Quick Commentary: Idlewild Lyrics

So, really quickly, here are two Idlewild lines:

From "Roseability"

Stop looking through scrapbooks and photograph albums because I know that they won't teach you what you don't already know - you'll always be dissatisfied

And then a line that I had forgotten from "El Capitan"

You were looking at pictures in the distance hoping to see the future

I had never really noticed it, but these lines are both about the same thing - Roddy's fascination with photographs and their power to show us things  that we have forgotten or never knew.  I'm not quite sure what to make of it, although I definitely feel that we sometimes look to documentation of the past and try to reinterpret and reconstruct that past from it.

Anyway, I found that thought provoking, and I really do think Idlewild remains terribly underrated.  At some point they have to be universally recognized as great, don't they?  How far in the future that will be, I honestly don't know.

Also, I'm just realizing it now, but "Film of the Future" would seem to imply the same message:

I know what you think: you think this film is about you.  It isn't about you.

I'm not sure many bands have the same continuity in their lyrical themes that Idlewild shows not just here but in many of their songs on various topics.