My 15-year-old is a singer and guitarist. He’s the one who introduced me to Noah right before Stick Season blew up. He’s in his room covering Busyhead and Sink right now. And he’s good.
I love the way music transcends generations.
(Oh, now he’s moved on to Orange Juice)
I figured this group could appreciate how awesome this is :-)
Listening to TGD has spun a web of lyrical and thematic connections. Some to other artists (mostly Mumford and Counting Crows). Some staying writhing Noah’s works. But the one I can’t shake today is the way the following are weaving themselves into a picture in my brain:
“Where I’m from and what I’m worth have gotten so damn intertwined” — Spoiled (so far one of the biggest gut-punch lyrics of the album for me)
“I was born into a one-hundred-year storm
Foot of ice across Vermont, and in that dark
And in that frost a heart was formed” — Doors
“If I get too close
And I'm not how you hoped
Forgive my northern attitude
Oh, I was raised out in the cold
If the sun don't rise
'Til the summertime
Forgive my northern attitude
Oh, I was raised on little light” —Northern Attitude
I’ve always been fascinated by the way place shapes who we are, especially the place we grow up, and to what extent we can ever really escape that no matter how far away we go. That place becomes a part of us. Love it or hate it, it is always in there. There’s always a pull back, even if running away was the best thing you could have done. I see a lot of wrestling with that in this lyrical web.
(So many parallels in general between Doors and Northern Attitude, but this is the main one playing in my head at the moment. The other tangential tie in I see to this theme as well is a line from “The Tall Grass” by Counting Crows “some of us are broken when we’re children and we can never get it back once it is gone.” But that opens up an all new direction to explore!)