Bright Eyes – ‘If the Brakeman Turns My Way’

“If the Brakeman Turns My Way” Lyrics:

When panic grips your body
And your heart’s a hummingbird
Raven thoughts blacken your mind
‘Til you’re breathing in reverse
All your friends and sedatives mean well
But make it worse
Every reassurance just magnifies the doubt
Better find yourself a place to level out

Got a cricket for a conscience
Always looks the other way
A cocaine soul starts seeming like
An empty cabaret
Hey, where have all the dancers gone?
Now the music doesn’t play
Tried to listen to the river
But you couldn’t shut your mouth
Better take a little time to level out

I never thought of running
My feet just led the way

Mixed-up signals
Bullet train
Cars are switched out in the crazy rain
I could meet you any place
If the brakeman turns my way

All this automatic writing
I have tried to understand
From a psychedelic angel
Who was tugging on my hand
It’s an infinite coincidence
But it doesn’t form a plan
So I’m headed for New England
Or the Paris of the South
Gonna find myself somewhere to level out

Are your brothels full, oh Babylon
With merry middlemen?
Never peer out of their periscopes
From those deep opium dens
All this death must need a counterweight
Always someone born again
First a mother bathes her child
Then the other way around
The scales always find a way to level out

I tried to pass for nothing
But my dreams gave me away

Mixed-up signals
Bullet train
People snuffed out in the brutal rain
I could live to any age
If the brakeman turns my way

It is an old world, it’s hard to remember
Like a dime store mystery
I’m a repeat first-time offender
Who has rewritten history

Mixed-up tea leaves
Phantom pain
Fuzzy logic in the the crazy rain
Getting better every day
If the brakeman turns my way

Mixed-up signals
Bullet train
Cars are switched out in the blinding rain
He’ll be smiling as he seals my fate
When the brakeman turns my way

 

This is the third track off of Bright Eyes’ album Cassadaga and in my opinion is one of the strongest from the album.

There’s something about the songs on Cassadaga that didn’t strike me right away, but now more than a year later I’m really appreciating it. Maybe I was expecting more personal songs that Conor Oberst has made a living off of through Fevers and Mirrors and Lifted, but Cassadaga is a very well written, all-around record. The tone isn’t the same as his previous works, but there’s a sense of maturity in his voice and music here.

“If the Brakeman Turns My Way” is a magnificent song that can be interpretted in many ways. It’s been said that Conor commented that the song was about hobos and how they travel on trains and rely on the ‘brakeman’ to see where they’re going to end up. As much as this gives a literal meaning to this song, I believe there’s a far deeper perspective that Conor is singing about.

It seems to be that this is a song that compares the path of life to traveling on a train… and all of the turns and stops are determined by the ‘brakeman.’ Whether the ‘brakeman’ is fate or essentially God, that’s up to you to decide.

Of course it can be about something much more specific, like getting over a drug addiction of some sort, which Conor has gone through in his life. The lyrics of the first two stanzas can be seen as a description of the effects the drugs had, and all he wants to do is finally “level out.”

Whether the song is about hobos, fate, a drug addiction, or a near death experience… it’s still a very powerful song that everyone can relate to because of its ambiguity.

Favorite Lines:

“First a mother bathes her child
Then the other way around.
The scales always find a way to level out.”

“I tried to pass for nothing
But my dreams gave me away.”