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February Double A-Side: The Colossus
🕑 Added 2025-02-28 17:22:37 +0000 UTCMastered by Andrew Katz
Art by Billis Helg
Couldn't decide which track I liked more, so this month is a double A-side!
Writing: My schedule this month was shaped around a weeklong visit to New York for promotional work in advance of the album. Before leaving, I started work on a song pretty different from this one called “Good Hard Work”, with a mellow chorus and style. As I worked on it, it developed a verse melody that was more ardent and fierce than the chorus; this verse ended up being the more interesting piece, and I abandoned the original chorus and followed this new energy. I was inspired by the book of Tobit and the book of Exodus, and started writing lyrics about people who leave behind all of their known lives to go somewhere else, on a thin promise - something I’ve seen in my own life and in friends’.
New York City, in past visits, struck me as a harbor of decadence and high-powered capitalism. This time, decompressing after the flight, I started researching the Statue of Liberty. Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus” went straight to my heart:
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
This was a different vision of New York than I had seen. That towering statue, that world-famous emblem of the city and the country, kept its back turned to the skyscrapers, to Times Square and Wall Street, and held its torch for the poor who gathered in its subways and streets. If these people weren’t represented by the city’s billboards and advertisements, they were still represented in her. I kept that poem close to my heart throughout the week.
In this song, Lady Liberty collapses into the sea, and the “empire” seems to dominate. But I don’t think it’s that simple. When old structures collapse, what was truly within them - good or evil - emerges into the light. If a monument to liberty falls, then what remains is what people truly need - the human hearts and human hands that can comfort the tired and the poor, ushering all of us into an unknown future.
Tracks:
1: electric guitar/vocal
2: percussion on acoustic guitar
3: acoustic guitar
4: vocal
Lyrics:
New York is losing its vantage
Into the Atlantic
The punishment of your midwives
Service for brick and mortar
Your temple of empire
Your purchasing power is your right to survive
What else could be expected?
Someone is sending
Something unknown into our lives
Far from the storied fables
The voice of an angel
Sends the strong into a terrored state
She holds the sword of anger
And the face of a stranger
Can you trust her to know the way?
Don’t bother setting the table
Eat in haste now
Mark the lintel and lock the door
Tonight I cry, I cry alone,
weak and huddled, far from home,
As the colossus falls into the sea
With the light she held for you and me
Never a time quite like this
The language of lightning
Is never before and never again
And if the heart is harder
The greater the power
All of his chariots and all of his men
Stilled and silent
The ending of violence
Someone turned the TV off
Tonight alone, alone I cry
Dying because I didn’t die
When the colossus fell into the sea
She took the lightning bolt for you and me
How many times she tried before
To lead us where there was no war,
Where night could not eclipse the day
How many times we fell away
Comments
veryevilalfie
I just saw the live version of this song on tiktok! :)
Federico Tranfaglia
Wow, fantastic!! Could you tell me what chords you use?? thanks:))
ash perry
SO SO SO excited that this one is getting played live!!!!
bowie!!
for me the beauty and meaning in your lyrics lyrics puts into words what i and many others could only wish to express. Your has music resonated with me throughout these years, I wish i could express how grateful i am for all of it. this song is no different, it puts into words what i could not. thank you
Sam Bradley
So sick!! This resonates deep. Living in downtown Tacoma has given me a lot of perspective on how city life seems to eat people alive. We live to work, we work to survive - the city decays around me. I had imagined it so fondly, only to realize that it’s nearly sucked the soul out of me. What once seemed so glamorous is now tumultuous and uncomfortable. I wrote a song about it a while ago - “the living dead walk the streets, their gangrene hands clutching their things. They build a fire, the smoke pours out abandoned buildings nearby my house.” Thats how it opens up. It’s tough being an artist in the city, but at least it gives me something to write about.
Ben Sunhoof
Thank you Mr. Bill Torpedo sir, this is great, can't wait for the record.
Luka Buchanan
please do pass on that the artwork has been stunning!
Mona Borghar
Ouhhh this is so good
callicoeidoscope
this is SO amazing!!!!!! is it gonna be on the album? :D
Luka Buchanan
Ozymandian!
