a change in pace.

© dyspeptic at deviantart.

I bring you: Bloc Party lyrics. (Stop looking at me like that.) While I'm not usually into this sort of indie-hipster music, it's undeniably well-written and goddamn, is it good to dance to or what.

i was sitting on the roof of my house
with a shotgun and a six-pack of beers
(six-pack of beers, six-pack of beers)

the newscaster says the enemy's among us
as bombs explode on the 30 bus
kill your middle-class indecision:
now is not the time for liberal thought

so i go hunting for witches
i go hunting for witches
heads are going to roll
i go hunting for—

in the nineties
optimistic as a teen
now it's terror
airplanes crash into towers

the daily mail says the enemy's among us
taking our women and taking our jobs
the reasonable fool is being drowned out
by the non-stop baying baying baying for blood

so i go hunting for witches
i go hunting for witches
heads are going to roll

i was an ordinary man with ordinary desire
i watched tv, it informed me
i was an ordinary man with ordinary desire
there must be accountability

disparate and misinformed:
fear will keep us all in place.

Singer and lyricist Kele Okereke on 'Hunting for Witches':

"The 30 bus in Hackney, which is just around the corner from where I live, was blown up. [That song was] written when I was just observing the reactions of the mainstream press in [the UK] and I was just amazed at how easy it’d been to whip them up into a fury. … I guess the point about the song for me is post-September 11th, the media has really traded on fear and the use of fear in controlling people."

So I'm in a little bit of awe with how sharp and insightful this track is. Opening with a haze of disjointed voices and white noise, as if one is shuffling through radio stations, receiving a mess of static instead of information. The lyrics have an almost absurd quality to them: "sitting on the roof of my house / with a shotgun and six-pack of beers", and the references to witches. And yet there's an element of reality about it: we've gone "hunting for witches" in a way that mirrors the witchhunts in Salem such a long time ago - demonising the Middle East, stirring up panic and hysteria and fear, lapping up the lies and spin fed to us by politicians and the media. And that bomb on the bus really did go off, those planes crashed into the Twin Towers. Nightmare and reality: it's as if they're becoming almost indistinguishable from each other.

I'll go to bed now.