@flounderingfish2480

7 months ago

I remember back either before youtube had turned off the comments sections for a lot of album tracks, or before The Oh Hellos had remastered their albums of Notos and Eurus, that there had been a comment under this song complaining of how the bird shown on the Eurus album was of a waterfowl, and how waterfowl are not passerines. They’d said it was a shame how they should’ve instead used a passerine bird to tie into this song, but they didn’t. While I don’t know if that original commenter will ever see my comment, I think it’s an intriguing choice more than a lost opportunity, and it still ties into the song’s theme quite well. At the beginning, the singer comments on how “the house of Augustus rings” and how “my birds of a passerine, they took to it,” but it’s implied they themselves didn’t. Later on in the second verse, the singer comments on how their “birds of a kind” look more like centurions than a messiah (nodding how Christians have used their religion against others instead of for others, becoming similar to the cruel Romans they so very hated). The use of a waterfowl instead of a passerine on the album cover adds to that beautifully. This person realizes they do not identify with the status quo and so attempt to leave it behind. However, they struggle with this reality of moving away from the place and ideology they knew, and I enjoy how The Oh Hellos used the loose metaphor of bird migration and the calling of a coming winter at the end to communicate that. Not to mention the themes of water and fire in these albums and how this waterfowl has probably sought refuge in the water away from the judgemental fire of the passerines, except that water is becoming colder and colder, and now they’re lost and confused. This is probably not what The Oh Hellos intended with the Eurus cover, but I do like the detail and believe it’s a nice addition rather than an unfortunate mistake on their part.

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