Song of the day: The Constantines - Time Can Be Overcome

Song: Time Can Be Overcome

Lyrics: http://lyricwiki.org/Constantines:Time_Can_Be_Overcome

Live: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIFBppxkDFA

Pitchfork: I'm also struck by the numerous references to time on this record. Many of the songs on Kensington Heights deal with confronting age ("Our Age"), generational conflict ("Brother Run Them Down"), and even overcoming time itself ("Time Can Be Overcome"). Why such a preoccupation with these themes at this stage in your life or career?

BW: I think anyone our age-- we're all around 30-- starts to get nostalgic or reflective about life. Writing a song is my way of coming to understand something, and I try to write from a few different angles. "Time Can Be Overcome" was me trying to understand time as a force-- something that acts upon your perspective of things.

Pitchfork: Such perspective often comes after a sort of maturation process, and I think this record chronicles this. Yet this process hasn't mellowed you, and such songs as "Hard Feelings" and "Credit River" seem genuinely distraught or even angry. Is there still a place for such emotions as one gets older?

BW: Yeah, absolutely. I think that part of me wants to write songs that celebrate people. That really seems like the most exciting type of song to me-- the most valuable. But I do believe that anger or expressing resistance to something is an interesting place to start when you're writing a song. And maturity may just be about accepting your limited perspective on such things. I don't try to articulate a single perspective in songs. I don't think that's really the way it is. And I am definitely having some trouble articulating where anger fits into that-- what its place should be in music. I think there is some truth to Public Image Limited's notion that "Anger is an energy," but I'm not always sure what exactly to do with that.

Toronto shows March 31st and April 1st, 2009 - Phoenix. 2008 Album of the year, as far as I'm concerned.