"Calf", working on lyrics
 

Hey guys!
Here's a new folksy, Sufjan Stevens-esque song I've been working on for a concept album called The Farmers Son. This song, "Calf", is a fairly plodding, melancholy song with just piano and vocals. Here's what i have so far:

Calf

There's a calf out by the barnyard.
The one with swollen limbs who rarely feeds.
Father says he won't last through the winter.
Better do it now, stop his suffering.

(Instrumental Break)

Took him out after sundown.
One last graze out through the verdant fields.
Then took him round to the tool shed,
remembering the words my father had said.

(Instrumental Break)

"One clean blow, to take him home. }
Should barely even feel a thing. }
One clean blow, and turn to loam, }
all you have to do is swing" } x2

All in my hands,
it's all in my hands.
All in my hands,
I must look away.

All in my hands,
it's all in my hands.
He's all in my hands,
It won't help to pray.


Any feedback/constructive criticism would be much appreciated. Thanks guys!

Demasco, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one writing about cows and calves! :)

I like that your lyrics, so far, are simple and tell a story without telling whether the action is right or wrong--but you show the son's hesitation and sympathy for the calf, since the son took the calf out for one final graze at sunset.

It sounds as if the farmer's son is going to go through with killing the calf since he says, "I must look away." The song so far has a nice ominous feeling to it that I like...it makes this moment of death and the wondering about it, about the rightness of it, stretch out.

I especially like the line, "It won't help to pray," because it suggests these life-death decisions people make about the lives of animals under their power are not actually made by any god...it is the people who make and rationalize them.

I assume your Farmers Son album is about a farmer's son in the 1960s or so, because these days people would call a vet for a sick calf on a family farm (and there are very few family farms), and killing calves through blunt trauma is illegal, best I know. However, it is still legal in the U.S. and recommended by the U.S. pork industry for producers to kill sickly or small piglets by blunt trauma.

To have the life of another sentient being in one's hands, all in one's hands, is an awful thing, an awful power, I feel. I'm glad you are writing about it.

I think that would make a great song, the lyrics are simple but touching: "One last graze out through the verdant fields" - I loved that line. Tell me when you record this song because I would love to hear it.

Thanks so much for your feedback guys! Will probably be doing a rough demo of it sometime this week.