Messy Hard To Understand

Astronauts, etc “Symbol Land”

“Living in a symbol land.” That phrase, central to this song, really gets under my skin. Symbols in and of themselves are fine – utilitarian, a crucial part of how we process language, images, and life. But the way we lean on symbols for shorthand can be disastrous. A lot of the problems in the world come from an over reliance on symbolism: A laziness in interpreting other people that justifies casual cruelty, the intellectual bankruptcy of only seeing action and ideas for their symbolic value, the accumulation of empty signifiers in capitalism.

“Symbol Land,” as a song, isn’t quite as political as my interpretation of that line would suggest. It’s more of a broken love song, with Anthony Ferraro singing about attempting to parse the meaning of a collapsing relationship. His melody is gorgeous, and the sound of the chords and harmony has a stately and angelic quality, like John Lennon’s “Imagine” by way of Brian Wilson. Ferraro’s words are left deliberately ambiguous, almost as though he’s attempting to disrupt the symbols that weighed down this relationship in expectations beyond simple, pure love.

Buy it from Bandcamp.