[Investblogger]

Welcome2England was supposed to start this thread...but seems to have vanished in the holiday ether. I have LOTS of thoughts on this song, but don't have time to post them just yet. In the meantime, here are the lyrics and a great live version. Please feel free to start the convo.

My heart became a drunken runt
on the day I sunk in this shunt,
to tap me clean
of all the wonder
and the sorrow I have seen,
since I left my home:

My home, on the old Milk Lake,
where the darkness does fall so fast,
it feels like some kind of mistake
(just like they told you it would;
just like the Tulgeywood).

When I came into my land,
I did not understand:
neither dry rot, nor the burn pile,
nor the bark-beetle, nor the dry well,
nor the black bear.

But there is another,
who is a little older.
When I broke my bone,
he carried me up from the riverside.

To spend my life
in spitting-distance
of the love that I have known,
I must stay here, in an endless eventide.

And if you come and see me,
you will upset the order.
You cannot come and see me,
for I set myself apart.
But when you come and see me,
in California,
you cross the border of my heart.

Well, I have sown untidy furrows
across my soul,
but I am still a coward,
content to see my garden grow
so sweet & full
of someone else's flowers.

But sometimes
I can almost feel the power.
Sometimes I am so in love with you
(like a little clock
that trembles on the edge of the hour,
only ever calling out "Cuckoo, cuckoo").

When I called you,
you, little one,
in a bad way,
did you love me?
Do you spite me?
Time will tell if I can be well,
and rise to meet you rightly.
While, moving across my land,
brandishing themselves
like a burning branch,
advance the tallow-colored,
walleyed deer,
quiet as gondoliers,
while I wait all night, for you,
in California,
watching the fox pick off my goldfish
from their sorry, golden state--
and I am no longer
afraid of anything, save
the life that, here, awaits.

I don't belong to anyone.
My heart is heavy as an oil drum.
And I don't want to be alone.
My heart is yellow as an ear of corn,
and I have torn my soul apart, from
pulling artlessly with fool commands.

Some nights
I just never go to sleep at all,
and I stand,
shaking in my doorway like a sentinel,
all alone,
bracing like the bow upon a ship,
and fully abandoning
any thought of anywhere
but home,
my home.
Sometimes I can almost feel the power.
And I do love you.
Is it only timing,
that has made it such a dark hour,
only ever chiming out,
"Cuckoo, cuckoo"?

My heart, I wear you down, I know.
Gotta think straight,
keep a clean plate;
keep from wearing down.
If I lose my head,
just where am I going to lay it?

(For it has half-ruined me,
to be hanging around,
here, among the daphne,
blooming out of the big brown;
I am native to it, but I'm overgrown.
I have choked my roots
on the earth, as rich as roe,
here,
down in California.)

[Dastyh]

Right now, "Is it only timing that has made it such a dark hour" holds special resonance – I always blow it

This must be the tribute album version:

[kaiayout]

This is one of my favourites from the album and seems to sum up some of the album's themes and approach. I relate it to "Go Long" in the sense that it has this feeling of working towards somewhere, slowly but surely. Some of the songs have verses that have these melodic resolutions, for want of a better phrase, but songs like "In California" and "Go Long" for the most part do not in the same way. "In California" a little less so, because there's that utterly gorgeous melodic change into the "there is another, who is a little older" part. And then comes the wonderfully unexpected but fitting "cuckoo" part, and the song at the end does feel like it has a sense of resolution melodically - but it's taken a while to get there.

That's one of her strengths, I find. Her long songs are not long because she overwrote them and thought, "well I'll put another two verses here to show off how amazing my lyrics are," they are long because they need to be for it to unfold naturally. Like "Baby Birch" - some would say the beginning part goes on for too long, but I think it's expertly judged. "Go Long" is the same, this sense of sinister foreboding is so effective because that melody is repeated. Now a song like "'81" or "Jackrabbits," if you imagine those being nine minutes long, you can't really can you? Or at least I can't. The verse melody in those songs to my ears is kind of resolved (I keep saying that, I hope I'm not sounding crazy - but they sound like they end on neat resolved chords) to the point where if you repeat that for minutes on end it loses its effect. Now, by the same token, imagine "In California" edited to four minutes. It just doesn't work. She lets her songs breathe, gives them their natural space, and that's partly why they are so effective. (The delicate melodies and wonderfully vivid lyrics help too!)

[Junrlaeh]

I absolutely adore the lyrics of this song. My favorite part where she compares her heart to an oil drum. Right now In California and Go Long are my main HOOM songs. Along with Only Skin I've been listening to them nonstop.

It's a shame the cover version is kind of "meh" though. No offense to whoever's singing in but their vocal range just doesn't seem to match Joanna's and the rest of the song is a little too much like the original. Maybe I've been spoiled by so many unique Tori covers but I have a tendency to expect something that transforms the song into a whole new thing to enjoy rather than something that mildly pays tribute to the original with shaky vocals and inferior instrumentals.