See also: Colorstore Brings Film and Rock Together at FilmBar With a Little Help From Their Friends
Colorstore's "My Life As a Beaver" starts with a fuzzy guitar, just like "Revolution" by The Beatles, then erupts into a blown-speaker pop opus. Whatever you do, don't snicker at the title, though it might go down in history with the likes of "The Beaver Song" by Robin Sparkles and Jessica Glitter and Primus' "Wynona's Big Brown Beaver" in the catalog of "Impossible to Not Chuckle at Song Titles Containing the Word Beaver."
One of the standout tracks from the band's excellent new record, Afire, the song's lyrics are buried under murky distortion, but lyricist Mark Erickson says the song's words stem from life at home.
"[The lyrics are about] my son Jack," he says. "[He's] a bit intense. Never met anyone quite like him. He's half me and half of his mom. A strong-willed, dramatic, thick-headed, emotional, intense wildfire (sweet and smart too, but, you know). So I guess I tried to come with some things to say to him. Life lessons, or something like that, with a ruckus sort of sound."
"A ruckus sort of sound" is an apt description of what's goes down in "My Life As a Beaver."
"The second idea for the title probably has more to do with the song's subject," Erikson says. "[It's] an analogy of somebody spending all their time damming things and losing purpose. I guess I could possibly view that person as myself, considering I spend a great deal of time doing such things with no great purpose and usually with a not-so-good outcome. So [it's] sort of that age-old "Don't do what I've done" sort of speech a parent might give their child. A lot of the lyrics on the song ended up a bit more simple than that idea (thankfully), but I think that was the idea."
Erickson understands that listeners might have to dig a little for the lyrics, but he doesn't mind that, and he doesn't mind if they don't bother.
"[People can] if they want to, but hopefully there's a sense that they feel like they don't have to. I was the only one out of the band and engineers that wanted the vocals buried across the entire record. I lost the request to bury them on some and won on others. 'My Life As a Beaver' is one of the ones I got my way with. Yeah, lyrics are difficult, especially when you're going through a terrible bout of self-consciousness."
Download: Colorstore, "My Life as a Beaver" Colorstore, "My Life as a Beaver"
Colorstore is scheduled to perform Saturday, May 12, at the Lost Leaf.
