Pez Dorado

Pez Dorado
	;
Album	Getting Into Knives
Released	October 23, 2020
Length	4:56
Previous Track	"Tidal Wave"
Next Track	"The Last Place I Saw You Alive"

Pez Dorado is the sixth song on Getting Into Knives. It also appears as the fourth song on the 2021 live album The Jordan Lake Sessions: Volumes 3 and 4. A teaser video of the first verse and chorus debuted on Facebook on August 21, 2020.

Lyrics[]

Echoes from a nursery rhyme
Hide in plain sight all this time
Here you come splashing in your summer clothes
You and your pale pink toes

Just there where the shadow falls
There we follow one and all
Can't resist the creeping dark
Ready to make our mark

Little red fish beneath the surface of the water
Testing the break point in case we get lucky

Ancient blood is patient blood
We were here before the flood
Waiting for our time to shine
Sparks in a silver mine 

Shorebirds deal death all day long
We are weak but they are strong
Lose some friends along the way
Then in you come one day

Little red fish beneath the surface of the water
Scales in the sun, stars in a shot glass
Testing the break point in case we get lucky

Take your time, we've got all day
Days beyond that, come what may
If you get home tell all your friends
The spawning tide never ends

Say what you felt when you found us here
Here where the waters run crystal clear
One summer day in your summer clothes
The day you saw several ghosts 

Little red fish beneath the surface of the water
Hungry for years, senses sharpened by the hunger
Testing the break point in case we get lucky

Comments by John Darnielle About this Song[]

"This is a song about intuiting that one's place in the universe is infinitesimally unimportant in the presence of goldfish." -- 2021-08-24 - Space - Evanston, IL
"This is one of those songs about how you occasionally get the sense that the natural world is, is smarter than you are, bigger than you are, older than you are, and has more complex and dark designs on you than you might previously have supposed." -- 2021-12-17 - Cat's Cradle - Carrboro, NC

Things Referenced in this Song[]

"Pez dorado" is a Spanish phrase literally meaning "gold fish" that can refer either to goldfish [1] or mahi-mahi [2].

Live Shows this Song Was Played at[]

Videos of this Song[]

Getting Into Knives
Track list: "Corsican Mastiff Stride" • "Get Famous" • "Picture of My Dress" • "As Many Candles As Possible" • "Tidal Wave" • "Pez Dorado" • "The Last Place I Saw You Alive" • "Bell Swamp Connection" • "The Great Gold Sheep" • "Rat Queen" • "Wolf Count" • "Harbor Me" • "Getting Into Knives"

The Jordan Lake Sessions: Volumes 3 and 4

Track list: "In the Craters on the Moon" • "Letter from Belgium" • "Woke Up New" • "Pez Dorado" • "Picture of My Dress" • "Whole Wide World" • "Dark in Here" • "Korean Bird Paintings" • "Snow Owl" • "Against Pollution" • "The Last Place I Saw You Alive" • "In Memory of Satan" • "Bell Swamp Connection" • "Rat Queen" • "Shelved" • "Sax Rohmer #1" • "This Year" • "Have to Explode" • "Game Shows Touch Our Lives" • "Until Olympius Returns" • "The Young Thousands" • "Corsican Mastiff Stride" • "Blood Capsules" • "Hair Match" • "Solidarity Forever" • "Soft Targets" • "Black Pear Tree" • "Wolf Count" • "Never Quite Free" • "Wild Sage" • "Jazz No Children" • "Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod" • "Exegetic Chains" • "Going Invisible 2"