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TWIN_CINEMAS
March 20, 2008
March 20, 2009
I've been listening to some old
"New Pornographers" lately,
specifically the "Twin Cinemas" In compliance with
CD that came out in 2005, and I Stamp Out Useless Puns
decided to figure out once and Month, this was not
for all what the lyrics of the called "TWIN_SIN".
title track were about.
Usually, I am
My first impression just from in the SOUP...
catching a few phrases from the song:
The "Twin Cinema" is your brain, and
the song is a celebration of that
which appeals to both sides of the
brain:
"They're showing that on both screens!"
I figured it was about something (or everything?)
that appeals to passion and intellect; reason and
emotion; logic and esthetics.
Firing on both lobes,
standing on both pedals. ZERO
Sometimes gut feelings and careful BIBLES
planning are in conflict, but
sometimes they're perfectly in sync,
going in the same direction.
There are issues that are no-brainers --
because they're all-brainers.
Anyway, that seemed like a good theory to me, but the
trouble with it is that it sounds a lot like a song
that I might try to write, which is to say it could
be that I'm projecting on to "Twin Cinemas".
I listen closely, but have
trouble picking out the
phrases:
The vocals just aren't that distinct:
A male falsetto harmony, mixed a
little into the background ala the That's probably what
bouncy, poppy rock style that the the name of the band
"New Pornographers" favor. means: they're absolutely
shameless about pushing
the Pop buttons
over-and-over.
I look over the packaging for a
lyrics sheet in vain, and so I
resort to the internet:
[ref]
"in home theaters
still projecting
undestructing These phrases all remain rather
a voice from the back of your Delphic even when you see them
double feature in print: I think they were
soft and harder shoe-horned slightly awkwardly
wait into a tightly fixed meter.
in silence When sung, the song has a
while planning your attack halting gait to it, several
short staccato lines followed
"shining through the hollow today by a long one in double time:
thinking maybe heavens away
they've shown this on both screens DOUB-- ble feat- ure
they've shown this on both screens" SOFT-- and hard- er
WAIT-- in sil- ence
while planning your attack!
(And in internet lyrics
But I immediately learned something from sheets, you need to infer
the printed words: the key line is in past your own punctuation:
tense, not present: even if they tried to do
their own, it's not
"they've shown this on both screens" reliable.)
And that immediately made me wonder if I've
called this wrong: Could it be that the idea
is that it (whatever *it* is) is stale,
overdone, and overexposed? ("Oh man, they've
shown *that* on *both* screens.")
The second thing I noticed is that
there's a line about "16th and Valencia",
which is an intersection in the Mission
District in San Francisco. This sent me
back to the liner notes: they're not
local, are they? Nope: they're Canadian.
And I also see that in
their list of "thanks
to" they mention "The
Winks" a Canadian band Just one or two more
that was a "recent of these and I can
discovery" for me. shout "Trend!", and
start babbling about
The Canadian Scene.
This, for me, opens up a whole other
range of questions. 16th and
Valencia could be regarded as one of
the coolest places in the universe,
or it could be shrugged off as some
place past it's prime that's been
"discovered" and lost it's edge.
There is indeed a movie theater
right around there: The Roxie is
on 16th, a few doors down from
Valencia... but until recently (They took over a small place
The Roxie was definitely a single next door and added a second
screen theater screen for the many "small"
releases that can't fill the
And what does a "Twin Cinema" main space -- one of the
seem like to these guys? These problems a place like The
days, a two-screen theater is a Roxie faces is that every
*small* place (when I was a kid, indie filmmaker in the city
they were still very unusual). thinks it'd be a great idea to
Is a Twin Cinema old-fashioned, open there, but they don't
retro, a holdover... a hipster have the resources to do
hang-out in a run down part of publicity, and neither does
town ("in torn seats")? The Roxie).
And does that make it skid-row, or is
it the incubator for the cutting edge
movements of tomorrow?
"teeming with things
you can find in the dark
dust in the light
falling through
day after night"
I could go either way on this... is it an actual
"anthem" for something, or does it just *sound*
anthemic because the New Pornographers have trouble
doing anything that doesn't sound that way?
There are some phrases that support
my first interpretation:
"no protecting
from voices in the back of your-- From the back of the
double feature!" theater, from in back
of your seat, from
the back of your mind.
"shining through the hollow today"
"Twin teachers!
False and feature--
picture and author, yeah!"
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