Meaningless / Solomon the Mystic

There's a certain bleakness to The Fatherless and the Widow that's absent from Sixpence's other records, however dark those do, indeed, get. It may be the simplicity of the instrumentation, since nothing is more prominent than Slocum's guitar (from the sound of it, he hadn't acquired the electric twelve-string that's become one of his signatures) and he rarely plays, to get technical about it, way up high on the tiny strings. It's not the only plodding, meditative track of the bunch ("Musings" is almost a straight-up drug trip) but "Meaningless" is simply hypnotic, from the first plunked notes cascading off each other to the arpeggiated acoustic hook that starts just as the song fades out*.

The words, borrowed from everybody's favorite bummer of a book in the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes, are much more of an existential downer than the rest of the record, which itself is mostly about death. But "Meaningless" transcends the mourning of individual loss because it's about how life is pointless to begin with. "It's all meaningless," goes the cheerful hook. The CCM-approved bridge goes on to say "Fear your God / This is all I know," but that hardly brings more comfort**, what with the connotations of fear in our language. The other dramatic breakdown, with Leigh and Matt singing in grave unison a riff on Robert Herricks's "To the Virgins to Make Much of Time," urging us to "gather ye rosebuds while ye may/tomorrow you could lie in a silent grave/pawing the dust and awaiting the end of time." 

"Solomon the Mystic" is an excerpt from the live digital-delay-fest that is the jam at the end of "Meaningless," and it's the most dynamic instrumental performance Sixpence has put on a record. Slocum slices and dices the song's mesmerizing riff, moves it way up the neck, and utliizes his delay pedal in a way that would make the Edge jealous. This is a jam that moves, deteriorates into sound and fury, as Plascencio detunes his bass strings so that in the end they're merely rattling, croaking, signifying nothing.

*This is also perhaps the only Sixpence mystery I've never solved: somebody says something, very very quietly, right at this moment. It's almost imperceptible, but it's there. What is it?

UPDATE: "Read Psalm 39, rather than listening to this backwards message."

**Incidentally, "Fear your God" is skipped over in live performances like this one (you have to become a member of the Sixpence discussion list The Vine to download it).