Is "Trigger Cut" about suicide?

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They seem so goofy on the surface.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 03:52 (twenty-one years ago)

None of their songs have any meaning at all. Much like their idols R.E.M., they're one of those bands where the lyrics are just there to sound good with the music.

― Mr. Snrub (Mr. Snrub), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 04:03 (twenty-one years ago)

"None of their songs have any meaning at all. Much like their idols R.E.M., they're one of those bands where the lyrics are just there to sound good with the music."

Perfect answer.

― Pavement fan who gave up trying to understand their lyrics in '94 because it mad, Wednesday, 15 September 2004 04:34 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't even know what "Summer Babe" is about!

― pavemnt fan 4 evah & evah & evahhhhhh (samjeff), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 04:43 (twenty-one years ago)

Funny, the New Answers page rightly describes this question as "Unanswered."

I always appreciate the melodic cop from Jim Croce's "Operator" on "Trigger Cut."

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 04:51 (twenty-one years ago)

So no one thinks

Lies and betrayals
Fruit-covered nails
Electricity and lust
Won't break the door

I've got a heavy coat
It's filled with rocks and sand
And if I lose it

I'll be coming back today. . .

sounds like it's about facing a collapsing relationship and contemplating suicide but still being undecided? (I assumed the heavy coat with rocks and sand was a reference to how Virginia Woolf drowned herself.) Or maybe this is an old debate that's been hashed and rehashed and I'm unaware that everyone's sick of it because I never clicked with this band till now.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 05:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Much like their idols R.E.M., they're one of those bands where the lyrics are just there to sound good with the music.

And unlike R.E.M., the music actually sounds good, too.

― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 05:24 (twenty-one years ago)

"Embassy Row" is "about" Blur & Britpop (maybe)

― Neil Willett (Neil Willett), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 05:25 (twenty-one years ago)

Wait, now I think the "fruit-covered nails" could be a reference to homosexuality. They broke up because he was a closeted homosexual who's just coming out. . .

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 05:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Sundar, I think the last lines of the song speak to the suicide interpretation. V. possible. I hope Mr. Snrub was joking about the words just being there to fill space. Tell me "Shoot the Singer" isn't about something!

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 05:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Analysing SM's lyrics can be entertaining as all hell, just don't take it too seriously because it actually is possible to drive yourself crazy. I'm glad to hear that you finally clicked with Pavement. Better late than never.

― A guy who really misses Pavementtherockband (Julien Sandiford), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 05:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Fruit-covered nails

nails could be "fingernails" in this case but it could also refer to the method of nailing orange halves to trees to attract birds.

― stockholm cindy (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 05:54 (twenty-one years ago)

that was a bad sentence, sorry. it's late.

― stockholm cindy (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 05:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, I'd never heard of that practice before but I was just thinking that the closeted homosexual idea probably wouldn't work that well unless the collapsing relationship is itself a homosexual one. (Why would he come back otherwise?) The oranges thing makes more sense actually: The other partner was using him for his prettiness and amusement value, attracting him with lies (equivalent to oranges for birds). Now only the ugly 'nails' underneath remain.

Esp if "trigger cut" could maybe = "trigger cocked":

I've got a trigger cut
And I can't hold it back
But if I learn how
I'll be coming back today

would be pretty unmistakeable.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 06:17 (twenty-one years ago)

trig·ger ( P ) Pronunciation Key (trgr)
n.

The lever pressed by the finger to discharge a firearm.
A similar device used to release or activate a mechanism.
An event that precipitates other events.
Electronics. A pulse or circuit that initiates the action of another component.

― stockholm cindy, montessori emo superstar (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 06:28 (twenty-one years ago)

also,

cut in
To connect or become connected into an electrical circuit.

― stockholm cindy, montessori emo superstar (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 06:34 (twenty-one years ago)

Electricity and lust

i really like the way he sings this line

― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 06:40 (twenty-one years ago)

amateur!!!st otm.

One of the most saliently likeable things about early Pavement (or any Pavement) on first listen is SM's enunciation.
I also love the way he sings the first few lines on Stereo.

― mzui, Wednesday, 15 September 2004 10:11 (twenty-one years ago)

None of their songs have any meaning at all.

Absolutely not true.

