Morning Music: Hood’s Branches Bare

Hood - Cold House - Branches BareIs Hood a sadcore band? I don’t know. Like I implied before: its too eccentric a concept to be clearly defined. In addition, I’ve come to think that there aren’t so much sadcore bands as there are sadcore songs — even albums. I mean, listen to American Music Club’s song Can You Help Me. Sure, the lyrics are depressing, “A century of my tears wouldn’t even fill a thimble.” Yet I don’t know of a song that makes me feel better. The whole refrain is, “Can you help me to believe?” Today, we listen to Hood’s not at all uplifting “Branches Bare.”

“Branches Bare” is off their fifth studio album, Cold House. What’s unusual about them is that while mostly, sadcore comes at music from a kind of folk perspective, Hood is essentially an electronic band. Sure, they are usually pretty down. But you know they not only listened to Kraftwerk, they also really liked it. To me, Kraftwerk was one of those bands that was clearly good and interesting and all of that — but which I just hated listening to.

Branches Bare Analysis

The song has a sorta kinda rap section toward the end of the song. It’s interesting, but doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. The rest of the song couldn’t be clearer. Some people are going through the house and all the stuff left by a recently dead person. It’s a reflection on the meaning of our lives. One of the people asks the other:

Will the memories be lost
When we lose you
When they clear the house
You lived so many years?

Sad to say, yes. I’ve thought about this a lot. I have no children. I will never have any. In a century, one of my distant relatives will dig into the family history as people do. And they will say, “There was this curious fellow — wrote some odd books — quite the eccentric it seems like.” And that will be it. That will be my legacy. But don’t misunderstand: it thrills me to think that someone might look back and know that there was this curious fellow. When you get right down to it, that’s all I’ve ever expected from life.

13 thoughts on “Morning Music: Hood’s Branches Bare

  1. Or maybe…you will be like Phillip J. Fry and have such a huge presence that your loss echoes through the ages.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrmFA5aHg7Y

    Probably not but sometimes it would be awesome to be the one person from the X century that people remember kind of like how Rat and Goat once discussed in Pearls Before Swine. And I once read that to achieve immortality you need to plant a tree, write a book and have a kid.

    • I assume the clip has to do with the episode where Fry finds how his nephew was the first man on Mars or some such.

      I’m not interested in immortality — just having lived a life that I would look at and say, “Interesting…” There are lots of ways to do that. But I do find that most people choose to live pretty boring lives, by my standards. But that’s great. The goal ought to be that everyone should think that they themselves lived a life that was worth living. I don’t think we have a society that makes that a priority. We are still to stuck on just getting by, which is really not acceptable in a world as rich as this one.

      • You are correct in how we don’t have a society that makes a life worth living a priority. However sometimes that changes-when I was eighteen I just wanted to be a wife and mother. And now I just want enough money to travel to England once a year to whittle down my five thousand place long list of places to look at. Both are incredibly boring.

        I think you did achieve your goal. I mean you have a Wikipedia page! I know you don’t like it but that is proof you lived that interesting life.

        • The question is what Frank V 3.1 is going to be. Because V 3.0 doesn’t have much going on that would be recognized as a life. I’m having lunch with a friend tomorrow. I’m going to ask her. I know she will just laugh at me though. I’m probably the most focused of any of my friends. But I feel rudderless.

          Sounds like you have the mechanics of life well in hand. Except that you live in Arizona. :-)

          • Eventually I am going to move into your backyard. Possibly literally. And gaze at you with big sad eyes to let me in that I have to print off the internet because my eyes are not puppy sized anymore.

            I thought you had your blog, music, and films with friends who stop by and say hi once in a while while leaving awesome t-shirts. What more do you need?

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