So...I absolutely love this song...but I wanted to get some opinions on what people think it means...

Or, I'd love to hear from OTR and see what they have to say...

Brandon

Hi Brandon...welcome, friend.
When I first started listening to OTR, Latter Days was my very favorite SONG, by anyone...for quite sometime. The words were mine. I just listened over and over as I was struggling through a very difficult time and my latter days DID take their toll.
I wanted the world to go on without me.
Listening to this song carried me along the rough spots.
It will always hold a special place for me.
Another GDBD favorite of mine is Go Down Easy.
Have you ever seen K&L perform live?
Trudes xo

i think the song means something different for everybody... but in general, i think it's about accepting pain ("lord knows we've learned the hard way all about healthy apathy") and moving through it.

I was working 32 hours in two days at a second job on the weekend. (16 Hours on Saturday and 16 hours on Sunday ) I happened to tune into a local public radio station playing "Latter days." I instantly fell in love with the song. To me, this song came at a time in my life where I was stretched in ways physically, mentally, and spiritually. The lyrics that spoke to me where the same ones that spoke to my wife. I felt like I was always leaving her alone, so I felt like emotionally, I was telling her that "if the music starts before I get there… dance without me, you dance so gracefully. I really think I'll be ok." Sappy, hugh? Anyway, not so long afterwards we both decided that having more money wasn't the answer either… I quit my second job!

BTW, I have been to only three OTR concerts but have yet to hear "Latter Days" live! Shucks!

Hm, I think I can guess which Brandon this is. I have five words for you: Kool Aid Rice Krispies Treats. That's what the song is about.

Okay, not really.

I think, like Trudes says, it's about wanting the world to go on while you take a hiatus. Like, everything has been so crazy that you've needed to discover that "healthy apathy" in order to just get through the disillusionment and tension. And maybe there's someone in your life that you want to connect with and enjoy life with on a meaningful level, but you just don't have the energy. You can't. So you say, "dance without me," because you want them to be joyful instead of worrying about you; you know you're going to be okay in the end, but you're not there quite yet.

BTW, Trudes, this was my favorite song off Good Dog, Bad Dog as well. It's currently tied with "Etcetera Whatever" and "The Seahorse," but it always touches a deep, exhausted piece of my heart when I listen to it.

"Latter Days" was shared with me by someone very special, and I adored the song the very first time I listened to it (it was the first OtR song I'd ever heard) ...

What a beautiful piece of heartache
This has all turned out to be

To me the song can be about anything, really, any situation that is very good and then turns very bad, maybe ... or maybe not bad, but sad, or both ... to me, the song itself is sad (the studio version, anyway, mainly with just the piano) ... but then, it's sorta hopeful, too:

I really think I'll be OK

I don't really have a favorite part of the song ... certain lyrics stick with me at certain times (at the moment: "There is a me you would not recognize, dear / Call it the shadow of myself") ... and I have not seen Over the Rhine live (yet!) but I think I would be devastated if they did not play this song!

Other OtR faves o' mine: "Anything at All," "Little Blue River/In the Garden," "The World Can Wait" and the instrumental song from Good Dog Bad Dog 2000 CD (I think it's "Willoughby").

For the record, I guessed wrong. But the Brandon I was thinking of really likes "Latter Days," too!

That song makes me want to cry every time I hear it.

It makes me want to cry as well, but in a good way. "I really think I'll be okay." I love the way Karin says the word "okay."

"Like A Radio" makes me want to break down and cry as well. I can just picture standing outside of someone's house looking in, seeing what you can't have and wanting to be a part of that life, that scene. I have been in that place where I'd be willing to be the furniture just to be near that special someone.

Sigh. Makes me want to cry right now.

Latter Days is a musical masterpiece. From a completely objective point of view, it is OtR at their best. The melancholy that lingers in the piano refrain coupled with the powerful lyrical hook of What a beautiful piece of heart ache/this has all turned out to be make it virtually impossible for the listener not to succumb to it. You might be able to turn a blind ear to much of OtR's catalogue, but by gawd, Latter Days is gonna make you sit up and pay attention.

That said, I agree with what CarriedAway said.



This line and Karin's delivery of it are breathtaking, IMHO.

One thing I always liked about Latter Days is the way it fades in. It's almost as if the song has always been there somehow and we're just drifting past, only hearing a tiny part of it.