Much like their idols R.E.M., they're one of those bands where the lyrics are just there to sound good with the music.

Not totally wrong.

― Matthew Perpetua (Matthew Perpetua), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 11:56 (twenty-one years ago)

My feeling has always been that, particularly on the first few records, Malkmus has a real gift for nailing in-between feelings. He's great at getting across little pains and minor joys. He's not big on narrative, but that doesn't mean the songs aren't "about" things. They trigger images, memories, emotions, and ideas, which certainly amount to something in combination. He's impressionistic, but he's not sloppy.

― Matthew Perpetua (Matthew Perpetua), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 12:01 (twenty-one years ago)

matthew OTM

― peter smith (plsmith), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 12:09 (twenty-one years ago)

For me, what Matthew said is perfectly reflected in Perfume-V (especially the "she's got the radio active and it makes me feel ok, i don't feel ok" part).

― alex in montreal, Wednesday, 15 September 2004 12:17 (twenty-one years ago)

OTM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He's like Ghostface Killa, I'd say.

― John Cei Douglas (John Cei Douglas), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 12:25 (twenty-one years ago)

that's a bizarre comparison

― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 13:14 (twenty-one years ago)

Much like their idols R.E.M., they're one of those bands where the lyrics are just there to sound good with the music.

Ahhh. This explains why I never could figure out "Everybody Hurts"!

― frankE (frankE), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 13:21 (twenty-one years ago)

r.e.m. got a lot more literal somewhere around automatic for the people

malkmus if anything has gotten more abstruse

― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 13:37 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't think the Ghostface comparison is all that weird. I think that they have a lot of the same lyrical strengths. Really, I think that part of the reason that I respond to Ghostface (and maybe the Wu in general) is a direct result of spending my formative teenage years listening to people like Malkmus, Stipe, and Thurston Moore.

Stipe's flirtations with being literal come and go. Automatic is pretty straightforward for the most part, but Monster and Hi-Fi are really obscure and strange for the most part. On the most recent R.E.M. material, Stipe's lyrics have become really heart-on-sleeve and obvious, mostly because it's part of Stipe's concept of artistic growth (and I don't begrudge him on that, it probably gets boring doing things over and over again for years). I think that the nakedness of his lyrics now can be kinda cringe-inducing, but all he's really doing is openly expressing things that he obscured in the past out of insecurity as much as for flair and style.

― Matthew Perpetua (Matthew Perpetua), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 13:59 (twenty-one years ago)

So basically, though I vastly prefer Stipe when he's being arty and obscure, I admire the fact that he's overcome a lot of insecurity over the years and has become very comfortable with himself. That's very inspiring, even if the music is somewhat less so.

― Matthew Perpetua (Matthew Perpetua), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 14:01 (twenty-one years ago)

if only they could write songs that weren't as obvious as the lyrics.

― frankE (frankE), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 14:07 (twenty-one years ago)

I haven't heard anything off of the new R.E.M. album aside from "Leaving New York," which I don't really like, so many I'm a bit premature in saying this, but it seems that the problem with R.E.M. now, even moreso than Peter Buck and Mike Mills being on artistic autopilot, is that Stipe's narrative has run its course. He has gotten over those insecurites, which is great, but those insecurities are what made the work fascinating. Reveal, and I suspect Around The Sun too, suffers in part because it's like the mundane adventures of the hero after the story is over and the central conflict has been resolved. In this sense, Up is the end of the line, and "Walk Unafraid" is the moment of ultimate victory.

― Matthew Perpetua (Matthew Perpetua), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 14:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Yes, I really couldn't agree more with Matthew about Malkmus. You're so right. No opinion on Ghostface though.

― strom (strom), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 16:15 (twenty-one years ago)

To bring things very dorkily full-circle, the only mental reference I ever had for "fruit-covered nails" was Michael Stipe's long-ago quip to journalists that the new R.E.M. album, Fables of the Reconstruction, sounded like "two oranges being nailed together."

― morris pavilion (samjeff), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 19:12 (twenty-one years ago)

if there's one thing i hope to never read a single word of ever again: analyses of stephen malkmus' lyrics.

