Film references in Distant Signal lyrics: January Embers
Sometimes we forget how strongly film influences our music. As we play a song, a stream of scenes and cinematic images come to mind, and I hope the same is true for the audience. ‘Mexico’ calls on the imagery of a road trip, a cross between Pulp Fiction and From Dusk ‘Till Dawn. ‘Shotgun Orchestra’, with its chorus of “Redrum, redrum, look how far we’ve come” looks to Kubrick’s horror classic The Shining, itself an allegory for the murder and marginalisation of Native Americans.
Today I thought it’d be a good idea to discuss the references in ‘January Embers’ in a little more detail. The song engages with Stephen King’s IT which is, frankly, a fucking terrifying film. Tim Curry plays a demented clown wreaking havoc in a small town, and on the lives of a group of close friends. It’s evil and I don’t recommend you watch it, but anyway here’s a clip of it:
The periods in the song refer to different times in the film and the characters’ lives, spanning the distance from childhood summer to adult autumn:
“Summer heat, melted face paint;
Trick or treat, they all celebrate”.
The reference to a paper boat spinning down a drain becomes clear once you’ve seen the film. My favourite bit is when Henry Bowers, the two bit thug, is locked up in a mental ward and Pennywise the clown appears in the moon to talk to him, which surely should be a confirmation that the asylum is the best place for him. This sequence spawned the lyrics:
“Moonlight messages, they’re fucking with your eyeballs!”
After the instrumental erupts in the heat of these horrific scenes, we escape towards more serene imagery and sounds, nodding the head to a Guy Maddin dream world. If you’ve ever wondered what Paul and I sing during the breakdown, it is the mantra: Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, which I suppose I’d want to be our solipsistic link to another kind of filmic experience. Here’s a clip of stills from that film soundtracked with some ambient music:
Unfortunately, the illusion cannot hold beyond the middle eight, and the reverie collapses back into horror references. Which gives us a good reason to riff onwards. The nursery-rhyme keyboard part that follows the dying feedback of our guitars is not the consolation it seems: it is the clown’s theme. I remember coming home from school one day and walking up to my bedroom. As I entered, I heard that riff coming from nowhere and nearly bricked my pants. Adam was hiding in the wardrobe with a tape recorder.
There are many other references on the Shotgun Orchestra EP.
You can get ‘January Embers’ from iTunes or from Amazon.
