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Merrill Garbus Water Fountain Meaning

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The drums and rhythms are the only musical ingredients that can compete with Merrill Garbus’ voice and lyrics in the song “Water Fountain.” Too often, dance music approves the vacant reverberation of let’s party or drunken I-don’t-care promiscuity that gives the serious listener second thoughts about sitting down and taking note of anything remotely connected to that genre of music. That is not the case here.
The song is high-speed vocalization that scats like machine gun fire. Even when the lyrics become repetitive, the fiercely driven delivery blazes with passion. There is no sense of the robotic aestheticism that so many dance tunes seem to carry. Garbus brings her lyrics like a wounded poet, yet leaves them riding the extreme rhythm of multiple instruments. Her melodies are as assertive as any song sung from the heart and it doesn’t take long to forget you are listening to a dance tune.
Her lyrical voice, however, has to be strong to be felt over the beat. A mosaic of swift deep bass, hollow tom-toms, and quick ringing bells, quickly get your feet tapping in an unconscious need to dance. The stacked rhythm grows with synthesized …show more content…

She unites soul with scat as she hits pinnacle after pinnacle of heartfelt lyrics. “Water Fountain” pulls the ear toward the powerful expressions again and again, which, considering the profoundly polyrhythmic beat, is no easy chore. The rhythmic churning stirs up emotions of a daily life in a repressed world when the singer bravely tells us, “Nothing feels like dying like the drying of my skin and lawn. Why do we just sit here while they watch us wither till we're gone? I can't seem to feel it. I can't seem to feel it.” Garbus’ lyrics feel like there is an emotional foot on her neck. While asserting her stance against water shortages, she gives us the feel of a good love gone

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