Parking is way back, way back
Convenient (Convenient)
Parking is way back, way back (Park)
Convenient (Convenient)
Parking is way back, way back Modest Mouse – Convenient Parking
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Thick syrup standing in lines Modest Mouse – Teeth Like God's Shoeshine
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Orange Julius is a classic component of the American shopping mall food court. While they’re rarely seen now (as malls are becoming ghost towns) they were ubiquitous in the ‘90s. The eponymous beverage is a frothy frappé of orange juice, milk, vanilla and powdered egg whites.
Here, they’re part of the album’s commentary on greed and suburban sprawl. He is actually describing consumers as thick syrup, as they are the ones “standing in lines”.
You can watch the band and others discuss this line about 30 minutes into Pitchfork’s documentary on The Lonesome Crowded West:
We inch forward, little by little, hoping to attain something that will make us feel whole. Orange Julius will definitely not make us feel whole. Hell, is that place still even around?
He sparkles, shimmers, shines Modest Mouse – Teeth Like God's Shoeshine
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Brock personifies American capitalism as a man with a concerning, white grin, shimmering with empty promises.
This may be an allusion to the Charles Bukowski quote, “never trust a man with shiny shoes”, as Bukowski has notably influenced Brock in his songwriting, going so far as to name a song after him.
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To burn someone in effigy is to burn a representation of someone, usually out of anger stemming from ideological differences.
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Decades in the drain, monograms on the brain
Decide what's working and what's moved on MGMT – Alien Days
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To put it quite simply, this is about forgetting your childhood. “Decades in the drain”, “one month crawling, next year blurring”. None of us can say we clearly remember our childhoods. It all seems like a blur to us, or like we frittered it away, years gone down the drain. The lifespan retrieval curve indicates that many people have a period of childhood amnesia from the ages of 1 to 10. Those years can seem like ‘alien days’ to us if we think too hard about them.
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Just like how Tom chases Jerry and Scooby Doo chases old men dressed up as ghouls, Will.I.Am feels like his whole life revolves around this chasing after girl – an ultimately unattainable goal
Admittedly, Will’s not the first to make a Tom and Jerry reference in rap.
I'm up all night to get some
She's up all night for good fun
I'm up all night to get lucky Daft Punk (Ft. Nile Rodgers & Pharrell Williams) – Get Lucky
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This is Skateboard P’s third time working with Daft Punk. The Neptunes made an official remix to “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”, for Daft Punk’s remix album, Daft Club. N.E.R.D.’s “Hypnotize U” was produced by Daft Punk.
This track also features prolific R&B/Disco guitarist Nile Rodgers on his mighty axe, who both duos are fans of. You may have heard of some of his big hits
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A reference to a buffalo jump, a hunting tactic used to kill buffalo in mass quantities in which hunters would, on horses, drive the buffalo off of a cliff, often breaking their legs or killing them.
Brock is saying that his brain is driving his heart to it’s death; he’s letting logic dictate over his gut instincts, which is in direct conflict to the first verse, in which he sings of his heart controlling his mind.
Not contradictory, but a conditional outcome – When his heart can’t win, it kills itself.
His brain has identified an issue that his heart cannot ignore (cliff), destroy (burger), or wear out (the long stairs). When his heart loses, it lets its negative feelings (bitterness) justify self destruction (jumping the cliff).
Rather than “logic dictating his gut instincts”[/heart] – I’d argue that Brock is saying that his thought processes set him up for heartbreak. The way that Brock tends to [over]think creates the figurative cliff for his emotions to run off of and plummet into the abyss; similiar to in the aforementioned Buffalo Run.
Brock is not contradicting the opening verse, instead he’s re-visiting the core refrain of the song using a different metaphor.
Something to maybe include would be the fact, that the word “Home” is most likely a metaphor for Brock’s mind.
It’s something that is a part of him and that’s not really something he can change a lot about.
For me it brings the image of someone growing up in an abusive (or just generally bad) household to mind, or that of someone ending up in an unhappy marriage and not escaping from it because it’s what they’re used to and it’s what they “call home”.