Heartland

Yeah, once again Sisters reissue land has been screwed up and the only Floodland available on streaming is the vinyl version.

dead stars wrote: ↑01 Jan 1970, 01:00

On Aug 10, 2002 6:59am, Zigeunerweisen wrote:

On Aug 4, 2002 5:40am, dead inside wrote:

Heck, I had a dominion post about it but I can't find it!

Did you find anything? It's about sex right, right? I know it is Maybe about drugs too, perhaps a little love thwron in as well. But it's a damn cool song, that's all i know.

No, no no no!

It's about that 5th dimension like series or film where a man is driving its car and meanwhile everyone is dead but him. All the assumptions you may infer from that beggining are your responsibility!

It's an interesting point. It's really made me ponder over this song today - it has always felt like a love song to me, though listening over and over to it and writing a poem inspired by the lyrics/rhythm/mood I made a poem about loneliness. There is some sort of loneliness in there, isn't it. some otherwordly chiliness spinning you around (I just remembered Jon Fosse's A Shining - it's a new novella but the mood is a bit alike)
And I do agree, the bass line here is damn amazing; I once knew how to play it on my bass guitar, one of the best experiences in life

Insofar as it matters, it's generally understood that Andy is writing about Claire Shearsby here, and he has described the song as "Nine While Nine part 2". We don't need to impose his reading onto our own though.

To me, there is some recurring Eldritch imagery. Driving on snowy icy roads, submersion underwater, etc.

What I find really really moving and striking in the lyrics though is the part about "the ice gets harder overhead" and the way it ends with the protagonist encountering all the things "lost in the drift".

However you want to decode it symbolically, I think the narrative of the song itself is:

"I got out of the car on a snowy empty road at night, I took a look around, I stepped out onto a lake which had become frozen ground, I fell through the ice and after I went under, the surface froze solid again, and I found a bunch of stuff beneath the surface - cars, people, cares - that had skidded off the same snowy road while trying to navigate the drift."

..To me, that's the actual "storyline" structure in the lyrics of the song, seperate to its symbolism or intended meaning. I love that Eldritch lyrics, for all their supposed 'darkness' often carry this kind of vivid hallucinogenic quality that I can't help but associate with colour and light. There's as much good acid as there is bad speed, in his writing, is what I'm saying.

It could be read as imagining a reunion, it could be read as a mournful ending, or as being trapped in some kind of stasis with your past, or about hopelessness, etc.

All the bits and pieces that make up heartbreak, I suppose.

I like that underwater picture of things lost under the ice, a jumble of tangible and intangible.

Picking upon the loneliness mentioned above, that definitely fits - the middle section hinging on 'F**k Me And Marry Me Young' seems to describe a very deliberate rejection (even repulsion) of the traditional happy ever after - possibly what caused the break up in the first place? He's made an entire career out of making things perversely difficult for himself and everyone around him. Loneliness and cold seem inevitable, tempered with exhilaration at the freedom.

There are so many tantalising precisely sketched pictures here, glimpsed and then snatched out of reach. I've always thought of the whole song as something akin to a snowflake - heartachingly beautiful until you try to pick it up for a closer look, whereupon it just melts and disintegrates...

Cheers,
S.

esf wrote: ↑03 Mar 2025, 00:06 I like that underwater picture of things lost under the ice, a jumble of tangible and intangible.

Don't drive on ice.