Confessions of a...what the...???

I just got Sam's Town in the mail. I own it now. There's a major difference between listening to a CD you own and something you just got from some relative of a relative. I made the decision: I want Sam's Town. So I got it. And when I get my CDs I listen to them. Over the last month, I've listened to British Sea Power and the Decemberists infinitely more times than digitial music I picked up in the same time frame. This means Sam's Town is getting the real CD listen and not the crapola-listen given to digital music. This "Confessions of a King (Bling)" has some of the most arresting lyrics I've heard in a long time. One thing I hate is being able to predict a rhyme, or a phrase. There is no way you can predict anything Brandon Flowers is going to say in this song. None of the lines seem to flow together. It's awesome. I've already made the decision about 5 years ago that any song that uses the word "riptide" is awesome. Hands down. Any song with riptide. Undertow....maybe. Surrender....yeah, surrender is one of those words that when you hear it in a song it just makes you think..."woah, this song is intense." (This is why Sweet Surrender works so well...the underlying feeling of, oh, I don't know how to explain it (tension???) mixed with Sarah's plaintive angelic vocals makes it just great). Anyway, "so you sling rocks at the riptide"...who throws rocks at the riptide? Seriously? Don't you throw rocks at waves? Or don't you throw rocks into ponds, lakes, streams and puddles? Most people don't say, "I'm chucking rocks into the ocean" because you don't really get the ripples, the splooshing, the damming, etc. You chuck rocks into the ocean when you are lonely and feel like a speck of sand. And it's not just throwing rocks, it's "slinging" them, like how John Elway would. Everything about this song is unpredictable. The beginning sounds like a cheezy 80s explosion and then Brandon's first little bit stripped bare is weird and you think "This song's going to suck...hard." But when the guitar kicks in and Brandon says "I awoke on the roadside/in the land of the free ride" I am so there!! I'm with you man!! Let's get this going, King. So he runs with devil, leaving a trail of excuses, rhymes water with devil, and fate with excuses, there's no way to predict this guy!! I love the non-rhyming. Way to be free. Way to be free! Too many songs are ruined by bad rhymes. Free form free form. Now he picks up his rhyme like it's a dirbble or something. Whenever it fits him. Is there a chorus? It's kind one of these free flowing songs like Mr. Jones where you have no idea what the song structure could look like on paper, but it's a great listen and unlike current indie prog rock, you never notice a change in movement. By the time you're done with the song, you realize that a lot of stuff just happened but it all fit. No sudden changes, you're in a similar place musically that you were when the song started. Oh, I love the moment where either the entire band or Brandon looped a hundred times emphasis the word...is it "hook"? Whatever it is, it's a muscular arena-rock move, long since passe but now cool again in the right settings. Seriously, what was cooler than having the whole band launch into the choruses back in the heyday of 80s arena rock? Bless the Scorpians. Man, they rocked uber alis.
So, what does the title have to do with lyrics? You know, on our equivalent of the Arrow 103.5 or all these classic rock stations, in 30 years, some poor sap kid is going to hear this song as he's getting his retro on (like all my friends did at some point during our teenage years...I bought Dire Straits and the Doobie Brothers and listened to Arrow the summer of 1996. I remember listening to Boston on my Walkman driving up to the Uinatas. Boston! More than A Feeling. All I have to do is write that word and I flashback to that time.Weird) and he'll wait for the DJ (maybe me, maybe Josh) who will be 50 and fat and promoting the Shins 5th reunion tour, to say the name of the song and all he'll say is "That was Matchbox Twenty's "Bent", Dave Matthews Band doing "Crash" and rounding out the set we had the Killers on Arrow" (sound of arrows hitting a target) and the kid will tear his hair out and look at every Killers album on-line and try to figure out which song it could possibly be based on the lyrics he's kind of picked up in the song. And he'll download 15-20 of their songs and get its it wrong and then he'll be driving in his car with his dad who will put this album in the car. He won't notice the first three songs as he looks blankly out the window, watching the robots on the sidewalk cleaning gutters and sweeping off awnings (yes, they'll be hovering over them) under the friendly but austere eye of Kip Drury (this could be any other musclebound jock who's future job will be Robot Administrator). But then! Something sounds familiar! "How do you know that you're right??" The kid's ears perk up. Could it be? Yes! The riptide line confirms it! "Dad, who is this?" "Why Wilbur (the hip name in 14 years, poor Wilbur by the time he's 16 has 17 other Wilburs in his class) this is the Killers" "The song, Dad, the song!! What is it??? What is its name???" And that's when the robots under the friendly but austere eye of Kip Drury rise against their master and the revolution begins. And you know how the story ends.