Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Destroyer - "It's Gonna Take an Airplane"



I listened to this song three times in a row walking home after taking my daughter to school this morning. I always listen to it at least three times when I listen to it, sometimes more. This is the fifth time today as I type this. I'm not sure if I like Destroyer all that much, and can't tell you another song on Your Blues because this song rises above it all, a star in the night sky above, so you think this is love, well I guess so, At least something to make it from...

Sixth time. As I walked home, I got it in my head that this song encapsulates the 00's, earnest while being pie-pan shallow, unable to discern between Nick Drake and Rent, knowing both only from commercials, throwing them in anyway, being a closed-circuit one man project but unfolding into a band that is all about me and my frunds performing my songs and being in my frunds' bands because my frunds are rather amazing artists actually. Seventh time. Flutes and Casio strings and New Order handclaps. Now step inside the widowmaker and listen to your heart.

And then he lines up the conflicting verses about airplanes and submarines to find himself at sea level

Now in my (Submarines) evil empire I (don't mind) am gonna be a star in the night (spending their time in the ocean) sky above

and at sea level, in the ground, which is going to take an airplane to get him off of, back to the beginning. Ninth time. I pictured a trade paperback cover with "It's Gonna Take an Airplane: Notable Music of the Nameless Decade by Alex V. Cook" written in that half-baked graphic design aesthetic of concert shirts where the image wraps around the side and there are birds and delicate things in the fade that I am too old and fat to wear, a mix of powder blue and file cabinet brown in the background. My author pic would find me sporting over-sized headphones, looking upon a vinyl copy of the MGMT record disapprovingly. Tenth time. Even this crap video is perfect. And art's just the start! Shaky cell phone captures of the inner sleeve festooned with the fake flowers of an indeterminate era. Always the play, never the thing... Eleven.

1 comment:

  1. moody. This song is moody. and it's just the kind of song that puts people into moody, heady states. I put into this category Echo and the Bunnymen, Stone Cold Roses. There are a lot more, but these are some of my go-tos when I WANT to be moody. And damnit. Sometimes a person does want to be moody. I wonder, what constitutes other people's "moody" music (which is not the same as "mood" music)?

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