― gygax! (gygax!), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 19:18 (twenty-one years ago)

then you might want to avoid clicking on threads that are titled "is 'trigger cut' about suicide?"!

other threads to avoid: "should i listen to 'date with ikea' while picking out bookcases?" "is 'cut yr hair' about the hair on your head or another kind?"

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 19:23 (twenty-one years ago)

please tell me those threads exist.

― Ian c=====8 (orion), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 19:25 (twenty-one years ago)

sorry, you're going to have go ahead and start 'em. i'm too lazy.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 19:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Anyone remember this, from Raygun magazine?

http://digilander.libero.it/jenkins78/firstsongs.html

― morris pavilion (samjeff), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 19:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Nice! I had thought back about that article a couple times but never thought to Google it. Well done, SJ. Raygun, jesus... remember Bikini?

― Taxi Dancing in the Soft Prison (Ben Boyer), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 20:08 (twenty-one years ago)

i dunno, i don't think writing abt malkmus's lyrics is that far removed from sort of lazily wondering abt them, which is what many people do while listening to pavement records.

― amateur!!st, Wednesday, 15 September 2004 20:11 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't. I keep my mind blank and sing along.

― n/a (Nick A.), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 20:13 (twenty-one years ago)

lyric analysis is kewl. i've always hated the "i don't understand it, so it must be meaningless" line of thinking.

― stockholm cindy, montessori emo superstar (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 20:49 (twenty-one years ago)

and hell, even if something is intentionally meaningless, it doesn't mean you can't have a larf trying to make sense out of it.

― stockholm cindy, montessori emo superstar (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 20:51 (twenty-one years ago)

GET A LIFE, JODY

― amateur!!st, Wednesday, 15 September 2004 20:54 (twenty-one years ago)

CAN ANY BOY TELL ME WHAT THE SONG EL DEBARGE WHOSE JOHNNY MEANS

― stockholm cindy, montessori emo superstar (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 20:55 (twenty-one years ago)

This is a great thread. I never really thought about the song before but it's fun to project meaning onto it. I think "I'll be coming back today / I got a message for you / I keep it in my hand" sounds pretty menacing, actually. Mostly it's fun just to hear these songs in my head again. Reading the lyrics to "Trigger Cut" and then that excerpt from "Perfume-V" got me a little excited! Such great hooks. Yeah, Amateurist OTM about Malkmus's singing that "electricity and lust" line. I haven't listened to S+E in ages but I think I have to now.

― Reed Moore (diamond), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 21:00 (twenty-one years ago)

trigger cut is incroyable. i think an unmentioned component has to be the la-la-la break. makes the song for me. it's my fave track on Slanted. (or maybe here, or zurich is stained, or loretta's scars, oh fuckit).

― drew, Wednesday, 15 September 2004 22:53 (twenty-one years ago)

I think "heavy coat" is an obtuse way of saying 'pair of pants', in which case the song completely makes sense.

― Sasha (sgh), Thursday, 16 September 2004 00:43 (twenty-one years ago)

The sha-la-la-la-la part is my favorite thing about the song too. One of my best friends loves to sing that part, usually totally at random, when she's bored. It's nice.

― Matthew Perpetua (Matthew Perpetua), Thursday, 16 September 2004 12:37 (twenty-one years ago)

last week my gf asked me what the hell 'grounded' was about. 'why are boys dying on these streets?' i said it was because the doctor had left for the holiday season. she punched me.

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Thursday, 16 September 2004 14:24 (twenty-one years ago)

I always took that line as being about people who can't afford medical insurance, etc. The doctor is so involved in his upper middle class existence that he's disconnected from this other reality where he could be useful, but he chooses his yuppie lifestyle. He's guilty, but not enough to change his life.

― Matthew Perpetua (Matthew Perpetua), Thursday, 16 September 2004 14:35 (twenty-one years ago)

Can someone provide a link to SM's explanations, in Magnet, of what the songs on the s/t are about? Always enjoyed that.

― Raymond Cummings (Raymond Cummings), Thursday, 16 September 2004 14:53 (twenty-one years ago)

i don't know if this is accurate, but that's an awesome subject for a song

― amateur!!st, Thursday, 16 September 2004 15:40 (twenty-one years ago)

"boys are dyin' on these streets" sounds like a line from a pseudo-hardboiled '80s cop show. sm probably meant it that way.

