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However, this song isn’t the most distinctive or memorable on the album. It reminds me a lot of Sigur Ros’s instrumental tracks.
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It has a dreamlike and timeless atmosphere, and the repeating sounds of birds chirping and insects in the background are evocative of a fairytale in a pathless wood. “Photograph” is mostly an instrumental piece, with a few vocal echoes in between. The melody seems happy and hopeful, especially due to the buoyant and rhythmic violin, but the lyrics reveal an underlying darkness: “And as we danced among the ashes of our arms / We laughed it off / And then we burned our tiny world to find the ocean / Just beyond those paper walls.” “The Ship in Port” is about those that are wandering and running, lost and drifting. This is fitting, as the lyrics seem to be about a vampire drinking blood from a diseased person. “Midnight” has an ethereal and ghostly quality to it, with haunting vocals and a melancholy melody. “Everything Costs” is somewhat similar to “Secrets (Cellar Door)” in its instrumentals, and the lyrics speak of resilience and defiance.
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But it is no less poignant, describing two characters driving through a grimy path: “The highways are lined with graves / Like the fingernails of giants / Like blood pulled through a vein.” The complicated dynamic between the song’s two characters is hinted at in a subtle and imaginative way. “Rivers in the Dust” takes a darker and more melancholy tone than the previous song. The last stanza is especially touching: “Slipping on the pavement where we ran from the ghosts that you saw behind the cellar door / That’s the way that you showed me that I wasn’t quite alone / That you’d also touched the dead before.” The melody, shaped primarily by the repeating guitar riff, is uplifting and echoes the lyrics in its hopeful tone.
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Taking place in the forest, the imagery is vivid and beautiful. “The Leaves” starts off with “Secrets (Cellar Door),” a bewitching song about the speaker discovering that he’s not the only one who has magical powers. The lyrics are poetic and enchanting, painting a vivid picture of a tale resembling a dark fairytale, and the instrumentation–specifically the guitar, piano and violin–layer over each other to create dreamlike melodies. The series’s primary strengths lie with Cooper’s lyrics and melodies.
The road to nowhere lyrics radical face tv#
I discovered Radical Face by hearing a number of his songs on TV from there, I listened to many of his other albums, and was immediately intrigued by the concept of “The Family Tree.” “The Branches” is a 40-minute album of 10 songs, and though it is not my favorite album in the series, it is every bit as evocative and moving as I had expected a Radical Face album to be. “The Family Tree” tells the story of The Northcotes, a 19th century family with supernatural and mystical abilities, using certain melodies and instruments as musical embodiments of specific family members.
The road to nowhere lyrics radical face series#
The series consists of three interconnected albums: “The Roots,” “The Branches,” and the last and latest album, “The Leaves,” which was released on March 25. In his series of albums called “The Family Tree,” Radical Face-the pseudonym used by Ben Cooper-proves that he is not only a songwriter and musician, but a poignant storyteller as well.