Our Lady Of the Scab

• Posted by Carson on July 1st, 2007 filed in General, Music

The New Album: Nova Anatomia Update: Our Lady of the Scab

So the mixing has begun in earnest with Our Lady of the Scab-keeping me up late at night (or is it my reasearch propsal that I’m losing sleep over?).

The song is about a fictional town based upon Centralia, PN-a town famous for the coal burning beneath it. The fiery anthracite has caused much of the town to cave in, forcing the majority of the residents out for fear of their lives.
The lyrics (see the lyrics page of carsonmetzger.net) are written from the perspective of a woman who is preoccupied with the spirit, “our Lady,” of the coal fire. She communes with this spirit throughout the song as she pleads with her her husband to remain in the town as their neighbors leave in droves. She reamins detached as the neighbors son is nearly swallowed into the earth and insinuates that she and her husband and children can satiate the hunger of the spirit.

The recording opens up the song, accentuating the creepiness of the protagonists fascination with the Lady of the Scab, while adding a quirky element through a repeated theme, played on the guitar, that morhps, by the end of the song, into a militant banjo beat. This melodic theme dovetails, in the songs culminaitng chorus, with the protagonists call to her husband-her “steely colonel”-to “dance.”

I’ll get it up as an mp3 teaser when I work out the frays.

-Carson