Love Is the End

Album: Perfect Symmetry (2008)
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Songfacts®:

  • Vocalist Tom Chaplin (from Perfect Symmetry's bonus DVD): "Love Is The End I think is a great way to finish the album. What is says more than anything is love will out, love is the most important thing. And I think it is a great way to end the record, because there are so many questions being asked about where we are going as a species, and who we are as human beings and the notion, that hippie-ish notion that love can win is something that personally, I hold in high regard. I feel it is very important. For us as a band, that song came out of the tricky times we've had as a band. You know I think for us, as a band, the love we have for each other and the love for our music was the thing that got us through in the end. And so I do think it is a powerful thing to have at the end of the album. In a philosophical sense I think it is a very potent song. And it ends with a gong."
  • This track features the eerie sound of a musical saw, which is mixed in with the strings. Singer Tom Chaplin told The Daily Mail October 17, 2008: "There are always dozens of reasons why you shouldn't try an idea, but too many bands are paralyzed by fear."

    The musical saw is a regular hand saw used as a musical instrument, which produces an ethereal sound similar to a theremin. They have been used for over a century, Marlene Dietrich, for instance performed with a musical saw when entertaining the troops during World War II. Among contemporary artists who play it are Tom Waits, Eels and Sarah McLachlan. Additionally Mercury Rev used it extensively on their Deserter's Songs and All is Dream albums. In Britain its popularity increased thanks to the success of a young sawist named Austin Blackburn on ITV's talent reality show Britain's Got Talent. Its best known use in the cinema was in the French black comedy Delicatessen, where Louison (Dominique Pinon) plays the saw accompanied by Julie (Marie-Laure Dougnac) on the cello.

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