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about
Lifted Fingers is the first single to be taken from Other Half’s third album, Dark Ageism, and finds the band at their most melodic; a dark, spindly indie-rock song featuring Nada Surf frontman Matthew Caws.
“Lifted Fingers is about the commodification of everything and how vital it is to preserve those little darkened corners that aren’t yet dripping in corporate slime, i.e. playing punk music to 30-odd people in the back room of some pub. Someone who came to see us do just that, miraculously happened to be Matthew Caws of Nada Surf, late in 2022. Nada Surf are one of our collective all-timers, and really formative to the music we play, so it means the absolute world that he also contributed some guest vocals here on Lifted Fingers, being the positive retort to all the doom-mongering I do in the first half of the song. I think at it’s heart, it’s a hopeful song, about finding connection amongst all the sludge. In Matthew’s own words, ‘people make stuff, you make your own stuff, and then sometimes you make stuff together. Here’s to making stuff.’
lyrics
‘I worked so hard for the money I earn’
I didn’t lift a finger for a penny of mine
So who’s the loser? I know who I’d choose
Not the snivelling suit, begging for the bag
Big Twenty’s riddled with that kind of vermin
Slapping our backs like they know us when they’re finally coming up
That dopey gurn just spurs me on to
Burn down every single thing that ever meant something to me
‘Cause they’ve got it and they’ll keep it too
The sterile stink of new money coke fiends
Clicking their fingers as if we’re on the books
Brand activations at demonstrations
Bank sponsored seances, communing with the debt
‘Cause they’ve got it and they’ll keep it too
Not a lot is sacred, joy mechanically copied and sucked out of spaces by corporate monoliths, and simplified and compressed into something sellable, neat, compact and relatable to a feeling we once felt, but now I’m not so sure, and when that all fades, it’s dumped into the cosmos, ready for saucer men to find and trade in the death knell of an earth, fumbled and wasted by men with dollars in their eyes and all the rest of it
but something existed, and it was cultivated in cracks and darkened corners, which maybe there used to be more of, but either way, will always be there. It’s a stop-start conversation with a stranger in a stairwell, asking how their set went, after they’ve played to 30 people in the only pub not turned into a bar within a 100 mile radius. A shared moment no one can really put their fingers on, but it seems more worth it than anything
And those oily snouts, they’re twitching for more
‘Cause they’ve got it and they’ll keep it too
credits
released March 4, 2024
Written and performed by Other Half
Guest vocals by Matthew Caws
Recorded and engineered by Owen Turner
Mixed and mastered by Tom Hill
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