for the Electrifying Conclusion tour, thus allowing it to appear on live documents like Live From Austin, TX and the "Electrifying Conclusion" DVD. It's a perfect vehicle for the latter-day GBV as Nate Farley and Doug Gillard dig in heartily, matey.
If I chose to look for a rallying cry in Pollard's lyric that would sum up the feeling around here as we continue to deal with flood damage and impact, it might be this line from early in the song: "The ship floats but it won't float away." Substitute "Our town" or even "our state" for "the ship" and you might have something worthy of a fundraising T-shirt (better by far than what has appeared to date).
Other key lyrics include "And you're doing a wonderful job shaping up this incompetent mob," as fitting a description of the way disparate groups came together to fill and deploy sandbags as any, and "It's as long as wide and just beginning," which accurately captures the sheer massive stretch of the water as it broke across river banks all across the state.
Beyond that, I've always gotten the feeling that this is Pollard's version of a sea shanty, telling a pirate tale. There's little to point to this in the lyric (though "cast your soul into the jagged sea" feels like it ought to be followed by a hearty "Arrrrgh!"), but I think it nonetheless. Beyond that, it's really among the early songs in the GBV catalog almost entirely carried by a fantastic yet terribly easy-to-play riff (see "Postal Blowfish" et al). Pollard wisely rescued the tune for the Electrifying Conclusion tour, thus allowing it to appear on live documents like Live From Austin, TX and the "Electrifying Conclusion" DVD. It's a perfect vehicle for the latter-day GBV as Nate Farley and Doug Gillard dig in heartily, matey.
Labels: Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia
posted by John at 8:32 AM
1 Comments:
I've always felt like this and Postal Blowfish were connected by those riffs - glad someone else does too.
This is one of those songs that as soon as I read the title those opening guitars pop into my head.
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