Birds of Tokyo – Armour for Liars

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This post is a crosspost from Jayeless, and can be read in its original location here.

“Armour for Liars”, off Birds of Tokyo’s second album Universes, is (in short) one of their most amazing songs ever. It does face some tough competition for this title I’d have to say, from “Like Rain” from Day One, from “Wild-Eyed Boy” and “An Ode to Death” from Universes, from… well, from basically half or more of their latest album Birds of Tokyo. It’d be tough for me to claim that “Armour for Liars” is my favourite song of theirs. And honestly, given how “In the Veins of Death Valley” and I bonded over that torturous document analysis for history, describing why Mussolini thought the twentieth century would be the century of fascism, I’m not sure I’m ready to make that claim.

However, “Armour for Liars” occupies a special place in my heart. It belongs where it does there because of what it’s about, what it represents — it’s an entire song about how the world is fucked and no one cares. For someone like me, who thinks that the world is fucked and who’s driven crazy by the apparent indifference of so many other people, the song really intersects with a huge part of my worldview.

Before I explain any more — the song!

…and its lyrics, which I can proudly say that I typed out from memory:

Driving, we keep on driving
Going nowhere
Silent, we keep it silent
No need to share… at all

Lately, things have been changing
But nobody cares
Save it for someone who’ll use it
Not those with their fares

And when did you notice something wrong here?
When nobody listens, and none of us care?
So what are we doing? When will we make a change?
Or we’ll lose what we want done

Hey, kid, run on home again
No world news to sell again
Hey, kid, run on home again
No world news to sell again

Hate yourself? Sorry but you’re responsible!
I would hate myself, knowing that I’m responsible
Flowing blood for wealth and oil
The arms race and their toys
Power suits and power ties
Corporate armour built for liars

And when did you notice something wrong here?
When nobody listens and none of us care?
What’re you doing? When will we make a change?
Or we’ll lose what we want done

Hey, kid, run on home again
No world news to sell again
Hey, kid, run on home again
No world news to sell again
Hey, kid, run on home again
No world news to sell again
Hey, kid, run on home again
No world news to sell again

This is a song about a “kid” — or someone who can be patronisingly referred to as a “kid” — realising how miserable our world is, caring about it when no one else does, and facing pressure to back down. I love the first two lines of the chorus — “So when did you notice something wrong here, when nobody listens and none of us care?” But how could you possibly have noticed, when no one else acknowledges it?

There is the whole aspect to the song of the world conspiring to stop this “kid” realising that anything is wrong. Hence, “hey, kid, run on home again — no world news to sell again.” In Australia — which is my homeland as well as Birds of Tokyo’s — and in my experience, it is not easy to learn about world news from mainstream media. Seriously, depending on what you read and watch you’re not going to learn much about Australia either. When Vegemite was certified halal a while back, the Herald Sun‘s headline was “Vegemite caves to political correctness” — I mean seriously, as if certifying a product as halal that already was halal anyway could possibly be depicted as a bad thing. But oh, how the Herald Sun tries. Seems that Muslims, and Islam, have to be demonised in our press to serve the interests of the powerful few.

And of course, this extends to world news. Reading The Age, for instance, which is not tabloid rubbish the way the Herald Sun is, you’re still not going to learn anything much about the world. It’ll report on a handful of the biggest issues each day, especially diplomatic visits that never do anything useful or natural disasters that can be depicted as no one’s fault, intersperse it with a lot of absolute rubbish like fashion pageants or how AFL is theoretically taking off in Germany or whatever, but there is no way you can come to a proper understanding of the world based on that. And if you don’t even read the newspapers, God help you, really.

The other thing I love about this song is that its protagonist is not defeated. In the face of all of this, this “but how can you care when no one else does?” and this “bye kid, we don’t have any world news for you”, he doesn’t sit down and go, “All right, all right, I give up; let me be subsumed into this apathetic, lost society.” I love the fury and indignation of the second verse — “Hate yourself? Sorry but you’re responsible! I would hate myself, knowing that I’m responsible!” — the fact that there can be no forgiveness for them, the fact that they deserve to hate themselves.

Because of course they should hate themselves! The CEOs of these companies, and the heads of these governments, should be crying themselves to sleep every night, screaming in guilt for what they have done and what they do every day. Are they? No, I’m pretty sure they’re not. But it’s this same vibe that also makes me love “In the Veins of Death Valley”. That song is about gloating over a powerful, evil figure as he dies, and I want to write about it separately, but it’s a little bit like the kid of “Armour for Liars” growing up and coming of age in an era of revolution, progressing from hating these figures from a distance to being able to rub it in their faces as they die. Or I suppose you could scratch the revolution part, and just have him punishing them on his own. The point is, there is an anger there in both songs and a sense of disgust at the present state of the world that I can relate to.

I know that might come off as a little bloodthirsty, but really, the line about “spilling blood for wealth and oil” is as true as true can be. In international studies a couple of weeks ago, the lecturer-tutor asked everyone what their least favourite “multinational enterprise” was, and after some consideration I nominated Shell, for the way they flooded the Niger Delta with oil, poisoning the rivers, killing all the fish, wrecking all the crops, destroying people’s livelihoods, and then the way they conspired with the government to massacre the resisters.

One of my classmates regarded me with abject horror as I relayed this entire explanation (and you think this sounds promising, but it’s not). Finally, he stuttered, “So wait… are you saying that… you want big oil companies… to follow safety standards?” I gave him a curt yes, and he went on, “But no… no, that’s not right… I mean… wouldn’t that make petrol more expensive? And I mean… I’m not Nigerian… and I don’t know about you… but I would hate oil companies much more for raising petrol prices than I do for killing a few Nigerians.”

Worse, a chorus of other people chimed in to agree with him. Another classmate said, “It comes down to that thing, doesn’t it, where no one cares about anything for so long as it doesn’t affect them. And is this a bad thing? I don’t know, but I don’t think it has to be. I mean, I like my cheap petrol. Everyone likes cheap petrol. Is it such a bad thing to forget why it’s so cheap?”

…seriously.

And this is why “Armour for Liars”, a song about caring about the most horrific things in the world in the face of resistance, in the face of almost everyone around you pressuring you not to care, resonates with me so strongly. I don’t want to turn this entry into a rant about shit my classmates say, but honestly, if I complain about the way the world is run, about the wrongs committed in pursuit of profits and power, I get classmates speaking to me — and about me, when they don’t realise I’ve left the classroom right after them! — like I’m insane. And I think there comes a point at which you have to recognise that it’s a problem with them, not a problem with you, that you’re surrounded by people who refuse to care about the world when you do. Because really, how could you not care? With people dying and suffering every day, how dare people take it as a sign of madness that others do?