My old classmate Eimert had told me about this guy, a one-man band from Norway with a warm soul voice and beautiful looped instrumentals and vocals, for real feel good music. Jarle Bernhoft will be in Berlin at Postbahnhof on 20 April. Helmut, we have the album, and tickets. C’mon talk to me and we’ll fly away.
As always, I’m fascinated and somewhat bemused by the way an international musician uses English, reusing chunks of language and sometimes mixing up idioms. It sounds like soul, of course, but the song rhythm doesn’t always match the intonation a native speaker would use for “second hand shop”. At times I don’t quite get the meaning. That reminds me that most non-native speakers don’t really get the lyrics in pop music anyway. And: Do they care? Isn’t the answer obvious?
Lyrics to Fly Away:
Chorus 1:
Fly away in the back of a second-hand shop
Draw the curtains and wake up in 1968 or 9
Fly away on the wings of a getaway plane
Fly away on your own and let your mind bring forward
every little thing that you are
These shakes are prying me loose
Ain’t got time to wake up, so many people to get hold of
Verse 1:
I’m calling up this downbeat guy I’d like to be for an hour or two
Slick and curious in every sense of the word
Fits my style like a hand in a glove
And with just a flick of a well-hung wrist
I’m gonna move over and over again
Sometimes you just hijack somebody
Make ’em into your own, make ’em into your own
Chorus 2:
Fly away in the back of a second hand shop
Draw the curtains and wake up in 1978 or 9
Fly away on the wings of a getaway plane (yeah yeah)
Fly away on your own and let your mind bring forward
every little thing that you are
These shakes are shaking me up
Ain’t got no mind to stay, so many times I tried to control and let go
Verse 2:
Right wing politician, or a communist
Army fiend or a pacifist
Top notch broker, or a beggar man, thief,
There’s no end to the possibilities
You can steal for other caller (?), get fluffy in the face (?)
Wear chains on your wallet and live out your indie ways
Nothing stops you from being anyone you want
But the city’s gonna break ya if you don’t wake up from where you belong
Chorus 3:
Fly away in the back of a second hand shop
Draw the curtains and wake up in 1988 or 9
Fly away on the wings of a getaway plane
Fly away on your own and let your mind bring forward
every little thing that you are
every little thing that you are
Fly away…
(Chorus 4 – Studio Version:
Fly away in the back of a second hand shop
draw the curtains and wake up in 1998 or 9
Fly away on the wings of a getaway plane
Fly away on your own and let your mind bring forward
every little thing that you are
every little thing that you are)
