"Without your voice, there is no Joyce," makes a concise lyric.
The album references the past, but it's a modern project, in lockstep with what many of her indie-rock contemporaries are doing today: writing snappy, concise songs with smart lyrics and walling them off with varying amounts of fuzz.
"I Want You (She's So Heavy)" was written by Lennon about his relationship with Ono, and he made a deliberate choice to keep the lyrics simple and concise.
In The Dawn of Indian Music in the West, Peter Lavezzoli writes: "Harrison's lyric and vocal were concise and powerful, a direct call for action in a specific crisis.
"As a lyric writer, Hal was simple, concise and poetic – conveying volumes of meaning in fewest possible words and always in service to the music," ASCAP's current president, the songwriter Paul Williams, said in a statement.
"As a lyric writer, Hal was simple, concise and poetic — conveying volumes of meaning in the fewest possible words and always in service to the music," songwriter Paul Williams, president of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, said in a statement.
The lyric is romantic, bittersweet, extravagant, yet cunningly concise.
The lyrics on the album tend to be cryptic and concise ("An apparition/Of twilight visions/A final mission/Of superstition"), and despite intimations of catastrophe and even hellfire, an air of neon stoicism prevails.
In this exclusive video clip, Snider discusses how Williams deviated wildly from the original blueprint of the record: And here he elaborates on the way in which Williams improvises lyrics and, with his typical offhanded brilliance, provides a concise definition of the aims of art: to lower your inhibitions and open your heart.
