Gaffa lyrics

[torkel@sics.sics.se (Torkel Franzen)]

NB: I myself do not know gaffa from hoffa: the following is posted
by a friend, and any comments you may have will be forwarded to him.

I have for about a year been listening on and off to your favorite.
When I first read various dispatches from various lovehounds I was
really surprised by the claims that were made for Kate's excellence.
However, I went back to my KEF loudspeakers and played HoL repeatedly.
Gradually I realized that this was much more complex and fascinating
music than I had been willing to believe. So I bought some other
albums as well and found Dreaming to be perhaps even better than HoL.

Now the problem is that I cannot find the lyrics to be anywhere
close to the level of the music. I find the words of the songs to be
up in the air with almost no contact with ordinary human life. Take
for example "night of the swallow" where the singing and the music is
unbelievably good and then the lyrics is a totally uninteresting
"story" of someone who is about to fly some people from here to there.
Disappointing. Or take "suspended in gaffa" which you have been
discussing here at some length. It is symptomatic of KT lyrics that
the most interesting aspect of the words of that song is whether a
line refers to an 8-track studio, and if in that case heaven would be
a 48-track studio.
 
 Can you give me some advice as to how to read the lyrics? For of
course they must be as good as the music, must they not?

 A final suggestion. The lines "That girl in the mirror..." OBVIOUSLY
refer to Kate herself and more specifically to an image of herself in
that year long ago when "they took the game right out of it". She
looks in the mirror and what does she see? "My eyes are full, But my
face is empty." Not that the lyrics are made any better by this.


                                          Anders Goransson

      [	Well, I think, Anders, that you are missing something in the
	lyrics.  Kate's lyrics are also often dense and layered, like
	her music.  "Night of the Swallow", which you brush off as
	being "totally uninteresting" is actually a powerful and
	moving story about a man's desire for excitement and his wife
	or girlfriend's desire for him to be safe and alive.  (The
	genders may be reversed.)  Her love for him is pulling them
	apart, as is his irresponsibility.  It's a universal problem
	with relationships -- one that we can all relate to, and
	beautifully told here.  "Wings fill the window, and they beat
	and bleed."  Regarding "Suspended in Gaffa", whether or not a
	line refers to an 8-track studio is hardly the most
	interesting thing about the song!  It's just a nit that one
	thinks about after one has poured over the lyrics for the last
	eight years.  That there are still things to find after all
	this time *is* symptomatic of Kate's lyrics.  -- |>oug ]