Cardiff Afterlife
From MSPpedia
| Lifeblood: | << | Fragments | | | Cardiff Afterlife |
Contents |
Details
- Status: Lifeblood - Album Track
- Length: 3:27
Appears On...
- Albums:
Lyrics
If the love between us
Has faded away
Left in the rain
Scratching at the stains
The paralysed future
The past sideways crawl
I must give up on this
It makes no sense at all
Makes no sense at all
In the Cardiff afterlife
In the Cardiff afterlife
We sense the breaking of our lives
In the Cardiff afterlife
In the Cardiff afterlife
And yet I kept my silence
Your memory is still mine
No I will not share them
Acquaintance through denial
For I witnessed splendour
And evil that no-one saw
And I felt kindness
And vanity for sure
And vanity for sure
In the Cardiff afterlife
In the Cardiff afterlife
We sensed the breaking of our lives
In the Cardiff afterlife
In the Cardiff afterlife
In the Cardiff afterlife
In the Cardiff afterlife
We sensed the making of our lives
In the Cardiff afterlife
In the Cardiff
About
The final track on “Lifeblood” deals with the band trying to find some closure, almost ten years after Richey's disappearance, with the people who try to revise Richey's persona without ever having known him. It was one of the lyrics that Nicky wrote as part of his "cities" project, just after the completion of “Know Your Enemy.” The idea was to have ten songs, each based on a different city around the world - “Tokyo Hole”, “Stockholm Alone”, "The Dublin Lag" and “Leeches over Havana” are some that Nicky completed - but only “Cardiff Afterlife” survived for James to write the accompanying music.
The music was heavily influenced by the soundtrack of the film “Taxi Driver”, the crescendo during the chorus being very similar to the key theme in Bernard Hermann's score.
The song is also the second Manics song (after “Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky”) to feature a harp, although this time around it is sampled. In a break from Manics tradition, James also plays harmonica, as he does on the previous track, “Fragments.”
Short Film
Patrick Jones directed a video for the song, which appeared on the official Manics website just before the album was released. It includes footage of Cardiff city centre and the 'old' Severn Bridge. The latter was a surprising inclusion considering its association with Richey's disappearance, but may be seen as a sign of how far the band have moved on in coming to terms with the situation.
