Tidal Wave

Tidal Wave
	;
Album	Getting Into Knives
Released	October 23, 2020
Length	5:25
Previous Track	"As Many Candles As Possible"
Next Track	"Pez Dorado"

Tidal Wave is the fifth song on Getting Into Knives. It was written on December 23, 2018. A teaser video of John Darnielle and Matt Douglas harmonizing part of it debuted on Facebook on August 27, 2020. It appears as the seventh song on the 2022 live album The Jordan Lake Sessions: Volume 5.

Lyrics[]

It's not the barnacles that do all the damage
Figure this out too late 
It's not the destination that makes the difference 
It's the freight 

Everything becomes a blur from six feet away 
Get used to this 
Every card ever turned over remains in play 
Get used to this 

Not every wave is a tidal wave
Not every wave is a tidal wave

It's not the mutiny written down in the diary 
It's the manifest 
Forgotten cargo in obsolete measurements 
Anybody's guess 

Even the proud, even the very proud 
Probably die on their knees 
Twin masts out on the open seas 
Mistaken for trees 

Not every wave is a tidal wave
Not every wave is a tidal wave

Comments by John Darnielle About this Song[]

"It's a song about sort of, uh, measuring the degree of damage that you expect, and when I say 'expect' I mean you've done the math. 'Expect' in a mathematical sense. The amount of damage you expect to incur." -- 2021-08-23 - Pabst Theater - Milwaukee, WI
"Friends, this is a song that tries to have it both ways. It counsels the listener to understand that not every, um, situation that seems overwhelming and devastating is actually, y’know, overwhelming and devastating in a final sense. But the rest of the words of the song seem to suggest that some things actually are big enough to crush you. This is called Tidal Wave." – 2022-09-17 - Tulips - Fort Worth, TX
"This is a song about how the accumulation of small wounds eventually makes one really, really big one." – 2022-09-18 - Tipitina's - New Orleans, LA
"The Mountain Goats are not one of those bands, right, you see tMG two nights in a row, you don’t get the same patter, because that’s offensive, but you paid twice to get in, y’know, and you shouldn’t have to [hear me?] recite the same thing, like we’re [twin?] parakeets or something like that. It’s not the Mountain Parakeets. But at the same time, this story, it’s sort of like the Aristotelian mean of what this song is about. It’s about –- and I wonder, I bet –– and I don’t know –– whether in English Evangelical churches, they have the same rhetorical tradition (the type of Christians I’m talking about don’t like the word ‘tradition’ but they have a lot of traditions. They just don’t want us to say it. That’s kind of one of the greatest things about them, it’s like they build their own traditions and then they focus on these scriptures against traditions, right?) But uh ... one thing they do in America, I learned when I was going to these churches, I was nineteen or so, I was hoping that God would hit me with a lightning bolt and stop me from being the person I was. It didn’t work, but uh, that was the idea; you’d see these people get smitten by the spirit and they’d fall on the ground, and I would think Wow, something better than them is in control of them, I need that in my life, and I don’t have it. It was a dark and weird time. But one of the things they do is, in America you have the Quakers, right, and the Quakers have this song called ‘Simple Gifts.’ ‘Tis a gift to be simple, ‘tis a gift to be free, ‘tis a gift to come down to where we ought to be. And the whole thing is like, you’re making things complicated and you’re not doing things the way the Almighty does it. And, you know, this is obviously anti-Catholic thinking, but um ... and in my next series of lectures, I’ll be dwelling on that at great length. But uh, but these Evangelicals who aren’t Quakers, they would introduce a song, and the songs were actually the worst kind of [inaudible] they were really just very bad, and they would introduce every song like this, like, 'Well, people, I just want to give thanks and praise, and I want to do this with a song that says, very simply,' and there’s a hint of condescension there to some person who’s not saying something simply. So he says, 'very simply, how I love You. You are the one for me.' But I would know by the middle of the song, you’re gonna sing that single tagline thirty-two times. You didn’t need to tell them about the simplicity of it at all [like there’s] some hidden message in there. But at the same time, I kind of liked it. As a rhetorical device, it frames things in a very sneaky sort of way, so ... people of the Roundhouse in London, we’d like to play for you a song right now that says, very simply, it’s not the barnacles that do the damage. But we figure this out too late." –– 2022-11-16 - Roundhouse - London, England

Things Referenced in this Song[]

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: Volume 5

Track list: "Let Me Bathe in Demonic Light" • "First Blood" • "Mark On You" • "Minnesota" • "Make You Suffer" • "Choked Out" • "Tidal Wave" • "Torch Song" • "Tulsa Imperative" • "The Water Song" • "The Window Song" • "Abandoned Flesh" • "We Do It Different on the West Coast" • "Guys on Every Corner" • "Training Montage" • "Extraction Point" • "Damn These Vampires" • "Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome" • "Bleed Out"