about
The roots of this song rest in one called ‘Radical Graves’ (which eventually became the name of our Halloween EP). We were working on it shortly before our trio became a duo. It’s one of the few songs we actually constructed together from start to finish and while using a traditional instrument (our piano). We ended up scraping all but the first section, which Spooky began tweaking and coming up with other parts for while crafting the ‘verse’ melody. We honed those in and I improvised some secondary lines which we cleaned up and that gave us the music. Spooky then added the soprano melodies and lyrics which revolve around Dia de los Muertos (a constant inspiration for us). And we wrote the verse lines inspired by this song in Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark by Alvin Schwartz called ‘The Hearse Song’. For the end, I thought it’d be cool if I dropped out and brought a tribal drum beat in. I did something simple and the first time we practiced I started making up lyrics based of some books I saw on the bookshelf (Kingdom Come was one). I then took a few of the words/phrases and refined it to be about all the wildfires we had in Florida growing up (and that they still deal with) and about rebirth and hope in the face of loss. It’s odd that all these elements came together to create a song dealing with so many facets of death from the campy/funny, to the loss of love, to the regrowth of things from the ashes. I’d say our hope for this song and the album would be that despite the seemingly dark tone, people realize how much positivity and humor there is. We enjoy finding amusing elements within ‘dark’ themes, and I think this is a good example of a song that on the surface is heavy and serious but at its core is about renewal and is quite light hearted.
From PORTALS //
www.portalsmusic.com/2012/04/sounds/alligator-indian-dark-fruit/
Download the remixes here:
alligatorindian.bandcamp.com/album/dark-fruit lyrics
Crawl up from the floor
Maggots at your nose
Eatin’ all your bones
I am, I am home
I made a sugar skull just for you, my sweet
I cuddled with a stone just to read your name
Bogie at your door
Never, ever more
Reaching for report
Live our lives in lore
As I say all of my goodbyes and go to sleep
I drift and decline, hold hands with Hades
In the summer, we would see
The burning down of all the trees
Things will die, but they’re reborn
The joy of watching kingdoms falling down
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