Wordcraft Wednesday - Family Tree (Intro)

    WARNING: This album deals with disturbing topics, such as abuse and cannibalism. Please proceed with caution.

 

 This album, man. It's heavy, dark, disturbing, foreboding, crushing, a tale that sticks with you long after Strangers ends. 

Across the next few weeks, I'm gonna be doing a deep dive into the lyrics and themes of the album. We'll be going through song-by-song, analyzing the lyrics and their meaning. So let's get started.

 

 1. Family Tree (Intro)

     The beginning of the track starts with a recording of a preacher talking about the importance of a mother, probably Mother Mary. It's a bit hard to make out what he's saying, but some of what I could make out include;

 '....a woman, a mother, a mother is the greatest thing on the planet. Other than the lord Jesus Christ, I think that a mother and a woman is one of the important gifts that God gives to this world. A mother is.... and love...a mother is the greatest thing on the planet. '

     This sets up the album's themes of family and religion. The dissonant, warbled, echoing effect on the preacher's voice tells us that there's more to these words than just what the man is saying. 

These crosses all over my body

Remind me of who I used to be

And Christ forgive these bones I'm hiding

From no one successfully 

    

 Now we hear Ethel's voice for the first time, lamenting the secrets that she tries to hide, but that everyone seems to already know. The image of cross tattoos plays further into the religious element of the album, and her use of 'who I used to be' tells us that for one reason or another, she no longer sees herself as the religious girl she one was. It's worth noting that Hayden, the performer of the songs (Ethel is her in universe character) is also trans, so the 'bones' she is hiding may be an allusion to that. 

Jesus can always reject his father

But he cannot escape his mother's blood

He'll scream and try to wash it off of his fingers

But he'll never escape what he's made up of

 

    And here we see the first of many lines that play on the theme of inter-generational trauma. The idea that no matter how hard one may try, that can't escape the blood bonds of family is something that would be a constant source of torment to someone suffering from this type of trauma. Ethel will always be known as the preacher's daughter, no matter how hard she tries to separate herself from it.

 

The fates already fucked me sideways

Swinging by my neck from the family tree

He'll laugh and say, "You know I raised you better than this"

Then leave me hanging so they can all laugh at me 

    Ethel is trapped by fate, and moreover, by her family. No matter what she does, no matter how far away she goes, she is still her father's daughter. She is always going to be an outcast, and that is what ultimately leads to everything that happens throughout that album. Her father rejects the notion that he had anything to do with the way she acted, what happened to her, and her ultimate fate. A man of God could never be the cause of a girl like her, and the very idea is something that makes him, and the rest of his community, laugh. The sight of someone they deem as lesser, and tainted and perhaps even evil, swinging from a rope, it gives them a sick sense of satisfaction that a person who rejected their lifestyle has ended up punished.

 

 The rest of the track is an instrumental, with Ethel's words echoing beneath the instruments. The dark, gloomy nature of the intro sets the tone right away for what's to come, and as the album progresses, Ethel lays bare everything that leads her to her fate.

 

Stay tuned for the next track.

 

-internet goblin