Anne Boleyn, Lee Miller, Sylvia Plath, a Japanese sex hotel, a Tasmanian devil who falls in love with a woman as he watches her swim, a gradual death, Richard Llewelyn’s book a 19th-century Welsh mining community, alt-J’s third album is full of oddities and wonders, but today’s pick is the album’s opener, the sort of fusion of disparate elements that we love at the Song Bar.
Written by Joe Newman, Gus Unger-Hamilton, and Thom Sonny Green and featuring Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell, it’s about a ‘wayward lad’ from the northeast who has a sexual encounter with two girls from Hornsea, culminating in the three worn words’ (presumably ‘I love you’), with reference to the statue of Shakespeare’s Juliet at the Casa Di Giulietta in Verona, which has been damaged by excessive rubbing by the hands of visitors eager for good luck in love, and imagery and scenery taken from the Japanese PlayStation 1 game known as “LSD: Dream Emulator”. You can’t get much more eclectic than that, except with the added reference and style of old British folk music. But where could this influence have come from? See the next SOTD for a possible answer …
Oh, these three worn words
Oh, that we whisper
Like the rubbing hands
Of tourists in Verona
I just want to love you in my own language …
Want to suggest songs for Song of the Day or to say anything about it? Does this song make you think of something else? Then feel free to comment below, on the contact page, or on social media: Song Bar Twitter, Song Bar Facebook. Song Bar YouTube. Please subscribe, follow and share.
New to comment? It is quick and easy. You just need to login to Disqus once. All is explained in About/FAQs ...