Originally this was a thread about a song I like very much, but then it turned into a thread about the Baltimore Orioles, a team for whom I can name more or less every regular player from about 1960 to 1985. With apologies to past management, I think that under Nathan's leadership this board is going to be my favorite on the forum.
I've discussed this song with Heat before. When I first listened to this album it stood out not because of the lyrics but because it doesn't sound like any of the other songs. I wasn't really sure if I liked it or not. After many more listens I noticed what the words were saying and now it's one of my favorite songs from the record, which is saying a lot.
I can't directly relate to this song because I've never held a materialist view of human existence and I've always held the same religious beliefs, but I'm always appreciative of genuine depictions of the inner reality of religious experience.
My favorite story of F. Scott Fitzgerald, which I'm sure I've talked about before because I talk about it constantly, is like this but written from the perspective of someone raised with religion.
Something that stands out, as Nathan put, is its compassion toward what one would expect to be the enemy. The aforementioned line about being willing to stand on a corner with a picket sign grants genuine humanity to the nameless evangelicals. Back in the mid-2000s, every remotely alternative band had at least one song about how evil George Bush and the people who voted for him were; none of them would say something like that.
The other bit that's always stood out to me is at the very end, where there's a reference (albeit not by name) to UFOs, part of our American folk religion. I can't say with confidence that this is what's happening here, but it makes sense that when thinking about religious experience, someone who was raised without any organized religion would fall back on UFO vocabulary to describe it.
