Demons, volume 2 – Sad Peter Pan

The best of Vic’s lyrics takes the listener on a journey filled with unfamiliar signposts, during the ride one is never quite sure where one is. There are puns, fictional characters, real characters, humorous asides, cries of anger, bouts of self loathing, joy, despair and, sometimes, resolution. Vic keeps the listener slightly off balance at all times, but more often than not, there is a moment in the song where it all falls together in a line or two that strikes deep into the heart of the matter, that crystalline moment that makes one pause and say, “now I know where I am, because I’ve been here before”.  Sad Peter Pan is such a song. For the first couple of verses you might not be sure of what is being discussed, although you can’t help but smile at a line like, “I’m a reluctant rebel/I just want to be Aaron Neville/with a crown upon my head/and my denim shirt all soaked with sweat”. But when the last verse is delivered: “ I’m just pushing the paint around/on advice from your lying mouth/You touched me and then you ran/and left some Sad Peter Pan/all alone and awkward/but a transformation, I swear it will occur.” That hopeless, empty, lost feeling of The Jilted, the only recourse, the only defence, is that last desperate plea, “I’ll change…”. You look around and you know where you are.

We asked our good friend Henry Kucharzyk to add his sensibility to this track and Henry came up with a clarinet arrangement which dances delicately throughout:

Henry did an arrangement for another song as well, below is the arrangement by itself. Ten points if you can figure out what song it is (no cheating by looking at the song title):