It's hard to believe there was a time when these songs didn't exist.

That beautiful ascending piano figure at the end, and

la da da dah dah dah

la la la lah la lah

It just kills me every time. There's so much more to life than words.

I think I have to go listen to GDBD right now...

Latter Days is definitely part of my Over the Rhine top 10, and that is a competitive group to boot. It may manage to displace Martyrs & Thieves for the title of Song Most Likely to Pop Out of my Mouth one of these days.

I always used to connect it with my years of depression, particularly those times when I gave up on ever developing a life of my own or making anyone non-depressed understand. It had its beautiful moments.

heh. well-said.

i can't believe i've only been listening to Over the Rhine for a year. i feel like i've know them forever.

i like that song... one of my favorite j. knapp songs.

Did you get The Collection? My comment for Martyrs was used in the liner notes beneath my friend Joe's (comparatively) hecka-long testimony. The excerpt they chose didn't say a tenth of what I meant it to.

I guess that's my thing with songs: no matter what, I seem incapable of conveying to others what the song means to me. If only it I were capable of duplicating an emotional reaction in others - then I'd think "okay."

me2.

no. i didn't get the collection. i'm not big on greatest hits albums, but that's cool you got in the liner notes!

The song is unbelievably beautifully sad. It makes me cry.

I heard this song in 1996, and what drives me crazy is that I can't remember where, or how. It was only until years later that I rediscovered it and discovered Over the Rhine.

But this has to be one of the most melancholy songs ever....although I'll really think I'll be okay.....

Wow, cool, I'm a huge Jennifer Knapp fan.

I have a bizarre question about Latter Days....i've been listening to it on the indie version of Good Dog Bad Dog a bit recently and I hear some kind of faint buzzing in the background on some of the notes. It reminds me of when I used to play on Mom's piano and the candlesticks would rattle when i hit certain keys.

I know they said to listen for the furniture....but what exactly is that faint rattling in the background of Latter Days?

Probably something with the piano...there's a reason "The Home Recordings" was added to the title.

Sometimes I listen to "Films For Radio" and feel like it's the record they originally wanted to make with GDBD before the record company went under, at least as far as the sound of the record. I always will wonder what it would've sounded like if they had made the record they originally had in their heads.

I just listened again.
This song gets me every time. I just need to close my eyes and take a deep breath when I hear the original version...it's so lovely and sad.
But I can't hear any rattles or furniture....

Ah shoot!

I just read this, and it struck me so funny that I had to make it my new sig.

What a beautiful piece of body
Stairways lead to skin that's bare
Lord knows we've learned the hard way
Not to strike blue tips anywhere...

I shared Latter Days with a friend who was going through some rough times. He tells me he wrote out the lyrics and put them up on his mirror in the bathroom so he could read them every day.

Ah, Keith, the song that never was....
My favorite otr concert moment and my first otr exposure are all sort of mixed up with that song- I love it in all its beauty/sadness but I love it for other reasons, too.

I've been fortunate enough to see Linford play the piano intro to "Latter Days" a few times. (I don't think that it's ever been recorded, although it *should* be...) This bit of music in and of itself breaks my heart--and then to have Karin come in when the song actually begins..... There are no words.

The intro always made me think of riding a bike downhill through autumn leaves (which, come to think of it, is probably due to Annie Dillard's equally heartbreaking essay "Aces and Eights"). I always had this vague sense of gently flying though the air as I heard it. It's just a gorgeous little piece of music.

It's on the bootleg vine for the Canal Street Tavern shows in May 2004, among others. The quality is fairly good, as far as audience recordings go.

Incidentally, Karin says my name onstage, during "Fever." This has nothing to do with "Latter Days," I just wanted to point that out.

Ooh, thanks Libby! (I think this is what I was secretly hoping someone would say!)

So how's it compare to the "home recording"? Is the rattling gone? I might need to get this show. I'd love a cleaner cut of the track (and an intro is always a plus).

i doubt latter days will ever grow old for me. there is so much yet to discover in this little masterpiece.

peace,
zayne

Isn't it just phenominal? I keep meaning to sit down and learn how to play this song. I play by ear, mostly, so when I put it on to learn it, I just get lost listening to it, and never end up actually attempting to play it. Then I found that th sheet music is on the website, but as soon as I start playing it, I want to hear it, and get lost all over again.

Beautiful, beautiful song...