The Rifle

Album: The Pirate's Gospel (2004)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song was inspired by a dream in which all Alela Diane's anxieties came together. She explained to The Sunday Times January 18, 2009: "I woke up at 5am, scrawled down the words and fell back to sleep. When I woke up, all those lyrics were there, and it was about the house I grew up in, straight out of a memory. We had this rifle hanging above the French doors - a great-grandperson's thing that didn't work any more - next to some antlers that my mom got at a thrift store or something."
  • The Pirate's Gospel album was originally self-released by Alela Diane in 2004. Two years later after amassing devotees on the internet, it was re-issued in revised form by Holocene Music. The following year, the employees of the Rough Trade record store chain named it their album of the year.

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