― stockholm cindy (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 16 September 2004 17:11 (twenty-one years ago)

I always associated "fruit-covered nails" with those stories of little kids finding razor-blades inside fruit that they got for trick-or-treat.

― o. nate (onate), Thursday, 16 September 2004 17:13 (twenty-one years ago)

But actually I think the song is about a guy who can't work up the courage to tell a girl how he really feels about her. Hence the act of pulling the trigger becomes a metaphor for revealing his true feelings, and the "trigger cut" of the title refers to his psychological scars from a previous rejection. The song is kind of the dadaist version of "Once Bitten, Twice Shy".

― o. nate (onate), Thursday, 16 September 2004 17:19 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah I like that, and the "heavy coat" that he hopes to "lose" is the emotional baggage he's carrying around with him.

― Reed Moore (diamond), Thursday, 16 September 2004 17:27 (twenty-one years ago)

it's a hairshirt! < /michaelstipe>

― stockholm cindy (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 16 September 2004 17:43 (twenty-one years ago)

O Nate's interpretation of "Trigger Cut" is basically the impression that I've always had. I can't say that I've ever given much thought to the lyrics of that particular song.

Amateurist - while I am definitely interpreting "Grounded" my own way, it's not very far off from what Malkmus has said about it in the press and in a few live shows.

This is what Malkmus says in that old Raygun thing that was reprinted in the Perfect Sound Forever Pavement book:

Only 10% of our Doctors went into it because they wanted to help others. The others did it for the money. Written for my personal physician and his cadre of German automobiles.

― Matthew Perpetua (Matthew Perpetua), Thursday, 16 September 2004 18:07 (twenty-one years ago)

ten months pass...

I always appreciate the melodic cop from Jim Croce's "Operator" on "Trigger Cut."

Wow, it was so obvious I didn't notice it.

― Cunga (Cunga), Friday, 5 August 2005 07:27 (twenty years ago)

I thought I had posted on this thread. Guess not.

― Dr. Glen Y. Abreu (dr g), Friday, 5 August 2005 07:43 (twenty years ago)

it's never occurred to me to pay any attention to malkmus's lyrics whatsoever. does that make me a bad person?

― CharlieNo4 (Charlie), Friday, 5 August 2005 07:48 (twenty years ago)

No. I think they are so obscure, you really can't get what he's on about most of the time.

― nathalie sans denouement (stevie nixed), Friday, 5 August 2005 07:51 (twenty years ago)

Bah. The obscurity of his lyrics is vastly overstated.

― Matthew C Perpetua (inca), Friday, 5 August 2005 11:09 (twenty years ago)

it amazes me that people could analyze "Trigger Cut" for this long without bringing up "Catholic Block".

― Al (sitcom), Friday, 5 August 2005 12:54 (twenty years ago)

In the first of Beckett's Trilogy, the title character Molloy--a barely functioning schizophrenic--walks around in a coat heavy with stones he likes to suckle. This probably has nothing to do with anything.

― Terry Eagleton, Friday, 5 August 2005 14:03 (twenty years ago)

Eeeee - lectricity and ...

I can't remember what precisely sparked this with me, but sometime during the past year some sort of clue made it seem suddenly obvious that Malkmus lyrics just aren't nearly as opaque as people like to pretend; the trick is to stop trying to read a story out of one song and listen instead to what seems to concern him most at any given point. And once I started thinking about it in those terms, it became weirdly obvious: the guy spent Pavement's entire career obsessing over the basics of getting older and adopting an adult lifestyle. The clearest is Brighten the Corners -- scan the lyric sheet, and it's reference after reference to a comfortable, domestic middle age. "Shady Lane" -- everybody wants one, and wasn't that the name of the suburb in Cheever's stories? "Date with Ikea?" "Old to Begin" -- "credit cards, lumbar pain?" "Not a lot of room to grow inside this leather terrarium." (Ha, and how Orange County middle-aging is that "trolls in the glen are consorting again / the liberals say they don't exist, but I know...?")

And taken as a whole, taken across the course of the albums ... I think he wound up writing much more coherently about non-surreal commonplace middle-class-life stuff than the usual conception of his lyrics every gives credit for.

