5. Morocco

Like “Answers,” “Morocco” (as the title indicates) draws on African rhythms, but it harnesses trip-hop’s mood and melodicism. Where “Listen” revolves around major A and D chords, this song revolves around minor A and D chords and breaks from the 4/4 time signature of the preceding songs by adding a bar of 6/4, thus marking a twist in the album toward complication (note that if you’re listening on vinyl, this is the first song of side B). The song should transport the listener to a hazy opium den with its mystical tint. Many of the lyrics come from William Blake’s metaphysical poem, “The Tyger.” In this particular iteration, aesthetic beauty is both the source and the product of primal passion.

In the dark you shine
A burning tyger in the night
In the dark you shine
A burning tyger in my mind

Tyger, burning bright     
In the forests of the night     
In the dark I hide
From the glowing of your light
In the dark I find you
In the middle of my mind     
     
Art twists the heart,
Twists the heart,
Twists (x2)

Art twists the heart,
Twists the heart,
Full of wonder

Art fills the heart,
Fills the heart,
Pulls me under

Art twists the heart,
Twists the heart,
Full of wonder

Art twists the heart, 
Twists the heart,
Twists

4. Listen

While “Listen” owes a lot to shoegaze, it also draws on new wave influences. The hi-hat is on the offbeat—as it would be with dance-influenced punk—but it’s also open, which pulls it out of the earth and into the water. Revolving around two major chords (A and D), the song should leave the listener with a sense of optimism. But it doesn’t. It’s a rather complicated minimalism. While somewhat of a companion piece to “Answers,” this song is less optimistically affirmative and more indignantly solipsistic—and it’s resigned to that fact.

It always starts with
Someone saying
Something to me
I can't hear them
I can't be myself
With all of my
Many voices shaking over

Your words
I heard mine first
I don't like it
I don't fight it
I just listen
I try to listen
 

3. Calafia

For all of its structural experimentation, “Calafia” is most illustrative of the album’s minimalist aesthetic. Not a single chord is played until the very end, as the song gives its last few breaths before sucking back in. Sometimes we call the song “Gothic Blondie,” because it has a dark tinge, but it’s still pretty bouncy and ‘70s art-punky—until it totally changes gear. Because it deals with the Spanish myth of California as an island empire of black women (hence our album title, “Island of Daughters”), female empowerment and the sense of standing atop a precipice pervade the music. The drop-off from the first movement to the second suggests a leap from this precipice and into flight. The spell is broken once the listener hits the ground for the third movement and continues running off the edge of the earth.

End of the earth
Where our lives all started
Uneasy birth
An island of daughters was calling

Walk off the earth
No wives are martyrs
Save for the first, if that doesn’t work
An empire of daughters has fallen

Calafia
I know that you are
Stronger than me and my friends are
Stronger than me and my friends are (x6)

Our world's been all
Targets in panopticons
Fear in control
In brush cover collect arrows
Cut from the chest
Cut time it takes to strike now
Stronger than me and my friends
Stronger than me and my friends

2. Bruise

Perhaps the most readily accessible song on the album, “Bruise” was also the first song we intentionally wrote for this project. As for its structure, chorus and verse placement are inverted like they are in many early Beatles and Ramones songs. So, the music and lyrics owe a lot to both ‘60s pop-rock and also early punk. Writing the bridge in French was largely a sonic and syllabic choice, but it also came out of the failure of language and the role it plays in the breakdown of relationships with people, place, things, etc. This collapse is illustrated most clearly at the end of the song as it loses its lulling drive and veers into Talking Heads-esque punk-funk before devolving into dub. 

Bruise
You’re a bruise (x2)

Wherever all my love goes
A part of you is gonna show
The bluer wound that you hold
Is something I don’t wanna know (x2)

But I wanna know
I don’t wanna know

Swoon
Vous êtes en rouge [you’re in red]
Swoon
Vous êtes en vouz [you’re in you]

Bruise
You’re a bruise (x2)

Where will all your love go?
What part of you is gonna show?
Who is taking you home?
Don’t tell me I don’t wanna know

Where will all your love go?
What part of you is gonna show?
Who is making you whole?
Don’t tell me I don’t wanna know

But I wanna know
I don’t wanna know

1. Answers

"Answers" developed out of a simple, forgotten pop riff from an old rehearsal recording. It would go on to open out into atmospheric layers of a more complex world. The major key and tropical rhythms belie its existential angst and affirmation of subjectivity, which are fleshed out by impressionistic explosions of blues, greens and oranges. Pay careful attention to the syncopations occurring between the upbeat guitar melody and the lethargic vocal melody in the first half of the song. By the second half, instead of opposing or bouncing against the musical support, the octave jump in the vocals affirms the triumph of the last stanza. Any aspect of the cartoonish is modulated by the lyrics, which are included below.

If you can come by any answer
Be it accidental and all
At an unlikely place, such an off pace
There's no sense in any of it

How does it go?
Oh oh oh
What does it go for?
Tell me about it
I didn't doubt it
For a second
It was out there

Let my life be
All mine
Made entirely of
Of my, oh my
Own likes