A Hostage and the Meaning of Life is the first full-length studio album by Brazil, released on April 20, 2004, by Fearless Records. Demos for the album were recorded in Nashville, TN, by Matt Miller and JR Cary in 2003, and included the unused song "The Way to Dusty Death." The twelve-track album was recorded in Los Angeles, CA, with Alex Newport.
After multiple personnel changes during Dasein, the band's lineup stabilized with the addition of James Sefchek on drums who moved to Indiana from New Jersey in 2003. Musically, the album extended the band's post-hardcore foundation, incorporating new elements such as ambient music, progressive rock and free jazz.
Reviews of the album were overwhelmingly positive. The piano continued to drive the songwriting, but the addition of guitarist Eric Johnson as a full-time writing member influenced the overall sound with more rhythmically complex songs such as "The Iconoclast" and "Metropol." Written as a loose concept album, lyrical themes included technology, escapism, and the passing of time.
A Hostage and the Meaning of Life was performed live from 2003 through 2005.
Personnel
Jonathon Newby - vocals
Nicholas Newby - keyboards
Aaron Smith - guitar
Eric Johnson - guitar
Benjamin Hunt - bass
James Sefchek - drums
John Newby - Saxophone
Tim Loo - cello
Touring members
Christopher Swinney - bass
Philip Williams - bass
Lyrics
A Hostage
J'ai une ame solitaire feels the same can you not see it? Our lips are dripping poison the feeling will last forever the fighting is over won without a sound / Alone in a white room alone with no one / Exstacy constantly rapidly one two three / And if I get the chance to lead one sheep astray I'll pull the rope with bleeding teeth / There's something in his eyes an angel can tell lies the war torn streets of Paradise / How hard the code to break depends on what's at stake a perpetual state of measure
The Novemberist
I dream of airplanes crashing solemn beginnings daily / Everyday I grow old and am born again bathed in light that starts to darken when I emerge / I dream of airplanes crashing solemn beginnings daily dissolution is change I see tongues of fire upon our heads turn off the lights to see the next room the constant / Save a match for me run with me into the flames save a match for me play the game with me tonight / Will November lose its meaning when your fingers lose their feeling? / Today make it shatter like glass today makes tomorrow unbecoming November is what can change me
Io
One wore white the other dressed in red one invincible the other fell down and bled one to touch your face the other to wipe the sweat one to know your name and the other not just yet / One stood by while the other came and went the other flew away so she couldn't fall out again / One to let you know the other to make you wait worlds across the fence and they're traveled every day / One day calm broke the silence I heard my voice in the audience / And it said "look at my face" / One day calm broke the silence I wear my nerves on the outside and hide them under my / There's no one out there I know her eyes were gleaming in Io yet I'm still breathing on my own the thoughts are leaving one by one
Escape
Awake dreaming solemn revery too lost secret link in a broken chain / Eyes are open only they don't see color, shape, and terminal velocity / Run away when I feel danger danger hides in every stranger stranger things have happened so I feel like being stranger, laughing / All is lost and all is lost on me lorazepam says it will set me free / No cold no heat feeling has passed through me give me one thing escape is all I need / Breathing down my neck you see is someone else's destiny it makes no difference to pretend so give me all my garmonbozia / The right make a world of your own escape overrides it all
We
Automation is a subtractive process / Do you remember it? We had a data date / You tried to turn it back now you're a bit too late / Stand in the light again open your mouth speak give me a sign of life touch me / Make peace with your right brain sense of security / Logic cuts pure and deep logic all you need / A line dividing us cold stark reality in logic you will find transformation / We have all the strengths of genius and all the signs of weakness you'd better go on believing interface cannot come between / Deep down I believe I'll always be powerless
The Iconoclast - Why are the words nonsense?
Your sky falls forever a black heart endeavor / The game of laissez-faire aces in the air your eyes stare forever in the cold dry hereafter hiding an affair I swore was never there it's over and under and over and under / In the city that never sleeps you're the creature that never wakes I thought you were someone else / Scent of attraction lean in to listen "Resurrect the dead on Jupiter" she said / Time's game is wasting a worldwide lambasting a billion miles away a deadly bird of prey flies over and under and over / Force fed my tongue everytime / Why are the words nonsense?
Zentropa
Run run away and don't remain running on the data track and don't look back surprise attack conscience tells me I am right / Burning lungs suffocate scream with every breath I take wondering one two three will I ever see my / If I should die before I wake never see shores with foreign waves memory fades to black under crushing marble slab / Cool me off rinse me clean let me please come with you porcelain ivory look at you now look at me / Run away run so far away the monolith is beckoning every day /Close my eyes and set me free
Fall Into
On time for me is too late for you / Their plastic gaze would melt for you / My passive face keeps me away / Cold, stark, and pale our sobriquet / Sending a wire transmission falling into submission / Are you real or are you a vain imagination / It's not for nothing I tell myself
Metropol
Take a breath / Random streaks of light prevade the petrol perfume that I breathe / Air / Taken at the witching hour missile launch and fuselage / Rivets from a row of eyes factory glass state of mind / Glare / Thus machine begets machine one is ten is four two three / Affectionate utility the death of time replaces the need for age / I think I tried to steal a kiss amid hollow shriek and hiss / Buildings blacker then the sea the sky a wash of acid pain's gray / The air is thick and oil slick the architecture breathes its breath soon I'll not want to go away / Black and silver soot stained eyes see fire and steel how can I tell if it's for real? / I think sometime today I'll rescue you away Andromeda can wait je suis desole / Follow your gray sillhouette
Aventine (nic started playing this in the basement)
Watch me and stay close beside so helplessly waiting close my eyes and hold me now because it's after me just waiting for my last breath / Vague distant holes in my memory the nightside I'm drifting so far away the words that I'm speaking come haltingly the air that I'm breathing taste sulfuric / Deep inside me deep inside my fortress / Feeling is lost with my memory I'll work my way back to what it means / It's far to late to trace my steps back again the thought's petrifying because the spider man is after me / Fading hoping of familiar recognition I built a castle made of arms cross and breathless / Watch me turn things around turn them on their head / This nightside where I'm drifting this place is a lie I'm believing to live with myself to ease the strain release the brain it's all I want bleeding the vein
Form and Function
Instrumental
Fatale and Futiqe (obsession with cute weird words)
Breathe the air eye the eye reach out and grab the hand that beckons / The Great Divide is in our minds you'll see some things are bound to happen / Drink the wine touch the ice enter the ruined and fallen city / Dead by design complete the line I know some things are bound to happen / Send the match and send the flame and send the heat / So I can burn down the walls that keep you in