“They’re taking our children away”

So, I had mentioned in my previous post that while watching The Sweet Hereafter I noticed a bizarre connection between that movie and the song "They Don't Want Your Corn, They Want Your Kids" by Liars. Well, I said I'd post another entry about it, and here it is.

Some of the things I am going to cover regarding the movie involve some plot points that may not ruin the movie per se, but will definitely give some stuff away. So consider this your spoiler alert. If you're interested in watching The Sweet Hereafter (which I would recommend), I might hold off on reading this.

***Spoilers Start***

As I was watching the movie, I kept hearing bits of dialogue that sounded vaguely familiar. By about the third time this happened, I realized that all these lines in the movie were also lyrics in the aforementioned Liars song "They Don't Want Your Corn, They Want Your Kids". After I realized this, I picked up on a few more lines of dialogue that are also lyrics. Most of the time, the lyrics aren't exact quotes from the movie, but are practically identical. Here is an example:

In one scene, Sarah Polley's character is reading "The Pied Piper" by Robert Browning to two children, and this becomes a reoccurring theme throughout the movie, her character providing voiceover in multiple scenes as she continues to read the poem. The poem includes the lines:

Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins

Cocking tails and pricking whiskers

Families by tens and dozens

Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives

Followed the Piper for their lives

This is actually what brought this to my attention. The Liars song contains the lines:

Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins

Families by tens and dozens

Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives

All of them fighting for their lives

Again, not an exact quote, but pretty close (actually, I'm not entirely sure about that last line, but it's close enough). Now, I realize that it seems perfectly reasonable that Liars took their lyrics from the original Browning poem rather than the movie. Which is more or less what I thought, but it kept happening. Here is another example. The character of Mitchell Stevens is talking on the phone to his runaway drug addicted daughter, Zoe. They have the following exchange:

Mitchell: Tell me your news, Zoe.

Zoe: OK. Yesterday I went to sell my blood. I'm in this fucking city, and I'm selling my blood.

Mitchell: That's not news, Zoe.

Zoe: No, but this is. They wouldn't take my blood. Do you know what that means, Daddy? Does it register? I tested positive. Welcome to hard times, Daddy.

Mitchell: What do you want me to do, Zoe? I'll do whatever you want.

Zoe: I need money.

Mitchell: What for?

Zoe: No, you cannot ask me that! Not anymore! You asked me what I wanted, not what I wanted it for. I want money.

Mitchell: Do you have a blood test?

Zoe: You don't believe me? You don't fucking believe me?! I like it when you don't believe me. It's better that you don't believe me, but have to act like you do.

[Both are quiet]

Zoe: I can hear you breathing

Mitchell: I can hear you breathing, too.

[Zoe hangs up phone, Mitchell continues to whisper into the now dead line]

Mitchell: I love you, Zoe. I'll take care of you. I'll take care of you.

Pretty intense, right? Well here are the lines from "They Don't Want Your Corn, They Want Your Kids" sung in a back-and-forth call-and-response style:

Mama, I'm selling my blood

Welcome to hard times

Daddy, I can hear you breathing

I'll take care of you

I'll take care of you

And finally, one last example that I noticed. When Mitchell is trying to convince one of the parents to join the lawsuit, and the parent refuses, Mitchell explains that his daughter is a drug addict. That everyone is losing their children, if it isn't bus accidents, it's drugs. If it isn't drugs, it's any number of other horrible things that destroy our children's lives. He concludes by saying:

Something's happening that's taking our children away.

In the song, the four lines quoted above ("Mama, I'm selling my blood…") are followed with the repeated phrase:

They're taking our children away

I'll take care of you

They're taking our children away

***Spoilers End***

I want to make it clear, it's not like the entire song is somehow lifted from the movie. There are just some lyrics that are obviously inspired by (or taken from) the movie. More than anything, this just seemed extremely bizarre. Buried in the middle of a dense and strange concept album about German witch folklore is a song seemingly inspired by an independent Canadian film from 1997 (that has absolutely nothing to do with witches, mind you). I've just been trying to wrap my mind about what a strange and totally unexpected pairing this is.

Regardless, both the song and movie are amazing. I'd highly recommend seeing The Sweet Hereafter (check out my entry about it to see if it sounds up your alley). I also absolutely love the song "They Don't Want Your Corn, They Want Your Kids." In fact, I love everything Liars do, and They Were Wrong, So We Drowned is definitely my favorite album. It's a strange, dense, ugly album, so it's not for everyone. But it's one of my favorites.

[Note: I totally had the quotes formatting really nicely in Word, then the formatting got all screwed up when I uploaded the post. Sorry about that.]

“Ok, we’re going to freak out now, but don’t worry.”

Last night marked the end of my blitzkrieg on the Austin nightlife. No more interesting weekend activities on the horizon, but I do know the Dirtbombs are coming to town at some point.

Anyways, the final event on my social calendar was a fitting climax. I went to see Liars at Mohawk. It’s fitting considering I love these guys more than Super Furry Animals and Crispin Hellion Glover. I’ve been wanting to see them live pretty much since picking up their debut album back in 2001, but haven’t gotten the chance. They rarely tour, and the only time I can remember having the chance was last year when they came through Austin opening for Interpol. I wasn’t about to pay $40 to see them, and then have to sit through Interpol. But this time around, it was $10, they were headlining, and No Age was opening (check out their website for pictures from Austin!). Much better situation.

