Song of the Day: Fanfarlo--The Walls Are Coming Down

I don't know a lot about this band. Admittedly, I don't know anything beyond this song. Fortunately, we have wikipedia to fill in those rather large blanks. Fanfarlo is a London-based group of 4 guys and one lady who put out their debut album in early 2009. Perhaps most importantly, lady Cathy plays the saw. Have you ever seen someone play the saw? It's effing brilliant.

But, for me, the chorus of their single, The Walls are Coming Down, tells me everything I really need to know.

The walls the walls are coming down,
the here and now is coming round
It will some day let you down
The ships the ships are coming in,
the great ideas are wearing thin
There is nothing left to do

Let's start at the end. Who doesn't love a slow-build, or really, a build of any kind? For me, that's a sucker punch--throw some appropriately placed strings and I've caved entirely.

The first time I heard this song, I loved it. It leaves you with a utopian feeling, a sense of building by tearing down. The staccato strings at the 1-minute mark could be well placed jabs in a Jenga game, just before the twoering structure comes crashing down.

At first, judging by the optimism in the strings and vocals, I considered this a positive destruction, a worthy act of deconstruction--some sort of giddy demolition of the barriers that divide us. Or the musical equivalent of two people finally meeting on a level without their protective pretense and defensive posturing. Walls coming down on so many separate levels at once and all of them leading to something freer.

Then I started really paying attention to the melancholy in the lyrics, masked by the triumphant brass, etc.

For atoms have gone as far as atoms will go

Your books write themselves,
they line up in row after row

And then I started thinking. With everything melting together and uniting and, well, globalizing, we're homogenizing too. It's this uncomfortable trade-off for less conflict/greater unity. Like we're hitting a utopian wall--the "end of history" so to speak. So then I started loving the dichotomy between the way the song is orchestrated and what the song is actually saying. There is nothing left to do.

Furthermore, on an individual, less grand-scheme basis, it's true that the walls people put up between themselves can oftentimes be more satisfying than what's behind them. You know the feeling? Of finally getting a hint of someone's vulnerability and then realizing, in a rush, that you weren't prepared to actually see beyond the walls, that you lack the ability to sustain that level of connection or kinship or whatever it is that's binding. Or, maybe you've experienced the dawning recognition that there's nothing left to do now that the walls are coming down and whatever is beyond has been laid bare. Where to go?

It's a triumph and a letdown at the same time.

So, that's it really. Where do we go from here? Is there anything left to do? Aside from watch this awesome video.