Song of the Day: 8-28-2023
Okkervil River: "Westfall"
Okkervil River’s “Westfall” is a murder ballad. Murder ballads are a sub-genre of the ballad form.
According to Poetry Foundation a ballad is,
A popular narrative song passed down orally. In the English tradition, it usually follows a form of rhymed (abcb) quatrains alternating four-stress and three-stress lines. Folk (or traditional) ballads are anonymous and recount tragic, comic, or heroic stories with emphasis on a central dramatic event; examples include “Barbara Allen” and “John Henry.” Beginning in the Renaissance, poets have adapted the conventions of the folk ballad for their own original compositions. Examples of this “literary” ballad form include John Keats’s “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” Thomas Hardy’s “During Wind and Rain,” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee.
In 2021 Esquire made it clear that white people do not hold a monopoly on murder ballads; black musicians have also written songs about murdering people. Who knew?
If you caught that little sermon about the blood meridian of the evening redness in the West yesterday, then you are in the know when it comes to “Westfall.”
Look, I’m not here you hold your hand through these cycles or anything, but I try to give a gold star to the close reader.
Note the way “Westfall” begins with the end. Our murderer is doomed, but he’s going to tell us his story. There is a bit of In Cold Blood in “Westfall.” Hell, there is a bit of the murder ballad of Cain and Able in “Westfall.” There is a bit of me in “Westfall”; I’ll reserve judgement on whether there is a bit of you in “Westfall”—you be the judge.
Some of the allusions are worth a semester’s worth of creative writing:
Colin Kincaid from the twelfth grade
I guess you could say he was my best friend
Lived in a big tall house out on Westfall
Where we would hide when the rain rolled in
Where we would hide when the rain rolled in
We went out one night and took a flashlight
Out with these two girls Colin knew from Kenwood Christian
One was named Laurie, that's what the story
Said next week in the Guardian
Said next week in the Guardian
Then the song holds up a mirror to your face and dares you to look back:
And when I killed her it was so easy
That I wanted to kill her again
I got down on both of my knees and
She ain't coming back again
She ain't coming back again
The murder ballad has it’s popularity because of that mirror; deny it if you want but it’s your reflection, not mine. I took the dare and stared right back into that mirror and I already made my confession.
Our speaker wants you to understand the face of evil as he goes to his death—but the genius comes in the way he depicts the vultures in the media circling around him:
Now, with all these cameras focused on my face
You'd think they could see it through my skin
They're looking for evil, thinking they can trace it, but
Evil don't look like anything
Evil don't look like anything
Evil don't look like anything
Evil don't look like anything
Evil don't look like anything
Evil don't look like anything
Evil don't look like anything
Evil don't look like anything
"Westfall"
I'm surrounded, each doorway covered
By at least twenty men
And they're going to take me, throw me in prison
I ain't coming back again
I ain't coming back again
When I was younger, handsomer and stronger
I felt like I could do anything
But all of these people making all these faces
Didn't seem like my kith and kin
Didn't seem like my kith and kin
Colin Kincaid from the twelfth grade
I guess you could say he was my best friend
Lived in a big tall house out on Westfall
Where we would hide when the rain rolled in
Where we would hide when the rain rolled in
We went out one night and took a flashlight
Out with these two girls Colin knew from Kenwood Christian
One was named Laurie, that's what the story
Said next week in the Guardian
Said next week in the Guardian
And when I killed her it was so easy
That I wanted to kill her again
I got down on both of my knees and
She ain't coming back again
She ain't coming back again
Now, with all these cameras focused on my face
You'd think they could see it through my skin
They're looking for evil, thinking they can trace it, but
Evil don't look like anything
Evil don't look like anything
Evil don't look like anything
Evil don't look like anything
Evil don't look like anything
Evil don't look like anything
Evil don't look like anything
Evil don't look like anything
About the Song of the Day:
Another form of my favorite form of cycles are song-cycles—song-cycles of great albums, and of course song-cycles of mixes. I have made cycles of mixes for friends for years—Mix-tapes in high-school and college—Mix-cds in grad-school and beyond. Now that cds have lost a bit of their shine in the wake of streaming services, I’ve struggled to find my footing with sharing mixes with friends. My goal here is to share songs that culminate in mixes—one song a day until a mix is completed. I will then post the complete mix and then begin a new cycle.