Roofers Union and the stunning surreal nature of "Symbiote Song"

 

"There is a creature without a body / Yet I am living on its back / For now I can relax / Both got plenty of time to react..."

By any stretch of one's heart, "Symbiote Song" by Brooklyn, New York's Roofers Union is a dazzling beautiful piece of sonic art and by any stretch of the imagination "Symbiote Song" is exquisitely weird. Can both descriptor exist in the same song? Yes, of course. Especially when the lyrics on this wonderful creation (or creature) crawls and metamorphoses through a tangible metaphor all the way through. In the same way that lauded Canadian film director / screenwriter David Cronenberg uses body horror to exorcise all kinds of anxiety about all kinds of human endeavors and challenges (macro and micro) like having children, sexual shifts in society, addition to forms of media (way ahead of the curve), Roofers Union asks questions, describes the unsettling parts of the human connection or the cutting of that connection.     

"(Symbiote Song) is about the end of a relationship - bittersweet, dynamic, and surreal. We wanted to make a song that was these things too"

Listen, absorb (wink) "Symbiote Song" through it's deeply moving vocal melodies, stirring, sometimes obtuse, orchestrations and probing lyrics but through a poetic lens (figuratively speaking) and it is wonderfully stunning song and exactly bittersweet, truly dynamic and surreal. 

"There is a problem with the future
There is a voice that’s getting louder
And soon all that comes out
White light pours out your mouth

Am I missing the joke
Am I the symbiote"

Roofers Union is drawing on the symbiotic nature of a relationship in all it's complex ways and seems to elude to the parasitic nature of things as well, it all becomes circular sometimes. I love this kind of writing, LOVE the lyrics not only because it is the essence of poetic songwriting but because if you flip it and the figurative becomes literal, it becomes fascinating and extremely dark. It becomes a David Cronenberg movie. 

There is a creature without a body
Yet I am living on its back
For now I can relax
Both got plenty of time to react

and

I can’t remember my dreams
The ghost is just another machine
Am I the fish in your mote
Am I the symbiote

 

"Symbiote Song" is one half of Roofers Union mini-EP "Fogdancing / Symbiote Song".

-Robb Donker Curtius

THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM 

https://www.facebook.com/roofersunionisaband

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4hCJMBYcFIE0g1XKrE0miL

https://soundcloud.com/roofersunionisaband

https://roofersunion.bandcamp.com/album/fogdancing-symbiote-song

Roofers Union, Brooklyn New York, folk, singer songwriter, chamber pop, folk, mini-EP "Fogdancing / Symbiote Song", poetic lyrics, surreal expressions, alt pop, deep pop,