Some quick notes about the venue. Mohawk is a two-story bar that has an enormous outdoor stage. The stage is on the ground floor, and there is ground level floor space for the audience. There are also two more tiers for the audience, making a three level outdoor venue. Pretty cool place. Unfortunately, on the night of the show, it was 40 degrees, it had rained all day, and the outdoors was just generally unpleasant. Since the stage is outdoors, and it had been raining, the stage and ground level was covered in tents. This basically meant that you couldn’t see anything from the upper levels, meaning everyone in the venue had to be crammed down on the ground level. So everything is wet, cold, crowded, and even on the ground floor the tents obscured your view. Less than ideal, but oh well. Better than canceling the show, that’s for sure.

First, let’s start with No Age. I’m vaguely familiar with their music. My brother, Brad, likes them, and made me a copy of their album Weirdo Zippers, but I haven’t really given it a whole lot of attention. Listened to it enough to know what they sound like, but not enough to know their songs very well. They’re a duo (drummer/vocalist and guitarist) that plays noisy, artsy, punk-ish kind of stuff. The show was good. They basically stood on stage and played their instruments, nothing too crazy. Sounded good. Pretty much it boiled down to a good show, but not knowing their music very well kind of rendered me indifferent.

Now on to the main event, Liars. For those who aren’t familiar with Liars’ music, they are a trio (foursome for the concert) who make music that is so varied they are nigh-impossible to describe. From album to album, their sound changes drastically and unpredictably. Their first album, They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top, was filled with jittery, confrontational, quasi-experimental dance-punk. Their second album, They Were Wrong, so We Drowned, is a dense, sprawling concept album about witches that was steeped in arrhythmic, difficult layers of noise, tape-loops, drumbeats, and just general grating unpleasantness (this is my favorite album– I seem to remember thinking the first time I listened to it, “oh my god, my brain is melting out of my ears…”). The follow-up to the unfairly reviled They Were Wrong was the critically acclaimed Drum’s Not Dead. It is a delicate, atmospheric, beautiful, and tribal album. Their fourth, and newest, album is the self-titled Liars, which marked a move away from the sprawling, experimental concept albums of They Were Wrong and Drum. Liars is a muscular, varied rock album that reigns in their seemingly uncontrollable weirdness into more traditional rock structures. There are mind-melting, Stooges-esque primal rock, fuzzy shoegazer/Jesus and Mary Chain pop, and even at least one faux-80s mid-tempo dance/funk song (mixed in with the usual unpredictable craziness, of course). They are probably the most unpredictable, exciting modern band around.

The set list for the show was a mix of They Were Wrong, Drum, and Liars. They didn’t play anything off of They Threw Us All in a Trench, and as Craig (a pleasant dude I met in line for the bathroom) pointed out, they 86-ed two of the original four members (Liars was originally a four-piece outfit, but after their debut album, the drummer and bass player left, and a new drummer was brought in, making them a trio) between their first and second albums. Craig thought they didn’t play any of those songs because the new drummer couldn’t handle it, but I prefer to think they don’t play them by choice. But whatever. Most noteworthy about the set, though, was that there was no “There’s always room on the broom” which is odd. Basically, I dig everything these guys have ever recorded; so set list selections aren’t really an issue.

In terms of what songs were best live, pretty much my opinions of their albums dictated which songs I liked best. Stuff off of They Were Wrong were best, followed by songs from Drum, and finally the new Liars stuff. Which is not to say any of it was even close to bad, just all relative levels of kick-ass. Notably, though, their live rendition of “The Otherside of Mt. Heart Attack” was spine-tinglingly awe-inspiring.

The performance was captivating. Angus Andrews makes for a charismatic and amazing front man (even with his recent back troubles); spazzing out, waving his arms around in an almost shamanistic manner; howling, screaming, and crooning his way through their set. Their “encore” was great mostly because Angus just got on the mic and said, “This is the part where we would go and sit in a little room for a few minutes then come back out. If it’s ok with you, I think we’ll just stay here.” Personally, I think encores are stupid and annoying. I don’t want to have to stand there for 10 minutes just to hear another two songs, so it was nice that they forego that bit of tomfoolery.

Overall, great show. The experience in its totality was a little rough, given the aforementioned weather/crowd problems. But I guess you can’t always have your cake and eat it, too.

Once again, Pitchfork has provided pictures of their show (again, not from this show specifically, but from the same tour).

On a side note, I noticed another developing stupid hipster trend. Ugly-ass camo tights. An unfortunately large number of female concertgoers were wearing tights that had camo patterns on them that basically made it look like they had some kind of gross, splotchy skin disease all over their legs. I guess it fits in with the whole looking-disgusting-and-having-poor-personal-hygiene-is-hot aesthetic.

Oh, and one more thing. When I got home from the concert, I went to go to the bathroom, only to discover a giant-ass spider in my toilet. INSIDE MY TOILET!!! Ewww….