Optimistic

sleepy pete + myself + our pal Feedle = holland buffalo.

sleepy pete and I have been trading files back and forth with our pal Feedle (an amazing electronica artist) for awhile. We've self-released an album together (myspace, amie st.) and have also made a video for this song, which you can watch over here (it's far and away my favorite video that we've done so far). This is one of the least electronica songs on the album although it was instigated by Feedle's first files.

Lyrics:

She lost her first in Guadalcanal and the second no one liked anyhow, but the third -- the third was her man. They put their backs into every day and spent each night in each other’s arms, sad that nobody carries around love here anyhow. They placed some jars out in the yard to gather water for coming years and sat on the porch and watched each other grow grey. One day the water ran out so she locked the door and he laid her down; that’s how they found them anyhow. And eyeing the cosmos...the stars the same each night...and I am the cosmos...and all the stars pay them no mind.

(Get Flash to see the track player.)
posted by melissa may (10 comments total)

/me really likes this one. Thanks :)
posted by Foci for Analysis at 4:36 AM on January 3, 2008

Cool song. I really like the lyric "they placed some jars out in the yard to gather water for coming years." Sweet.
posted by Corduroy at 1:18 PM on January 3, 2008

Lovely imagery in the lyrics and nice tune too. Thanks for posting the lyrics it always helps me enjoy and understand the song better.
posted by haunted by Leonard Cohen at 7:28 AM on January 5, 2008

You know I'm a fan, but putting my "fanness" aside for second, being purely objective, this is just fantastic. Those drums and the feedback have the perfect texture.

And the video is just perfect too. You have a knack for finding the right images for the music, like with that Indian video last time.
posted by micayetoca at 9:43 AM on January 5, 2008

micayetoca, your video is pretty damn great as well.

I'm glad there have been comments on the lyrics because these were pretty hard to write--the story is about a couple who lived down the dead end street from me as a kid whose end was crushingly depressing so it's not worth sharing--because we wanted to write something for them that was simple, but make it ambiguous/surreal enough so that the listener could understand the story, but not be distracted by it. Hope it worked. TMI possibly, but thanks for the kind words from everyone.

The weird thing is that the other day melissa may and I walked by a house that had around 10 water jugs, with water in them, scattered throughout their small front yard to collect rain water (seemingly). We wrote these lyrics about a year and a half ago, so it kind of freaked me out a bit to see something I made up as a metaphor in real life.
posted by sleepy pete at 1:08 PM on January 5, 2008

Wow, man, those lyrics ARE sweet. Thanks for posting this.
posted by snsranch at 4:50 PM on January 6, 2008

Going along with the crowd on this: The track was great, and the video was a wonderful reminder of just how alive and sensual a place the universe really is. Really cool.
posted by saulgoodman at 7:55 PM on January 11, 2008

Thank you so much, saul, that is exactly the feeling we hoped for -- and thank you all so much for taking the time to listen and say what you thought. It means a lot to me.
posted by melissa may at 4:25 AM on January 12, 2008

This is such a stunning song - such beautiful lyrics. One day I'll hopefully be good enough to cover it. And I need to set aside some time to look through your site too, to order myself some music :) This is probably my favourite song ever on Music (so far!) :)
posted by Ira_ at 9:52 AM on August 1, 2008

"This is one of the least electronica songs on the album..."

And this is why I like it so much! Not an electronica guy, myself, and this song manages to bridge the gap between that world and my own musical tastes. It's a really good song, MM. Kind of reminds me of some of the stuff Radiohead has been doing of late. Thanks for sharing it!
posted by Effigy2000 at 2:56 PM on April 29