Furies Of The Guillotine

Hey, I bow to no one in my love for Richard Thompson's music, and I won't deny that this song, which received its live debut the other night, has his fingerprints all over it. If you're gonna steal, steal from the best, right? But I do like the lyric, as dour and portentous as it is: the title phrase had been rattling around in my head for a good ten years before I did anything with it, and I ended up using the metaphor (the twinned metaphors, really, of the execution and the end of the love affair) as a way to work out some of my anger and disbelief over the We Saw The Wolf debacle...

Minor key: verse stays pretty close to the tonic, dropping down to the VII for the tagline, while the refrain goes from the VI to the minor IV, with the release ("didn't have the time to cry") a III-VII resolving to the I on "down." There's a little partial-chord riff after verse 3 and the first chorus.

This is a song about that feeling that you get when you wake up on a hot night and turn your pillow over to get the cool spot, and when you lay your head down down you get this shiver because you feel like there's this cold clammy hand REACHING OUT TO GRAB YOU BY THE NECK...

...it's just me, isn't it...

After The Axe Has Fallen

when the axe bites into the chopping block
there's the sigh of relief and the state of shock
after the axe has fallen

it's all over but the shouting now
the church bells ring and the crowd thins out
after the axe has fallen

no Christian burial no funeral Mass
just a message in lipstick on the mirror glass
after the axe has fallen

any trace will wash away with the next good rain
get some sawdust now to cover those stains
after the axe has fallen

I had my face to the ground
wrong way around
thinking that I had it made
then I felt the cold touch
on the back of my neck
of the edge of a heavy blade
and I didn't have time to cry before it all came down

hands up behind the back
fall to your knees and the sky turns black
after the axe has fallen

an unkindness of ravens is a-drawing near
looking for something for a souvenir
after the axe has fallen

I had my face to the ground
wrong way around
and they forced me to the killing floor
then I felt the cold touch
on the back of my neck
like I'd felt it my dreams before
and I didn't have time to cry before it all came down

As originally conceived in the full-band arrangement, there's an epic guitar solo at the coda that builds from a few scattered notes to a full-on string-bending frenzy. It's virtuosic and emotionally devastating and allows me to throw all kinds of heroic shapes and poses and make all my best guitar faces. It'd be very cool—you'll just have to trust me on that.