You cut your leg off to save a buck or two
Because you never consider the cost
You find the lowest prices every day
But would you look at everything that we've lost
And yeah, it's true, I learned it from watching you
But now it's you who doesn't know what a dollar is worth
You got the market its own bodyguard
And all the people are gettin' hurt.
The title track from Bazan’s second of five solo albums to date, released in 2011, it seems like a timely choice for a period of troubled, confusing, indeed farcical Brexit talks, and yet the process of poor communication and argument is one for any era, in the personal or political realm. While Theresa May dismisses EU president Jean-Claude Juncker’s claims frosty, unhelpful talks as EU gossip, there’s no denying that things aren’t going well. No surprise there. And so we broaden this out to Bazan, far way from Europe, from Seattle, Washington, who has worked with Pedro The Lion, Headphones, Overseas, The Undertow Orchestra among others. He delivers a beautifully measured, melancholy song, that seems to be about bad business (or perhaps a divorce settlement?) where self-interest comes a cost to everyone else. It’s an experience we should all learn from, but the same mistakes get repeated, over and over again. Why? As he put the sad question, in another song, Hard To Be, somehow, always, "it's hard to be a decent human being".
In these strange negotiations
Man they really are gettin' me down
Strange negotiations
Feel like a stranger in my hometown …
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