Winnipeg's John K Samson is arguably best known as the frontman of Canadian act The Weakerthans. His influence can be heard on current records from the likes of Pinegrove, Modern Baseball, The Hotelier and Frank Turner.
But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster—tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this?
Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (Chap. 1: Loomings)
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These landsmen are service-sector zombies from retail and government jobs, and they yearn for the open sea, for the freedom it offers from their menial lives on solid ground.
I mean, which would you rather have, this?
Or this?
where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land.
Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (Chap. 1: Loomings)
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Upon a first reading, you might think he’s talking about the underground-dwelling insectivore. Not so—in nautical terminology a mole is a massive, usually stone wall constructed in the sea, used as a breakwater and built to enclose or protect an anchorage or a harbor.
Just a few hours before impact with the mole, the waves and breezes at Battery were far out in the open ocean: it’s as though the tourists gathered there are seeing something of a faraway, unknown world.
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“Windigo” (pronounced WIN-dih-go or wen-DEE-go) is an anglicized form of the Cree word wittigo, which is a terrifying monster that conspires with starvation and cold to kill the Cree in the harsh Hudson and James Bay winters. They can also turn people into windigos, much like vampires or zombies. You might not even notice that you’re going windigo until you’ve killed and eaten your family… something that really happened over and over in the early 1900s.
The water snake in the song is from Plains Cree/Sandy Lake Cree mythology. The description of hypnosis in the song is taken directly from the legends.
Basically, this is a song about how we all have a destructive impulse inside us, and we’re all monsters somewhere in our souls. It is thematically quite indebted to Wintersleep’s “Orca” and “It’s The Fear of Myself That Keeps me Odd” by Alexisonfire.
And you know your life is heading in a questionable direction
When you're up for days with strangers and you can't remember anything
Except the way you sounded when you told me you didn't know what I should do Frank Turner – Recovery
When you're up for days with strangers and you can't remember anything
Except the way you sounded when you told me you didn't know what I should do Frank Turner – Recovery
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What is this?
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You sleep as much as I do now
And you don't eat much of anything The Weakerthans – Plea from a Cat Named Virtute
And you don't eat much of anything The Weakerthans – Plea from a Cat Named Virtute
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When depressed, people tend to be unmotivated and sleep a lot. They also get thrown off of their normal diet. John’s in a pretty deep rut. As for the cat, cats sleep an average of sixteen hours a day… anyone who’s ever actually met a cat suspects that it’s higher.
I swear I'm going to bite you hard
And taste your tinny blood
If you don't stop the self-defeating lies
You've been repeating since the day you brought me home The Weakerthans – Plea from a Cat Named Virtute
And taste your tinny blood
If you don't stop the self-defeating lies
You've been repeating since the day you brought me home The Weakerthans – Plea from a Cat Named Virtute
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Virtute has talked herself in circles, and now it’s time to get serious (and more than a little violent). If John can’t get out of his woe-is-me rut, she’ll do everything in her power to do it for him.
Fun fact: blood is often described as tasting “tinny” or “coppery,” and for good reason: it’s loaded with iron platelets.
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John K. Samson’s cat, Virtute, has some pretty particular opinions about his owner’s lame life. If he doesn’t shape up soon, she’s going to do something about it.
Virtute, whose name means “strength” in Latin, makes a decidedly more depressing appearance on the 2006 cut Virtute The Cat Explains Her Departure
The cat’s name is spelled “Virtute” (not “Virtue”) and pronounced “Vir-too-tay”.
In an interview, Samson reveals Virtute is fictional:
Yeah, I feel a bit bad when I tell people that Virtute doesn’t exist. She’s a composite of several cats I knew and loved.
6 years
3 years
John later clarified that Virtute is a fictional cat in an interview. “Yeah, I feel a bit bad when I tell people that Virtute doesn’t exist. She’s a composite of several cats I knew and loved.”
Dancing where the stars go blue
Dancing where the evening fell
Dancing in your wooden shoes
In a wedding gown Ryan Adams – When The Stars Go Blue
Dancing where the evening fell
Dancing in your wooden shoes
In a wedding gown Ryan Adams – When The Stars Go Blue
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Here, Adams uses symbols of broken dreams or unrealized aspirations: the colour blue (i.e. “to feel blue”), falling stars (broken dreams), and wooden shoes, an old anarchist symbol to the same effect.
The wedding gown would indicate that this sadness is centered on a relationship; love did not work out the way that the woman in the song wanted it to. Adams looks on with pity but also with admiration. It’s possible that he is in love with her and devoted to her but she is with another man.
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