Bootblacks – Birds [2⊘13]

disturbedByVoices

Jul 4

With a furious fusion of delightfully dark and explosively effusive gothic jazz, Bootblacks' "Birds" truly is one of the most beautiful and unique music videos ever produced, even apparently filmed live. It should therefore surprise no one that the sparse though richly-imbued lyrics would be as cryptic as possible mimicking the video's dreamy surreality, with hints alone to hone their implied meaning.

"I dwell in possibility
With malice and civilized hands
Sweet regret, ivory eyes regret
A horizon's last breath"

The term "Bootblack" is actually a more colorfully eloquent term for a shoeshiner and yet a strong and proper name for a Brooklyn, New York-based post-punk goth band with influences born of Joy Division, The Cure, and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Thusly made up of guitarist Alli Gorman and vocalist Panther MacDonald, with the further addition of Barrett Hiatt on drums and Peter Mavrogeorgis on bass, the band members' diverse backgrounds and musical tastes infused their sound with a sense of experimentation and unpredictability artfully presented within this very particular track.

Bootblacks photo of band members in mostly black and white.

"Children hide away on distant shores
Wander gather paradise
These myths are meant to touch
So pull the curtains tight"

Of the many attributable meanings to the enigmatic lyrics several literary works are reminiscent. Some elements seemingly reflect "A Clockwork Orange", while yet others a farther stretch to the mythical Persephone and the sirens (originally half woman, half bird) sent to unsuccessfully save her from kidnapping to the underworld by Hades, with perhaps the most salient being relatable to "The Lord of the Flies" and the children lost to their own island to rebuild society in their own flawed image. The beauty of lyrics such as these being in the individual interpretation, especially in juxtaposition to such stark raving music.

"Lost cities they play hide and seek
Remembered in suspended scenes
Wasteful kings are meant to sleep
So wipe the ashes from your eyes"

The music here is of such nature as to feel nearly cataclysmic with a see-saw mechanistic motion, an almost roiling nautical effect, as if a ship were stormed over an ocean to destructive end upon rocks. This would seem to portend a more literal lyrical interpretation of actual sirens in figurative fireiness drawing the ship's sailors to their inevitable doom through divine wanton temptation. An ending in a cacophony of pyres.

"Sirens they burn in front of me"