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 5 August 2005 14:51 (twenty years ago)

the guy spent Pavement's entire career obsessing over the basics of getting older and adopting an adult lifestyle. The clearest is Brighten the Corners -- scan the lyric sheet, and it's reference after reference to a comfortable, domestic middle age. "Shady Lane" -- everybody wants one, and wasn't that the name of the suburb in Cheever's stories? "Date with Ikea?"

Not that I agree with you here (possible projection but at any rate, that's the worst Pavement album), but "Date with Ikea" was not written by Malkmus.

Pavement's lyrics are probably the biggest downside to their music.

― gygax! (gygax!), Friday, 5 August 2005 15:06 (twenty years ago)

gygax i luv btc but i really luv yr never ceasing hate of btc

― j blount (papa la bas), Friday, 5 August 2005 15:10 (twenty years ago)

haha, but I actually came around on this to think Nabisco's is confusing Malkmus with Spiral Stairs, as Spiral's songs on that album are absolutely about comfortable, domestic middle age.

― gygax! (gygax!), Friday, 5 August 2005 15:16 (twenty years ago)

Malkmus writes most eloquently about L-O-V-E.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Friday, 5 August 2005 15:20 (twenty years ago)

Yr, right, I'd forgotten the writing split. Maybe they discussed these things -- I feel like those themes are in every song on that album, more or less. And they run all the way back through Slanted and Enchanted, in various forms.

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 5 August 2005 15:21 (twenty years ago)

("Shady Lane" still reads to me like a Fred Barthelme story.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 5 August 2005 15:22 (twenty years ago)

After scanning those lyrics again, I really think that the lyrics Nabisco quoted above are pointed potshots at his peers (and possibly bandmates). Perhaps a jealous insecure angle, but his narrative position in Shady Lane does not come off earnestly, I think more in the sarcastic/ironic/send-up/farce/satire camp.

― gygax! (gygax!), Friday, 5 August 2005 15:26 (twenty years ago)

Hell, I can't even remember the names of the songs, much less the lyrics.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Friday, 5 August 2005 15:55 (twenty years ago)

Yah, gygax, I don't think he was ever rhapsodizing about this stuff -- but then again, I think he was always too interested in it for it to always be plain satire. It just seemed to be on his mind at every point, in some half-conflicted way.

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 5 August 2005 16:26 (twenty years ago)

I think Nabisco's right on, and that Spiral was just on the same page as Malkmus on Brighten The Corners, probably for the first and last time. Just because Spiral wrote "Passat Dream" and "Date With IKEA," it doesn't change the themes of every other song on the album.

The themes of aging and maturing continue on through Terror Twilight and the three solo albums (most notably the new one), so I think it may be a little too dismissive to see the lyrics on BTC as being just potshots at his friends. I mean, sure in some ways they kinda are ("We Are Underused" especially), but it's all in the context of himself and his own issues.

― Matthew C Perpetua (inca), Friday, 5 August 2005 16:50 (twenty years ago)

Pavement's lyrics are probably the biggest downside to their music.

Relatively new here, so forgive me if this has been discussed elsewhere, but thank you gygax!

Anyone else here love pavement like me, but think the biggest weakness is that SM was always playing it off too cool to commit to actually saying anything? Though perhaps it's for the best... when Stipe got coherent, for the most part, it sucked (with a few exceptions.)

I do think SM is strongest when he's not abstract, e.g. final verse of "Range Life" (tell it like it is) and that reckoning song on the extended crooked rain ("time after time was my least favorite song") ... damn funny.

― declan zimmerman, Friday, 5 August 2005 17:08 (twenty years ago)

six years pass...

Slavic princess with a rose...

― answering_machine, Sunday, 30 October 2011 10:45 (thirteen years ago)

Much like their idols R.E.M., they're one of those bands where the lyrics are just there to sound good with the music.

And unlike R.E.M., the music actually sounds good, too.

― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, September 15, 2004 1:24 AM (7 years ago) Bookmark

awful post

― mylo & xylotis (some dude), Sunday, 30 October 2011 16:06 (thirteen years ago)

nabisco seriously otm, in form

― thistle supporter (mcoll), Sunday, 30 October 2011 20:17 (thirteen years ago)

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