Wye Oak (née Monarch) is a duo of Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack, formed in mid… Read Full Bio ↴Wye Oak (née Monarch) is a duo of Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack, formed in mid-2006.

Wasner and Stack have been playing music together and apart in Baltimore, MD, and chose their name from the honorary state tree of Maryland. If Children is the culmination of many months of recording, polishing and perfecting to achieve what Any Given Tuesday best described as, “. .. . mingling in a room full of shoegaze, alt-country, folk, and noise, shaking hands, kissing cheeks, and making friends with everyone.” If Children is an exuberant debut – noisy and restrained in turn, Wye Oak describe their philosophy: "We'd like to think that if a song is good enough, it'll stand on its own regardless of how much noise you pile on top. On the other hand, we do like noise." Listen, and we think you will have to agree!

The droll tone and fleeting sweetness of a Yo La Tengo are cut into the more deeply textural concerns of shoegaze in the Baltimore group's work. It's an interesting alignment, given the contrast in senses of humor. But Wye Oak successfully shed tonnage from the latter without losing potency.

Before
Wye Oak Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

This morning
I woke up on the floor
Thinking I have never dreamed before
And in the afternoon
The nagging thought
That I have never lived or else forgot

I tell you stories

But truth be told
I can't remember
What came before
That's how I know
That's how I know
And I am brand new
And not so whole
That's how I know

On paper
I'm waving with a grin
Proof of places I have never been
So I pull you forward towards this spot
That I have never seen or else forgot

I show you pictures
Of this very corner
But I can't remember
Who pushed the shutter
I have no answer
You say "No matter"
My only memory
Is coming home
That's how I know

This morning

I woke up on the floor
Thinking I have never dreamed before

Overall Meaning

The opening lines of Wye Oak's song Before capture the sense of disorientation that can come with the realization that the past is not what it seems. The singer wakes up on the floor, an image that suggests a kind of surrender to the groundlessness of memory and identity. The lines "Thinking I have never dreamed before" suggest the disorienting feeling of waking up from a dream that seems to contradict one's sense of who they are and where they've been. As the song progresses, the singer struggles to make sense of their own memories, admitting "I can't remember / What came before."

Despite this struggle, the singer attempts to connect with another person ("I pull you forward towards this spot / That I have never seen or else forgot") and tries to anchor themselves through images and documents. Yet these attempts at stability only highlight the singer's lack of clarity: they can't remember who took the pictures they show to someone else, and the only clear memory they have is coming home. This sense of being unmoored and adrift is captured in the repetition of the phrase "That's how I know" throughout the song - a kind of mantra that the singer uses to acknowledge their own uncertainty.

Overall, Wye Oak's Before is a powerful exploration of the ways in which memory shapes our sense of self, and the disorienting feeling of realizing that memory is not as reliable as we might have thought. The song taps into a deeply human anxiety about who we are and where we come from, and does so with a haunting melody and evocative lyrics.

Line by Line Meaning

This morning
At the start of the day

I woke up on the floor
I found myself lying on the ground

Thinking I have never dreamed before
Realizing that I have not experienced dreams previously

And in the afternoon
Some time later in the day

The nagging thought
An incessant concern

That I have never lived or else forgot
Wondering if I have ever truly experienced life or if I simply cannot recall doing so

I tell you stories
I recount events to you

But truth be told
However, the fact remains

I can't remember
I cannot recall

What came before
What occurred prior to the present moment

That's how I know
This is how I realize