A song I like: "Blame It On the Tetons" by Modest Mouse
a beautiful and reflective and melancholy lament of the powerlessness and senselessness of being a person who is alive
I love this song. The piano line that kicks in gently in the first stanza. The cola/cold one thing, the vocal after the second stanza. I love the line about the actors taking credit for lines created “by the people tucked away from sight.” I love thd reference to The Cave.
I come back to the language as “great for solving problems, after it creates a problem” over and over again.
I choose to think of “Blame It On the Tetons” as a nonsense lyric, and just leave it to mystery. I don’t need to understand what it means, and I actually think the referent of the word “Tetons” doesn’t exist, at least doesn’t for me. The whole point of it is to act as a scapegoat, so you may as well just blame those mountains over there, maybe.
I love the notion of being a building burning with no one to put the fire out, waiting for time to burn us down. It’s true; it’s what we are. I love being an ocean drowning; I love striving to become a cloud.
So many of their songs are such beautiful cacophony, and this one is just gentle and beautiful and melancholy, and I love it.
YouTube - Blame It On the Tetons
Spotify - Blame It On the Tetons
Genius - Blame It On the Tetons lyrics