“When the lights go down in the city…blaargh, floogle, blarrgh…” Thankfully, Band of Horses did not emulate this epic track dedicated to the city of San Francisco…or did they? Listen below and form your own opinions. You can also read the press release which follows the video. It elucidates more information than I have provided.
Lead singer Ben Bridwell’s lyrics envision a cinematic reflecting on a night out with a friend that mutates into what feels like a Law & Order episode, but the case is actually a mystery of where did the love go. Bridwell reflects, “I was with my family at an indoor water park hotel. On my last day there, I was walking down the hall and this guy was like, ‘Ben?’ It happened to be this dude that was producing the film that I was writing the score for. We met up in the family-friendly hotel bar which gets closed down by us at 10:00, at which point we then ended up in the parking lot. We get a little loose – nothing too crazy, but we ended up dodging security guards. Our story then goes on to when I’m back home and someone had broken into my house. With the cops that ended up being around, there were more people turning the lights on us, one way or another. At the parking lot of the hotel, it was the security guards turning them on to check on us out there and at home, it was the lights going on and off with these cops. I’m drawing metaphors here and there from these two stories. Also, things were going poorly for me at that time and that kind of peppers the entire track.”
“More metaphorically,” explains Bridwell, “the song was meant to be a bit uplifting and I’m wishing for a better existence in a way. I’m getting over the things that had been going wrong in my life. The lights go on signifying it’s a better day kind of thing.”
