(1)
I can make out 'e'
A reversed 'y'
Acrylic, lower, urals, question mark
More demonic than italic (2)
A snake 's'
The numeral two at end
Then a letter so simple, yet disgusting in a stroke
And the it anti-matter
That writ wrote it
Inexplicable and disgusting
Limp, yet mocking
Indestructable in a stroke
It encapsulates all that is foul in man and creature (3)
It is scoffing
In a s***ious and wasteful
Grudge cliff valley hole
Revealed in dream, in cloth
The dry cleaning fluid erased the brain so far
Brain we held most dear
Now we have to make sure, he's safe, sound, and clear (4)
He's staying with friends again
He will never
Join
The quest
When they are a garden friend
You see and reveal
Elizabeth and dear old Bill
Or the foolish Roderick
Notes
1. This was originally t**led "Jungle" when it appeared on setlists in August 2014. In a way the lyrics are pretty straigtforward--the narrator expresses distaste for a piece of writing. Intriguingly, his ire seems to be directed at the typography ("a letter so simple, yet disgusting in a stroke"
This song shares certain lyrics with "Jam Song" from 2013's Re-Mit (see note 3 below).
If we transcribe the mentioned characters in the sequence in which they are mentioned, we wind up with something like "EY?S2." Somewhere in there the word "eyes" is almost suggested. Divvey from the Fall online forum has suggested that the opening lines refer to an eye test, while Dan finds this on page 13 of Renegade:
"Worst thing was, when I was about six I went blind. I had an eye disease that nobody could understand. I just woke up one morning and everything looked like it was in Hebrew or Greek. It's like being thrown into a foreign country... For half a year everything looked upside down, like ancient letters, hieroglyphics...
Chris Goodhead suggests that the song may be about a T-Shirt.
Steveoid from the Fall online Forum says of the t**le: "I a**umed it was from J Cloth, the well known dish/cleaning wipe widely promoted in the 70s."
Commenters have suggested that the song sounds like West African pop or, indeed, Santana...
Thanks to Shrimper for transcribing the lyrics.
^
2. Xyloplax: If we think of Cyrillic/Acrylic and Urals being a reference to Russian, then "more demonic than italic" makes more sense if you consider that "demonic" is a word swap with "demotic", which is usually most a**ociated with "demotic Greek", the linguistic term for Modern Greek, the alphabet of which Cyrllic closely resembles (St. Cyril, the inventor of the Cyrillic Alphabet, was Greek). Italic, of course, being a reference to the Roman alphabet. Linguistically, Modern Greek is part of the Hellenic Language Family, which many Linguists say is closer to the Slavic Language Family (which Russian is a member of) than the Italic Language Family (which Latin and the Romance Languages are a member of).
As alluded to above, it has also been suggested that "Acrylic" may be a mispronunciation of, or perversion of, "Cyrillic," an Eastern European script which is used, among other places, in the Urals, which of course clears everything up about this song...
^
3. Some interesting remarks from Russell Richardson:
"On that mysterious letter referred to, 'a letter so simple, yet disgusting in a stroke'... this is surely the capital "I"... it has been referred to as a 'downward stroke of arrogant identity,' which would fit into the general tenor of the piece. An unrelated thought is that MES is scrying the Greek alphabet, maybe a newspaper (now why would he be learning Greek...?) which is an interesting idea (note also the real Greek or mock/clumsy Greek grace notes in lyrics of the past decade.)"
That quote about "I" was so apt that it sounded familiar, but I have to put a Wikipedia-style "by whom" here...a Goodle search for the phrase turns up only Russell's comment toward the bottom of this page, alas.
^
4. From "Jam Song":
It started one afternoon
When the LP came on
It erased the brain of the man we held dear
Now we have to make sure
The estate and sound
And we have to make sure
The estate and sound
Here "Estate and sound" may be a substitution for the phonetically similar cliché "safe and sound," which appears in the next stanza: "Now we have to make sure
It is safe and sound today."
Tetrachloroethylene is a dry cleaning fluid, exposure to the fumes of which can cause brain damage.
"Clear," it should be noted--although it is somewhat unlikely in context--could refer to Scientology, which holds that human souls, or "thetans," accrue attachments called "engrams" as a result of traumatic events (and other thetans, of the unrestful deceased, have a tendency to latch on as well). One of the lower levels of initation, which occurs when the practitioner is prounounced free of these accretions, is called "Clear."
