Hobson claims imperialism's driving motive is to convert "superfluous" capital to profit, and this holds true, conditionally, here. Vocals and unaccompanied (multi-tracked) guitar pursue inverted strategies, starting or ending with muted resonances (or fully delineated voicings) that sound the limits. Dissipating and emerging, amnesiac narrator attempts to make sense of "she" who "is coming." Imminently locatable (from either 1902 or 1922, it doesn't matter), the desired stranger is posited as both amorous possessor and easily possessed. Key movement: singer's ability to "wish mine"; desire's return on investment is the apprehension of alterity. Too much being.
The sweetness of contemporary womanhood involves, first, a "crossing" into a zone of withdrawal. The first-order problem, of course, is the "you" to surrender to (who permits the "ugliness" which is "everything" and every "little thing" to disappear). The withdrawal from the "faith" of self--which leads us all from our "home[s]"--will lead us to a warm "room," but worries about disappointment prevail. As such, surrender is only given to the extent that it's a given, and the "last line" which must be traversed simply traces the contours of self-possession (in/through another or self as other). No promising decay here.
Prisons are meant to break the "will"--or at least make it "weak"--but unlike “enemy combatant” Jose Padilla's predicament, the gist of the just is for Black men and women to assume the "stool" of power to reinstate the fair-play of the "rules." "Warrior princess," a decidedly un-matriarchal figure who comes from the other "sun"/son (one of undeniable compassion), suggests that once a "bridge" is built to yoke together the people, it should be destroyed. But what of the landlock/island? "Evil" must test the good, but this is a structural problem, and track could exhibit imprisoned thought if not for the ghetto's missing piss pot possibly serving as the sign of absenteeism: the golden shower may only be enjoyed if recalibrated for mutuality.
Being direct, for the singer, does not necessarily appear along with being inflexible. Why, though, is obstinacy defined as the opposite of "[takin'] chances"? The badge of social ostracism is impossible to shake, but there's also profit in it (see "Bad Reputation," for example). Embodiment gone awry: kingdom rock.
From Treasure, where every track is a woman’s name. Much atmospherics: bells, drones, breathy upper-register rushes, and deep moans. But without discernible lyrics, this name, like all of the others, becomes an empty signifier, radically open to whatever-contents via interpretation (or not). Wresting the proper name from determination.
Imperialist affirmative action promotes racial exceptionalism for those Filipinas that acquiesce to being "all alone" but available so that "sailors" can enjoy "making love to every pretty girl" they meet. Reclaiming the "rustic," single "island" (out of the many) to renovate the decaying South. The price of assimilative admission: you're "ours" when I can "claim" you.
Strangely, the end of a relationship enforces a reckoning with time, where a detachment from nagging masculinity ("you're gonna miss me when I'm gone") is impossible. Verse vocals press against the beginning of the bar and, alternately, the two and three; incomplete and rushed, the giving of time, now, consists in waiting to suspend it with and through another. Futile, waiting for "him to send for me": the textbook in (male) management.
The gist: "Your desire for 'male sensitivity' alienates me." Sure. Also: constrictions of fidelity/monogamy instate dynamic of completion. The grass is certainly greener, "but it's grown beneath my feet." Singer thinks it's too late: foolish to revolt against this circuit/stagnancy, but why not more of them? Infatuation with space and space-ing out (ad infinitum): liberal bachelor music.
Um, apparently, Canada is a virile man, and the U.S. is an aging temptress. Dodgy and ridiculous gender assignations aside, song seemingly declares sovereignty (or, in global geopolitical terms, it announces strategy of delinking). Dependent on proper spelling of sovereign name, and U.S. recognition and agreement (“listen what I say”), track is really a plea in the shape of a tantrum. Subservient.
Singer imagines herself as one-of-a-kind on the assembly line: she has “desire” (to leave, to be a “big star”) while her female co-workers “got no . . . cranium,” and her immediate supervisor is a “pink clammy lady” who carefully manages the workload, and thereby heightens the tedium. She, on the other hand, aspires to smell like a boy (“forbidden” and “acrid”) as an antidote to acceptance of her situation. Undecidable in terms of tonality, but, either way, demonstrates class’s intersection with gender (sororophobia).
