Words: Lance Robson

For those of you who have Last FM, dig The National, or are unabashed file sharers, ponder the song "Forever After Days."

After listening to last night's debate I disengaged by listening to an album for a review. After tiring of that, I shuffled all the tunes on my player and said song popped up. Aside from having an unadorned Michael Gira-ish vocal quality, the lyrics jumped at me, while I lay concentrating on the sounds leaving my oversized headphones.  "Forever After Days" then struck me as The National's song for Obama, albeit a subtly delivered and not yet publicized one - if I am correct.

The track seems to correspond nicely to The National's "Mr. November" t-shirt/activism that popped up some months back. The shirt shows Obama's face with the header "Mr. November" taken from an unrelated track from the 2006 album Alligator.

I'll start & end with the lyrics "wrap me in the banner I made," which seem like a nod to the people our forefathers enslaved to build this country while noting the time has come (yet again) to begin to deal with the US's often but not always buried racism by choosing to cast votes for Barack (a man of African heritage) and, hence, elect him. Picture a romantic image of Obama with a flag draped around/over him to complete the imagery the lyric suggested to me.

The whole song seems to deal with stepping up and reaching a potential greater than that of one person.