matt’s music blog

I’m not a huge fan of The Killers – but this latest album has had more good tracks then bad, and this one is arguably is one of my favorites (a couple others are probably as enjoyeable, if not as quantifiably good).

So we get a nice electronic intro, which jumps into a sort of updated Killers groove at 0:15. Vocalizing is a good way to make a track fun. The drop down to simpler instrumentation works great for the first verse, keeping the percussion and a guitar or two.

It started with a low light
Next thing I knew, they ripped me from my bed
And then they took my blood type
It left a strange impression in my head

You know that I was hoping
That I could leave this star-crossed world behind
But when they cut me open
I guess I changed my mind

And you know I might have just flown too far
from the floor this time, ’cause they’re calling me by my name
And they’re zipping white light beams
Disregarding bombs and satellites

And that was the turning point
That was one lonely night

Can you hear the accoustic guitar panned left on the second part of the verse, at ‘and you know I might have just flown too far’? Could this be a Bowie reference? Maybe it’s just the title, but I’m going to guess that there’s a ‘Space Oddity‘ connection her, because it seems intentionally distinctive. Anyway, here comes the chorus, which is once again very ‘Killers’, but with sort of a new poppy twist:

The star maker says it ain’t so bad
The dream maker’s gonna make you mad
The spaceman says everybody look down
it’s all in your mind

It makes me think a little of Flaming Lips too, maybe because I went and saw Christmas on Mars recently, and I’ve seen their UFO Show, in a state where I’m prone to make strong sensory associations.

There isn’t much new going on past the first verse and chorus – the return to the verse at 1:31 is a nice comfortable fall into the previously established theme, and the lyrics continue to be ingruigin:

But now I’m back at home and
I’m looking forward to this life I live
You know it’s gonna haunt me
So hesitation to this life I give

You think you might cross over
You’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea
You better look it over
Before you make that leap

And you know I’m fine
But I hear those voices at night sometimes
And they justify my claim
And the public don’t dwell on my transmission
‘Cause it wasn’t televised

But it was a turning point, oh what a lonely night

There’s a nice quiet break at 2:45, though, which adds a bit of mystery to the song, and the line “They say the nile used to run from east to west” evokes time-travel imagery – was he a space traveler who set off to find the earth, but arrived much later then he expected, and (like The Man Who Fell To Earth) just decided to stay, and become human?

Anyway, the vocalizing comes back at the end, which fades out to some appropriately spacey synth pads – the ride is over.

This is one of my favorite Enya songs – as an artist, her music can be a little hit-or-miss for me. Sometimes it’s too ethereal for its own good, and loses its appeal in spaced-out vocals and ‘world music’ instrumentation. Caribbean Blue doesn’t have this problem.

The beginning is a great way to introduce a concept – brief orchestral strings, which fade away to trancey plucked arpeggios and nice bass swells. The beuty of the chord progression is made clear, along with the sort of flowing, lilting rythem of the song. The brief ‘ah’ vocal sting at :25 should make it abundantly clear to anyone listening that this is, in fact, an early Enya song. The swirling vocals immediatly afterwards give way to the enchanting lyrics:

So the world goes round and round
With all you ever knew,
They say the sky
High above
Is Caribbean blue.

More orchestral strings follow, along with more vocalizing, keeping things interesting but not varying much from the original music premise of the song. Next verse:

If every man says all he can,
If every man is true,
Do I believe the sky above
Is Caribbean blue?

More vocals, more orchestal strings, a little stronger this time, with more bass, intensifying things a little until the bridge at 1:58, carrying the song swirling onwards with higher notes, until the last verse comes around, this time transposed upwards a bit:

If all you told was turned to gold
If all you dreamed were new,
Imagine sky high above
In Caribbean blue.

By now we’ve heard all the song is going to give us – things roll onwards to the ending at 3:50, which is as brilliant a way to usher the track out as was the intro to usher it in – everything drops off, leaving a lone vocal pad, which briefly hints at a solo, before abruptly fading down to silence.

What’s the song about? To begin with, there are a few observations we can make about the ‘narrator’ – the fact that “they say the sky” is blue, and that its blueness is questioned in the next verse, and finally imagined in the last, suggests that wherever this song takes place, the colour of the sky is not readily ascertainable. Are they underground? Are they in space? Are they in a world that’s perpetually cloudy? When I think of the colour ‘caribbean blue’, I think of the deep endless ocean off the shore of a tropical island – impossibly deep dark blueness, accompnied by a fring of shallow green and sandy yellow. It sort of feels like a yearning for a lush vegetative island paradise – something the world in the song is possibly missing.

The phrase “so the world goes round and round” pretty explicitly refers to the passage of time – after all, that’s how our chronology works, revolutions of planetary bodies. “with all you ever knew” seems like another reference to time, and perhaps a sort of elder wisdom – a world in the future, where all the secrets of the past are contained somewhere on the planet? A planet which has lost its island paradise? The other lines seem to suggest that it’s possible for this paradise to be reclaimed: “If every man says all he can, if all he says is true… If all you told was turned to gold, if all you dreamed was true…” If the shattered world worked together, imagined progress, dealt honestly, and communicated… would the sky high above once again become caribbean blue?