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The Annotated Lyrics
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- Home /
- The Annotated Lyrics /
- Masquerade
Masquerade
Lyrics
This is new! (2)
And what is that branch?
What branch is it?
Account is altered
And nine year olds
Walk around
In debt record
Account is altered
The grim visage (3)
Account is Delta (4)
All yours
The web descends
Look to your grey hairs
And back your horses
About a week
A space allowance
Ran out yesterday
The Masquerade
The Masquerade
The Masqueraderie
Like a fish dish
The grim visage
Altered again
And again
The fifty percent interest
Ran out
Today
Account altered
In succour
All granted
You, you
Desperate comrades
Evaporated...
And what is that branch?
What branch is it
That has the pipe
Of Aluminium (5)
Sprawling underneath it?
You rich pig
What beheld it,
The Masquerade?
The Masquerade
The Masqueraderie
The web descends
Look to your grey hairs
And back your horses
About a week
A space allowance
Ran out yesterday
The Masquerade
The Masquerade
The Masqueraderie
Like a fish dish
The grim visage
Altered again
And again
The fifty percent interest
Ran out today
In Bolton
In succour
All granted
New you (6)
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Notes
1. These lyrics seem to have something to do with bank accounts and the perfidy of the rich. The social life of finance is the masquerade here, I suppose, but the song is in some ways a hallucinatory and fractured vision; maybe I should come up with something clever about the song itself being a masquerade, but I don't know exactly what I'm talking about here. As usual, there's just enough sense to lure one in, but after that one is liable to get lost...
Smith alters the pronunciation of "masquerade" as he's singing the chorus, generally going with "Masquerahd" the first time and "Masqueraid" the second.
The song was co-written with Mike Bennett, who co-produced Cerebral Caustic and The Light User Syndrome. Bennett also has writing credits on "The Chiselers," "Pearl City," and "Cheetham Hill."
2. The first three words are uttered by Brix from a live tape. According to mountainoaf, "Brix's quote - it was uttered on 11 October 1996 at The Forum, London - her last gig with the gruppe. The whole quote is: 'This is new. Fresh. Fresh out of the womb.' [long pause] 'It's getting stale now.' This was before 'Das Vultur Ans Ein Nutter-Wain', but the original plan was to play 'Masquerade' instead."
The Peel session includes a slightly longer version of the same recording, and runs: "This is new. Fresh! Fresh out of the womb." Reformation proivides the following rendering of the lyrics on the Peel version:
They asked
Was this branch?
The bran...
The masquerade
They were wrong
It was a light aluminium branch
Wrongly cut
The masquerade man lives alone
He was succeeded by
Mahatmed, the (marksman)
Which led...
The destruction is...
The destruction is forecast in the Old Testament
He had one song to sing
Like a flame
He acted out of hand
They thought, "Peculiar man"
And what is that branch?
He smiled valiantly
To the turn of your wit
The green wire mesh fence held him in
Like all men, he did (flow)
He was mistaken for the man
He needed
And ten more days to ask (desktop) to enter
<Kiddy talking sample> (Julia Nagle's son Basil, thank you to Chives!)
The masquerade
And what is that branch?
What branch is it?
That leaves the tree
Into aluminium
A wire fence
Over and over
Again
And ten year olds run around
For affection
For affection
And...
The masquerade
The masquerade
The masquerade
And what is that branch?
What branch is it?
That leaves the pipes
Into aluminium
Your (...)
In surgery
Scram
Masquerade
The masquerade
Nothing you say whatsoever
In (...)
Forty-five minutes
Really matters
Is that clear?
If you disagree
Take your grotto
(... round)
And...
And like a (...)
The evil entered into your...
(...)
Again and again
You're still green
Fences encumbered
The masquerade
3. From Gloucester's speech in Shakespeare's Richard the Third, Act One, Scene 1:
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
Thanks to Dan for the quote.
4.This refers to some sort of debit or credit card, but there seem to be several candidates called "Delta."
Iceland also questions pipes of aluminium:
"What the goddamn fuck is it,
That played the pipes of aluminium?"
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Comments (21)
What branch is it?
That has the pipe
Of Aluminium
Sprawling underneath it?"
Iceland also questions pipes of aluminium:
"What the goddamn fuck is it?
That played the pipes of aluminum"
About a week"
Just been looking at old Fall News archives http://thefall.org/news/971203.html#leeds and I spotted this 1997 interpretation of those lines from Simon Christian:
"I'm looking forward to a bout in ring"
Have a listen to Masquerade, he could be right.
I also wonder why "knew you", when the more obvious would be "new you"...any reason for this?
Echoes of Shakespeare, Richard the Third, Act I, Scene 1, l:
http://shakespeare.mit.edu/richardiii/richardiii.1.1.html
I'll note Delta. As a non-UK reader/writer/listener, I have no idea what it is, but I'll google it.
I'm not sure why "new you" is more obvious....why is it more obvious? "Knew you" is possibly a legacy from the Lyrics Parade, and I do lean toward "new" if there's no authoritative source for "knew," though...let me look into it.
So is Delta the airline here? They have some kind of card, or it another kind of card and a different Delta?
"Note the British"
What, like, conceptually?
Masque/mask................ and is there a better word to describe the government's shambolic, incoherent and inconsistent Covid response than "masquerade"?
Note also the reference to Bolton - there's a lockdown in Bolton as I type.