Lyrics:The Horrible Fanfare / Landslide / Exoskeleton [Version (a)]:
The Horrible Fanfare
Ashes of ancients
The nations repainted
The chain gang chatelaine
Changing the station
The theme song playing
The anthem of normal
The horrible fanfare
The horns get distorted
On a public annoucement
The towns are impounded
Where the order resounded
Cowards towered around it
Powerline buzzards
Surveilling the night
Talons in flight
The fake horizons ignite
Banality lives
Where hysteria kills
Civilian jungles
With malaria pills
Animals bleed
To buy a star from the night
Avenue kids
Wear a scar like a stripe
Send up a signal
To the heavenly rescue
When the poison's coming
From the person you're next to
Let the voltage of thought
Pull the plug from the wound
'Cause if the soul is a sympton
The condition is you
???
???
???
Landslide
We know it's a letter bomb hand-me-down
This thought is a perjury blindfold
When she crawls from the Himalayan rain
With the birds of prey and weapons on fire
She's ridin' a landslide down to me
Cuttin' the shackles off of me
Shakin' the dead birds from the trees
She's takin' the only air I breathe
Iron lungs and a plate glass sermon
Don't call it death on the installment plan
She's pulling the armour on my back
Raking the coals over the tracks
Taking the knife out from the stack
She's bringing the blood that I have back
She's coming to see it's all a sin
Coming to see the sun again
Coming to wash it off again
Coming to see herself again
Coming to see herself again
Coming to wash it off again
Exoskeleton
Person 1: I picture like a...like an illuminated manuscript, you know?
(indecipherable) You'd have to have an end (indecipherable)
Person 1: Like, depending, like change depending on what mood you're in. Like the best...or depending on like when you assume from a different age, they'll mean something different.
Person 2: I don't like it when they change. It frightens me.
Person 1: You want them to stay the same more?
Person 2: It makes me feel like someone's pushing me from below. Or trying to put me, turn me over, and put me down. That's what it makes me feel like when they change.
Person 1: It has to tell you how to live. It is an instruction guide. It's subtle, It's--it doesn't push, it nudges...i-it entices...it seduces. It has to encompass the whole world, everything that has been, is, and will be, and could take it into space. And that's why we build a spaceship. Because that's ultimately what space travel is all about, is sending a shuttle from Earth into space. And not just in some, like, space shuttle. It's got a little phone coming off of it, you need your own...glowing...you know, multicolor...spaceship. It would be inside the spaceship, and also the spaceship. Like an exoskeleton.
The Song:This is the end track on The Information. It is a medley of sorts, three songs connected. It is over ten minutes long, each part joined by a repeated riff.
The first 2:13 of the song is "The Horrible Fanfare," an apparently political rap. Beck has mentioned how Nigel Godrich got him rapping again on this album, but always had him whisper his raps. He clearly did that here. I'm also super-impressed with the words... the meaning may not be specific or obvious, but it flows amazingly well. And there's lots of inner rhymes (just look at the first lines and all the "ai" sounds: "Ashes of ancients the nations repainted / The chain gang chatelaine changing the station / The theme song playing"). Beck then flows into other inner rhymes like this throughout the song. Like I said, I'm not sure what it means, but it seems to be portraying the downfall of a society/country.
The bridge between "The Horrible Fanfare" and "Landslide" is explained thus:
"Recently Beck got into the shipping forecast. "I remember coming into the studio one day and my producer was sitting there listening to it on his computer," he says. "I was like, 'What the hell is that?' He told me, 'It's the most relaxing thing in the world.' He said he loves to listens to it in the bath." Beck agreed - "the voices are just so pleasant" - and decided to recreate it on the finale to his new album, The Information, inviting an English friend into the studio to read out the coastal station reports for Tiree, Stornoway and Lerwick (showers at all three). "It kind of matched the mood of the song," he says.
After that, the track moves into "Landslide." Beck originally played "Landslide" on stage in 2004. He improvised a song, which we refer to as "
Long Way Back From Home," once as a solo jam, where he used a drum machine and added electric guitar over it. The electric guitar and beat would end up as "Landslide" (with new lyrics).
"Landslide" is one of my favorite Beck songs. The music both is both rocking and seductive. The lyrics are mysterious. The song refers over and over again to a "she" but it is hard to tell if that is a metaphor for something, or actually a female character. In the beginning she seems to be dangerous, with birds of prey, weapons and taking the air he breathes. But the last verse flips it a little, and she offers protection of some sort: she's armour on his back, bringing back his blood. These two angles of the song go well together.
"Exoskeleton" is a long ambient kind of thing, in which a conversation between Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze runs in the background. What did they talk about? Here's Beck:
"We brought them in, and we were going to have a commentary going through the whole album, almost like the two old men in The Muppets. It was hilarious. A heavy beat would kick in and they would go, 'Shit! Listen to that beat! That drummer is so confident!' But we couldn't fit it all in. I asked them, 'What would the ultimate record that ever could possibly be made sound like?' That's what they're going on about. They're saying it would be like an illuminated manuscript, handmade by monks. Or it would be a record that changed every time you listened to it. It was a great conversation."
Madness!
Live:Played live 18 times:
September 16, 2005September 20, 2005October 8, 2005June 21, 2006June 27, 2006June 28, 2006June 28, 2006August 11, 2006August 12, 2006September 2, 2006...and
8 more.
Earliest known live version:
September 16, 2005Latest known live version:
April 8, 2007The live stuff listed above is all for the song "Landslide," which Beck has played alone a number of times. I do not believe he has touched "Horrible Fanfare" live, and am sure he never did "Exoskeleton."
Beck played "Landslide" by itself around 20 times between 2005-2007. It never sounds drastically different from the record, though for a bit they actually used a tape of the shipping news report to begin it. Other times, it was more pure rock, just the band rocking, no tapes or DJ scratching.