There are two snippets of lyrics on Joan of Arc’s twelfth release, Flowers, that really snagged my attention. Before we get to that, I want to make it clear that I’m not a longtime fan of Joan of Arc.  I’d chalk this up to the fact that I did not write for a blog in the late 1990s and, as such, was slightly less tuned in to the sounds of underground America than I am now.  Judge me if you’d like, but I was nowhere near hip enough to listen to Joan of Arc when they started making records.  I completely missed the boat on them.  Happily, Citizen Dick has afforded me the opportunity to be closer to the pulse than I used to be, so I’m slowly digging through the substantial Joan of Arc back catalog as we speak.  Flowers is good enough to spur me backwards.  Now, back to that lyrical content.  It’s pretty clear from the outset that Joan of Arc’s sole permanent member, Tim Kinsella, and his rotating band of musical compatriots are pretty sharp cats.  Kinsella and crew both know their way around the studio (the arrangements on Flowers vacillate between dizzingly complex and craftily simple) and, more critically for me, around a turn of phrase.  While I’m a tad reluctant to reduce the essence of this record to these two snatches of words, I think the argument holds up.  I’m going to throw a paragraph at each lyric, so hopefully I’m right.

The first line comes from “Explain Yourselves #2″: “No one wants to die with a couple hundred bucks still stuck in the sock drawer.”  (This is one of those serendipitous moments when the track the record label says we can give you is actually the track that I want you to listen to.  Hit play down below while we wrap our brains around this thing.)  There’s a whole lot in that line that says a whole lot about this album.  First, it’s a pretty informal, nearly jocular statement; it sounds conversational, with a hint of trust fund kid sneer and ass-slapping goofiness.  However, as the line gets repeated over and over in the track, it starts to gain gravity and seriousness (at least for me).  The notion that this lyric seems to be pushing, that most of humanity strives to get it all out there before shuffling off, is a powerful one.  (That’s the way I’m choosing to read the lyric, by the way.  The money in the sock drawer, in my interpretation, is standing in for all of the things we leave undone in our lives before they’re cut off.  If I’m over analyzing, feel free to posit an alternate opinion in the comments.)  This universalist stab at the despair we associate with unfulfilled ambitions, cut off at the knees by death, is pretty heavy shit for an indie rock record.  It also typifies the album’s meandering experimentation.  What would be the point of making records if you aren’t going to empty your brain and soul into them, right?  For the album, the sock drawer money is any idea left unexplored.  Further, the lyric isn’t delivered in a morose, French existentialist kind of way either.  It’s a big idea wrapped in a jokey meatphor, lacking any sort of self-seriousness.  This is a quirky record, but it’s not snobbishly arty.  Those sixteen words hit the thematic scope of the album, it’s willingness to work outside of normal parameters and its ability to do so without being douchey.

The second lyric of importance comes from one of my favorite tracks on the record, the kind of straight forward rocker “Life Sentence/Twisted Ladder.”  As with the first lyric, when Kinsella sings “You put the quotes around your entire life,” he’s grabbing at a ton of big ideas and shoving some truths about the album to the fore.  I might like this one a touch better than the first because there are two distinct analytical paths (I think).  If you hear it as putting the quotes around “your entire life,” it’s a statement on the hipster aloofness that too many of us adopt.  If you go the other direction and put the quotes around your “entire life,” it’s about the ephemeral nature of existence and our human ability to encapsulate big ideas in little chunks of meaning.  If the first interpretation is a gentle poke at the cognoscenti, the second is a sweeping assessment of the human condition.  Either way, it’s a killer line.  For the record, these twin meanings make a ton of sense as well; is this thing a slight poke in the eye of the establishment, with its odd twists and off-kilter arrangements, or is it a broader critique of music that’s made safely?  There are a lot of ways to listen to this record, and this lyric points to two of them.  Pretty sweet line, right?

Past the two tracks we dove into above, there is a ton to like on Flowers. The meandering, instrumental  jamminess of the title track is a broad display of the musical talent on the record and will please fans of Phish as much as those of Big Black. (Which doesn’t happen a lot, I imagine.)  The clever wordplay in the titles of “Table of Laments” and “Fable of Elements” makes me smile, as does both tracks’ stellar guitar work.  The album’s opener, “Fogbow,” somehow manages to sound vaguely like the song the Lambas play at the end of Revenge of the Nerds without being parodic or stupid, which is a tremendous feat.  Overall, the tracks bounce from easily accesible (“Life Sentence/Twisted Ladder”) to strange but catchy (“Fogbow”) to deeply experimental and challenging (“Fasting,” “The Sun Rose”).  As we hit above, this willingness to dig into the bag of tricks is one of the things that makes the album good.  Joan of Arc followed their own advice and laid it all out there.  There’s not a lot left in the sock drawer after this thing.

Flowers is out on Polyvinyl on June 9th (my anniversary, coincidentally).  Until then, enjoy “Explain Yourselves #2″ and turn that Zen koan of a lyric around and around in your head.  You’ll enjoy the tune as much for it’s hushed organ and shifting, up front drum beat as you will the lyric I can’t stop obsessing over.  The rest of the album holds treats for the ears and the brains, which isn’t something we say often.

“Explain Yourselves #2″ – Joan of Arc