Fluxblog
October 14th, 2016 12:47pm

To Resurrect What I Forgot


Crying “There Was A Door”

In a way, “There Was A Door” is an update and revision of Fugazi’s “Suggestion,” a song about street harassment and a desire to exist in the world without worrying about the attention of potentially threatening men. The crucial difference is that while “Suggestion” was written and performed by men, and had blunt lyrics designed to get through to the dumbest, most aggro guys at a punk show, “There Was A Door” is written by a woman and gets into the nuances of the experience and the emotional toll of living with constant anxiety about it. The lyrics aren’t designed as rhetoric; it’s all about one woman’s thoughts and emotions, and so the words can be a bit scattered or oblique. The second half of the song is more direct and declarative – “all I’ve wanted for the place I live is respect for this vessel I’m in” – and pushes back on men who cannot respect boundaries. (“FAMILY” doesn’t mean you can touch and “JUST JOKING” is not a reason enough for me to not bite but be polite.”) But I like the way it all flows together, from poetic reverie to assertive response. It feels like a direct translation of complicated feelings in song.

The song itself sounds rather bright and cheerful, but has this odd structure that is constantly shifting into higher gears as if the band is too restless and excited to stay in one position for long. The music feels a bit disconnected from the sentiment of the song, and the odd way the words are stuffed into the meter suggests that maybe this is just an arbitrary home for these thoughts. But then, the sound of this is extremely mid-00s, and a ton of artists around that time were all about packing reams of extremely wordy lyrics into pop melodies.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

RSS Feed for this postNo Responses.


©2008 Fluxblog
Site by Ryan Catbird