Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Artsy Fartsy Wednesday ~ It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All a Dream! It's Alright


I've decided to reserve Wednesdays as a day to appreciate and talk about art in all of it's various forms. I am a graphic designer by trade. My first post which was my introduction to this blog has a picture of my personal logo. It contains my initials, DL, in case you were trying to figure out what my logo was. It's a lower case "d" and an upper case "L". The orange dot is the hole of the lowercase "d". Both letters have been cropped so you don't see them fully. Anyway, this post isn't about me, it's about mewithoutYou.

If you've never heard of the band mewithoutYou, then shame on you! Seriously, you need to get out of your cave and check them out here. I've seen them perform twice now and I plan on seeing them again and again and again. They played a free show a couple weeks ago that I went to and the first time I saw them was at Purple Door in 2007. They have released three full-length albums titled "[A-B] Life", "Catch for Us the Foxes", "Brother, Sister" and they are coming out with their fourth album "It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All a Dream! It's Alright" in about two weeks, May 19th.

mewithoutYou can best be described as an indie, alternative, experimental rock band. They come from Philadelphia, PA and they tour around in a 1976 MC8 Charter bus that runs on vegetable oil. Lead singer, Aaron Weiss, is extremely open and honest in the lyrics he writes. The songs he writes cover issues such as God, unity, struggles, suicide, love, forgiveness, equality, etc. All the songs he writes are deeply poetic and I've sat around with friends and discussed Aaron's lyrics before and we've all come up with different ideas about what the songs are about and what they mean to us. That's what I like about his music, it's open for interpretation like all good art should be. I think it's interesting how the "m" in mewithoutYou is lowercase and the "Y" is upper case. I think the reason why the "Y" is uppercase is because it refers to God and some of the songs Aaron writes are about what his life would be like without God. But that's just my interpretation.

Well, I could ramble on all day talking about mewithoutYou but I'll let you explore them on your own. There is a link to their website in the second paragraph if you didn't catch it before. I will leave you with a music video which happens to be one of my favorite mewithoutYou songs, "Paper Hanger" along with the lyrics below. Come on back tomorrow when I reveal Thursday's theme. Till next time, adios!



Paper Hanger~by mewithoutYou

Not one motion of her gesture could I forget
The prettiest bag lady I ever met
Pushing her cart in the rain
Then gathering plastic and glass
She watched the day pass
Not hour by hour
But pain by pain
I was a basket filled with holes
She was the sand I tried to hold
And ran out behind me
As I swung with some invisible hands

I stopped believing, you start to move
(She was like wine turned to water then turned back to wine)
I stopped my leaving and the better man bloomed
(And you can pour us out and we won't mind)

I was dead, then alive
She was like wine turned to water and turned back to wine
You can pour us out, we won't mind
A scratch around the mouth of the glass
My life is no longer mine

If you're still looking for a blanket, sweetie
I'm sorry, I'm no sort of fabric
But if you need a tailor
Then take your torn shirt, and stumble up my stairs
And mumble your pitiful prayers
And in your tangled night's sleep, our midnight needles go to work
Until all comfort and fear flows in one river
Down on the shelf by the mirror where you see yourself whole
And it makes you shiver

I stopped believing, you start to move
(She was like wine turned to water then turned back to wine)
I stopped my leaving and the better man bloomed
(And you can pour us out and we won't mind)

I was dead, then alive
She was like wine turned to water and turned back to wine
You can pour us out, we won't mind
A scratch around the mouth of the glass
My life is no longer mine

Our lives are not our own
Even the wind lays still
All I felt was fire and cold
And movement, movement
If they ask you for a sign of the Father
Tell them it's movement, movement, movement and repose

No comments:

Post a Comment