I can make out 'e'
A reversed 'y'
Acrylic, lower, urals, question mark
More demonic than italic (2)
A snake 's'
The numeral two at end
Then a letter so simple, yet disgusting in a stroke
And the it anti-matter
That writ wrote it
Inexplicable and disgusting
Limp, yet mocking
Indestructable in a stroke
It encapsulates all that is foul in man and creature (3)
It is scoffing
In a s***ious and wasteful
Grudge cliff valley hole
Revealed in dream, in cloth
The dry cleaning fluid erased the brain so far
Brain we held most dear
Now we have to make sure, he's safe, sound, and clear (4)
He's staying with friends again
He will never
Join
The quest
When they are a garden friend
You see and reveal
Elizabeth and dear old Bill
Or the foolish Roderick
Notes
1. This was originally t**led "Jungle" when it appeared on setlists in August 2014. In a way the lyrics are pretty straigtforward--the narrator expresses distaste for a piece of writing. Intriguingly, his ire seems to be directed at the typography ("a letter so simple, yet disgusting in a stroke"
This song shares certain lyrics with "Jam Song" from 2013's Re-Mit (see note 3 below).
If we transcribe the mentioned characters in the sequence in which they are mentioned, we wind up with something like "EY?S2." Somewhere in there the word "eyes" is almost suggested. Divvey from the Fall online forum has suggested that the opening lines refer to an eye test, while Dan finds this on page 13 of Renegade:
"Worst thing was, when I was about six I went blind. I had an eye disease that nobody could understand. I just woke up one morning and everything looked like it was in Hebrew or Greek. It's like being thrown into a foreign country... For half a year everything looked upside down, like ancient letters, hieroglyphics...
Chris Goodhead suggests that the song may be about a T-Shirt.
Steveoid from the Fall online Forum says of the t**le: "I a**umed it was from J Cloth, the well known dish/cleaning wipe widely promoted in the 70s."
Commenters have suggested that the song sounds like West African pop or, indeed, Santana...
Thanks to Shrimper for transcribing the lyrics.
^
2. Xyloplax: If we think of Cyrillic/Acrylic and Urals being a reference to Russian, then "more demonic than italic" makes more sense if you consider that "demonic" is a word swap with "demotic", which is usually most a**ociated with "demotic Greek", the linguistic term for Modern Greek, the alphabet of which Cyrllic closely resembles (St. Cyril, the inventor of the Cyrillic Alphabet, was Greek). Italic, of course, being a reference to the Roman alphabet. Linguistically, Modern Greek is part of the Hellenic Language Family, which many Linguists say is closer to the Slavic Language Family (which Russian is a member of) than the Italic Language Family (which Latin and the Romance Languages are a member of).
As alluded to above, it has also been suggested that "Acrylic" may be a mispronunciation of, or perversion of, "Cyrillic," an Eastern European script which is used, among other places, in the Urals, which of course clears everything up about this song...
^
3. Some interesting remarks from Russell Richardson:
"On that mysterious letter referred to, 'a letter so simple, yet disgusting in a stroke'... this is surely the capital "I"... it has been referred to as a 'downward stroke of arrogant identity,' which would fit into the general tenor of the piece. An unrelated thought is that MES is scrying the Greek alphabet, maybe a newspaper (now why would he be learning Greek...?) which is an interesting idea (note also the real Greek or mock/clumsy Greek grace notes in lyrics of the past decade.)"
That quote about "I" was so apt that it sounded familiar, but I have to put a Wikipedia-style "by whom" here...a Goodle search for the phrase turns up only Russell's comment toward the bottom of this page, alas.
^
4. From "Jam Song":
It started one afternoon
When the LP came on
It erased the brain of the man we held dear
Now we have to make sure
The estate and sound
And we have to make sure
The estate and sound
Here "Estate and sound" may be a substitution for the phonetically similar cliché "safe and sound," which appears in the next stanza: "Now we have to make sure
It is safe and sound today."
Tetrachloroethylene is a dry cleaning fluid, exposure to the fumes of which can cause brain damage.
"Clear," it should be noted--although it is somewhat unlikely in context--could refer to Scientology, which holds that human souls, or "thetans," accrue attachments called "engrams" as a result of traumatic events (and other thetans, of the unrestful deceased, have a tendency to latch on as well). One of the lower levels of initation, which occurs when the practitioner is prounounced free of these accretions, is called "Clear."