Pink and Blue

Pink and Blue
Album	All Hail West Texas
Released	2002
Artist	the Mountain Goats
Length	2:29
Previous Track	"Balance"
Next Track	"Riches and Wonders"

Pink and Blue is the seventh song on the album All Hail West Texas.

Lyrics

wind out of Oklahoma this morning smelled like blood and smoke.
and the crows discuss their future in the branches of 
their Louisiana live oak.
the limbs are strong and heavy and its leaves are all aglow.
and the branches brush the upper air,
but the roots reach down to where the bad people go.
and what will i do with you, pink and blue?
true gold, nine days old. 

nice new clothes on you and old cardboard produce box for a cradle.
I mashed some bananas in a coffee cup and 
I fed you there at the kitchen table.
crows outside complaining about the finer points of local politics.
strange wind all full of new smells -- rust and fur and reception sticks.
and what will i do with you, pink and blue?
true gold, nine days old.

Comments by John Darnielle About this Song

• "[Pink and Blue]'s one of the more complicated ones [on All Hail West Texas]. I don’t know if you play video games, but when a video game starts going faster, before you actually end a level and go to the next one, things get a little harder because you are a little better at the game, and that’s when you get to advance. And I have songs, where I go, 'Oh, you leveled up, you got a little better somewhere along the line.' Rhythmically and structurally, 'Pink and Blue' is a considerably more complicated song than I’d been writing on the last album." -- Salon.com interview
• "I feel like the recording is pretty perfect - it’s a home recording, obviously, but that was the magic of the boombox years: sometimes I’d be recording during just the right take, and the energy of the song’s newness would be present at the exact moment when I’d gotten my fingers wrapped around the changes and my voice was fitting the words just right…and, I assume, vagaries of chance like the humidity in the room and the hour of day would come into play, I don’t have enough tech knowledge to really say. relative distance from the mic. the condition of the gears on a hot day vs a cold one. etc. the song still has live potential, but it’s never seemed to me like one that calls out for live performance. when I hear the version on AHWT I feel like that’s the best one to hear. also you don’t feed solid food to nine-day-old babies but I can’t really substitute “days” with “years” because that’d just be weird, also “months” would sound ridiculous and “centuries” would change the meaning of the song drastically. well ok those are my thoughts about how I haven’t really played “pink and blue” live much if at all, guess I should have some coffee before thinking out loud much more today" -- John's Tumblr
• "But there's also 'Pink and Blue', which is about somebody who has abandoned twins, right. When people abandon their infants on a doorstep, this is not an un-political consequence, right. This is not a caprice. This is a response, often, to a society that has failed to care for people who have less." -- Interview with Joseph Fink ("I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats" podcast, episode 2)
• "It's about child abandonment. I'm certain that the jumping-off point must have been during orientation, somebody talking about what happens if we find an infant on our step, because it's gonna happen one of these times, you know, that's what people do, if they can't take care of their baby, they leave it at a hospital or someplace, and hope that somebody can, can take care of it for them. And I was thinking about the panic that a new mother must be in to go through with that." -- Interview with Joseph Fink ("I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats" podcast, episode 6)

Live Shows this Song Was Played at

• 2014-01-19 - Rock for Roe at the Pinhook - Durham, NC
• 2021-09-17 - Tower Theatre - Oklahoma City, OK
• 2021-09-21 - Tellus360 - Lancaster, PA
• 2022-12-05 - Doug Fir Lounge - Portland, OR

All Hail West Texas

Track list: "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton" • "Fall of the Star High School Running Back" • "Color in Your Cheeks" • "Jenny" • "Fault Lines" • "Balance" • "Pink and Blue" • "Riches and Wonders" • "The Mess Inside" • "Jeff Davis County Blues" • "Distant Stations" • "Blues in Dallas" • "Source Decay" • "Absolute Lithops Effect" Reissue bonus tracks: "Hardpan Song" • "Answering the Phone" • "Indonesia" • "Midland" • "Jenny" (alt. take) • "Tape Travel Is Lonely" • "Waco"