Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Breezeblocks

So I picked Breezeblocks by ∆ (known by normal, not pretentious people as alt-J). It's a very weird and very poetic song, and to understand the song it really helps to have seen the music video.
~~~Links Baby!~~~

Lyrics: click here boo
Video: right here bae (watch out this video contains murder)
Video Played in Reverse: you'll understand in a minute

Cool so here we go.
The song is about a relationship that has been completely and totally wrecked, but one where the guy at least still very much loves the girl, despite his infidelities and their mutual issues. The video, and the lyrics, show their final cataclysmic fight during which the guy drowns the girl. "She may contain the urge to run away / but hold her down with soggy clothes and breezeblocks." Here in these introductory lines we see the entirety of the plot - the girl is leaving him \, and he is vengefully drowning her by holding her underwater with breezeblocks (British slang for cinder blocks), while also "tying her down" in the relationship by holding her back with her soggy clothes and the bricks. Or so it seems.
Now this doesn't even a little bit sound like a love thing until you see the next line: "Cetirizine, your fever's gripped me again / Never kisses, all you ever send are full stops." Cetirizine is an anti-fever medication. She's his drug and his love for her is the fever - her presence around her keeps him numb to the burning fire he feels for her. The next line though shows that the love isn't reciprocated - when he sends her kisses (the reference here is to telegrams and the XOXOX dealio), she sends nothing but a full stop (a period.)
Stanza two starts with a direct reference to Where The Wild Things Are, which the band cited as the main inspiration for the song. I don't quite get the reference so I'm not going to pretend I do. Next line, "Break down, now weep, / Build up breakfast, now let's eat" is pretty much representative of their current relationship status: they break down and fight, then they move into their routine without fixing issues but instead pretending they don't exist. 
This pattern of strife and unappreciated love is prevalent throughout the song . "Muscle to muscle and toe to toe", meaning his love fills his body. "Morphine, queen of my vaccine", again same idea as the cetirizine. There's a really cool line that goes "My heart sinks as I jump up" for which the imagery is really cool. I think it means that as he tries to maintain this positive attitude his spirit sort of falls as he becomes more aware of just how unhappy they are, and so its like when he jumps up his heart stays still and seems to move lower in his body.
The song ends with this refrain of "Please don't go", "I love you so", and "I'll eat you whole." Apart from the weird vorarephilic connotations of that final bit, it's almost like when he's pleading with her he's showing his desperation to keep her with him, how he'll go as far as to consume her. It's pretty dark and pretty cool.

Also the video is worth at least a brief mention. It shows them fighting and him killing her but does it in reverse, so when you first start it it looks like he's just killing her in a classic dbag dude way, but as you get to the end you see that she actually set it up to where when he got home she would stab him from behind only her plan went wrong and he ends up smacking her with a cinder block and drowning her.

2 comments:

  1. So, just a side note, you did notice that he was keeping her captive in a closet... right? This is more of a case of "I'll let you out if you show me you love me" and she waited for the opportunity to make her move and escape. Overcome with rage he attempted to secure her, eventually having to use the cinderblock as a way of knocking her out. Seeing as he used too much force, he put her in the bathtub to make it look as though she slipped and hit her head.

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  2. Cetirizine isnt for a fever, it's an allergy medication. Zyrtec actually. Does this change your analysis?

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