Intro (instrumental)

A

1^st half: Geranium kisser / Skin like silk and face like glass /
Don’t confront me with my failures // (*strong/strings)

2^nd half: Kiss me with your mouth open / For your love, better than wine /
For your cologne is really fragrant // (*weak)
Refrain: Call on me, call on me, call on me * (very strong)

A’

1^st half: Your hair is like an eagle / Your two eyes are like two doves /
But our bed is like a failure // (*strong/strings)
2^nd half: All day up in the family / At the waning of the light /
To the chamber that conceived me // (*weak)
Refrain: Call on me, call on me, call on me (*strong)

A’’

Extended 1^st half: Geranium killer / Throat of soil and mind like stone /
Please don’t defend a silver lining / Around the halo of what is already shining /
When all the planets are aligning / For an afternoon that’s never ending // (*very strong)
Call on me, call on me, call on me (*strong)

 “Two Doves” has a sophisticated, compact form. An introduction gives us a finger-picking guitar in F# major, which motors along throughout, providing the song’s only real rhythmic action. Along with a string section, the key of F# punctuates the form at important points and at different levels of relative strength (indicated in the lyrics above with an asterisk). F# major provides brief respites (see if you can hear them) from the shimmering, somewhat unpredictable chord changes that surround it.

Each of the first two verses, A and A’, splits roughly into two halves followed by a short chorus (“Call on me, call on me, call on me”).  The first verse (A) is symmetrical in that the second half repeats the music of the first with new words. Melodically, the singer leaps unpredictably all over the place with the first two lines (“Geranium kisser / Skin like silk and face like glass”) only to come back down to earth with a step-wise melody for the third (“Don’t confront me with my failures”). What’s interesting at this point is that the arrival of the first “rest stop” (after “failures”). Its arrival is somewhat surprising; we expect continuation, but we suddenly get the F# major chord (at the first asterisk). We want more, but she is done with this haiku-like thought (“Don’t confront me with your failures”). The confrontation, whatever it is about, ends there; the strings punctuate her statement, and the obedient, motoring guitar obliges her with a F# major chord.

Throughout the song, it should be said, the strings provide the emotional backdrop to the singer’s words, while the guitar remains steadfast, constant in the face of conflict and turbulence. It’s too simple to say that the strings are the female voice and the guitar is the male; rather maybe we can say there’s three-way dialogue going on: the singer, the guitar, and the strings. They interact with each other in ways I am only beginning to get a handle on.

The second half of the first verse (“Kiss me with your mouth open / For your love, better than wine”) gets back to the kissing. The strings are slightly more active here than previously, and the second resting point (after “fragrant”) is a little weaker, allowing for the stronger conclusion after the refrain (“call on me, call on me, call on me”). The leaps in the melody now are even more dramatic, but the comforting, pentatonic melody over the lush strings and non-threatening [nerd alert], tonic – subdominant (I-IV of various sorts) harmonic accompaniment in the guitar adds a folksy, satisfying close to the section.

The second verse follows a similar pattern, again with the idea of “failure” ending the first half of the verse. It’s really intriguing how the ideas of family, youth, and conception get tossed in here all of a sudden. Things that don’t often mingle well together and uncomfortable, but honest: she’s showing the chamber where the singer’s parents conceived her to the object of her own sexual desire. After spending the day with her family, young lovers have to sleep somewhere, right?

The “geranium kisser” of the first verse is now a “geranium killer” in the third, where the symmetrical formal pattern of the first two verses is finally broken. Rationality, with which the singer played fast and loose throughout the song only to be brought into line unexpectedly, is tossed out the window: what was previously a single “half” of a verse is extended, and even given its own strong, conclusive resting place (after “never-ending,” ironically). But of course, the guitar motors along, unobstructed. The strings go haywire in this verse as well. It’s really well done. The final refrain gets extended long enough to contain some extra “thoughts” expressed by the strings.

Album info: Bitte Orca (2009)

The fact that it recalls like this Nico song (written by Jackson Browne), also in F# major, which was featured and introduced to the public at large in the Wes Anderson movie, The Royal Tenenbaums, is bonus. That movie’s chock full of family, sex, youth, etc.

Nico, “The Fairest of the Seasons” (1967)

Verse / Chorus 1: Now that it’s time / Now that the hour hand has landed at the end /Now that it’s real / Now that the dreams have given all they had to lend /I want to know will I stay or do I go / And maybe try another time /And do I really have a hand in my forgetting?

V/C 2: Now that I’ve tried / Now that I’ve finally found that this is not the way / Now that I turn / Now that I feel it’s time to spend the night away / I want to know do I stay or do I go / And maybe finally split the rhyme / And do I really understand the undernetting?

Bridge: Yes, and the morning has me looking in your eyes /And seeing mine warning me / To read the signs carefully.

V/C 3: Now that it’s light / Now that the candle’s falling smaller in my mind /Now that it’s here / Now that I’m almost not so very far behind / I want to know do I stay or do I go / And maybe follow another sign / And do I really have a song that I can ride on?

V/C 4: Now that I can / Now that it’s easy, ever easy all around / Now that I’m here / Now that I’m falling to the sunlights and a song / I want to know do I stay or do I go / And do I have to do just one /And can I choose again if I should lose the reason?

Bridge 2: Yes, and the morning / Has me looking in your eyes / And seeing mine warning me / To read the signs more carefully.

V/C 5: Now that I smile / Now that I’m laughing even deeper inside / Now that I see / Now that I finally found the one thing I denied / It’s now I know do I stay or do I go / And it is finally I decide / That I’ll be leaving in the fairest of the seasons.