Was that a religious image? “Our Whole Lives” is a Christian song. A confessional, the second verse: “Tonight we’re gonna have a very good time but I want to go to heaven on the day”. . . Craig Finn is singing it to his priest at times: “Father I have sinned and I want to do it all again tonight.
It is another outrageous Hold Steady party and it is hard to figure who is seducing whom, “I didn’t know that you could dance like that”, Finn sings at one point. “I’m gonna hafta ask you to take two steps back”. After rejecting the goth girls he finds another: “you finally stopped talking about that boy back home, maybe that’s just better, if you want you can sleep over.”
The college party ends in bed and a morning of cleaning up and forgiveness. “We can’t be good all our lives,” Craig notes.This song is purely joyous
Craig’s past college but what with the reference to the townies it’s a definite time and place. “The Battle Of Hampton Road” is just post college: with a career as a teacher looming, before him, Patrick looses his girlfriend, doesn’t take the life of a teacher awaiting him, returns to New Jersey and forms Titus Andronicus once and for ever and ever. It is the circle completed, from college boy singing in the way of nothing, to rock star in waiting.
Patrick has said that the Monitor is about a bad break up with a girl. I think he has it a bit wrong. I think it is more about his decision to not become a teacher. The song (the album) tells two stories, 1) the change of life that lead to Titus and 2) a ship battle during the civil war. The connection is teaching.This is crystal clear on the penultimate “The Battle Of Hampton Roads”, a 14 minute epic song A huge song, a major sentiment, “when I scream I will scream till I’m gasping for breath” Patrick sings .The song is huge rock. Huge like Oasis could be but for much better reasons, huge like Springsteen could be and U2 can’t anymore. It is huge like Arcade Fire are too gnomic to figure out.
By the end there are funeral bagpipes into old time rock and roll riffs : the singer has nothing and rock is still bringing him back home.
Nothing can bring James Murphy back home “I Can Change” Based upon a six note synth loop and programmed drums and echoed drums in contradistinction. The thirty something James Marshall has been through college, through work, and he knows that he needs to be careful with love. That love is losable. And that he is losing a woman. To say “I can change” is not to say you have made a mistake: it is to say your need for a person is greater than your need for your distinctive personality. he loves her but things are disastrous, he wants her to remain the same, that’s why he adores her, the only thing left is for him to change. It is a very sad song and the jokes stick in your claw: “But there’s love in your eyes, love in your eyes, love in your eyes. But maybe that’s just your love of fights…”
When you are 27 you leave the relationship, when you are 37 you are too fragile: I would love it if Hayley Williams would play THIS SONG on piano.