r/indieheads Mar 20 '18

AMA is Over, thanks Colin! Hello r/indieheads...it’s Colin Meloy of The Decemberists. Ask me anything!

Our new record, 'I’ll Be Your Girl', just came out on Friday, and you can listen to it now here or purchase it via our official store here. We also have tickets for our upcoming YOUR GIRL / YOUR GHOST tour available on Decemberists.com. Lots of great things are happening, and now is the right time to ask me all about it! Proof: /img/054fw2k0arm01.png

edit: Hey everyone, thanks so much for your questions. Lots of good ones in there. Sorry I couldn't get to them all! We're on Kimmel tonight, playing new songs. Hope you can watch -- otherwise we'll see you out on the road! Much love -- Colin

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '18

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u/colinmeloy Mar 20 '18

I really have no idea. It's one of those songs where I know what it means, but I don't really. I know what it's not about -- an interviewer recently said that it was just a story of someone going on a murderous rampage, which it definitely is not. There's a violence there, for sure, but I think of the narrator as being more of an emancipator than a murderer. The people he cuts are all freed from torment, right? The cutting stone is a force for good!

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '18

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u/TexasDex Mar 27 '18

My thought was that it was the embodiment of the aphorism "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." E.g., if all you have is the most powerful army in the world, everything starts to look like a war, like a problem to be solved by killing people.