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greatwyrmgold · 1 month

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A Thematic Analysis of Starship Velociraptor

Those familiar with Galactikraken's debut album might think thematic analysis of Starship Velociraptor is pointless. Its songs are quite obviously about whatever the band members thought was rad, and I won't disagree with that conclusion.

But that conclusion is incomplete. I've listened to most of the album over and over, and there are patterns in what Galactikraken considers rad. There are three recurring points that I'd like to draw attention to: Anti-authoritarianism, wealth, and piracy.

A couple quick points. First, I will use "Galactikraken" to refer to the metaphorical narrator of these songs and the collective voice of Johnathan Young and his band members. Second, I'm mostly discussing the songs, and will bring up the animated music videos when they compliment or contrast the songs' narrative in some interesting way.

Now, let's start where the album does.

Glory or Gold

What's rad? Piracy Pirates mentioned? Obviously

Appropriately, the first song in the album clearly establishes its primary themes and focuses on the recurring motif of piracy. Its chorus clarifies the thesis:

So hoist up the Jolly Roger, we're taking a ride. Take back the life that they denied. For glory or gold, we sail across the galaxy, Our sovereign starship flying free. Forever, our treasure taken from plutocracy. We've all got mouths to fuckin' feed. So it's a pirate's life for me!

Relevant conjecture: Any sentence containing a word ending with either "-archy" or "-cracy" will make a political statement.

In this case, Galactikraken seems critical of plutocracy. They don't adopt a pirate's life because they want to be rich and famous; they do it because their lives were denied by the wealthy elites, and they still have mouths to feed.

Verse 1 hones this criticism beyond the vague concept of plutocracy to what I can only call capitalism.

All of my crew and I are wanted for the highest form of treason: For questioning authority demanding we sweat and bleed and slave our lives away, then call it freedom.

I don't know what Galactikraken's real-world political beliefs are. But I know what they wrote, and this? Profiting off the sweat and blood of an underclass, and claiming that that underclass is free? That's capitalism, baby.

"Glory or Gold" isn't a detailed or nuanced critique of capitalism; it's a sail-by broadside against its worst excesses. But it's there, and it's worth examining. Practically every line of this song is condemning the "plutocracy," holding it responsible for everything that drove them to piracy.

I also feel it's worth pointing out that this song mixes "authority," "plutocracy," and "the crown". Part of this is presumably because those lines sound good with those specific words, but it also means that we can't assume every king in one of these songs is a literal king. That's just how symbolism works—especially in music, where the words you use are limited by rhyme, meter, and whether the word's sounds sound good with the other songs in that line.

Best Band in the Universe

What's rad? Music, hubris, profanity Pirates mentioned? Only if you assume all songs in the album are about the same group of pirates, in which case pirates are mentioned in all songs

I don't have much to say about this song, because I personally don't like it, because of reasons that are completely irrelevant to this post.

What is relevant to this post is that one of the reasons Galactikraken declares itself "super cool" is that they "break the rules". That anti-authoritarian streak is present.

Settle it With a Swordfight

What's rad? Swordfights, especially ideological ones Pirates mentioned? Yes

This song is the second-most-obvious example of Galactikraken just writing songs about cool stuff. Which isn't a criticism, it's a statement of fact. I like "Settle it With a Swordfight," but beyond being cool, it's kinda dissonant with the rest of the album.

Well, if you roll with us and you’re not seeing eye to eye, A problem on the crew you know that words just won’t revise. When there’s nothing left to say, you’ve got to let your blade reply. Someone’s gonna die. (Settle it with a swordfight!) If we can’t tell just who’s right, (Settle it with a swordfight!)

Anyone who watches shonen anime knows the kind of fight this song is about. Two characters disagree, and they come to blows over it. The resulting fight challenges both characters' conviction and ideals as much as it challenges their strength and skill. It's undeniably cool!

It's also pretty much the only time a song in Starship Velociraptor praises violence against pirates. And it's absolutely praised, "Cold steel can justify your sins" and all that. Other songs in the album praise violence of various kinds, but violence against authorities, not fellow pirates.

Hyperspeed

What's rad? Speed, starships Pirates mentioned? No

This song is pretty straightforward. The first line tells you what to expect:

The only thing that gets me high is going faster than the light.

There are some love-song undertones in there, but this is mostly a song about going fast and why going fast is cool.

If you sail away with me, we'd escape reality. So accelerate in one, two, three!

Speed and flight are common symbols for freedom, a theme which is pretty prominent in this album. "Hyperspeed" fits this reading like a glove, and its music video even more so. (In my opinion, "Hyperspeed"'s music video fits it better than any of the other animated music videos.)

Army of Tigers

What's rad? Tigers, armies Pirates mentioned? No

"Army of Tigers" poses a bit of a problem for this analysis.

On one hand, the tiger general attacking the Sun could be symbolic. The Sun might represent an unjust authority, a world order most people see as natural and benevolent, even as it "sends us cataclysmic cancers" and stuff.

On the other hand...

Quench the final fire, extinguish heaven's light! I command an army of tigers. Defeat the Sun tonight!

That's a hell of a chorus, and that might be reason enough for Galactikraken to assault that castle in the void.

Storm the Castle

What's rad? Regicide Pirates mentioned? Not really

We will not be prisoners in a kingdom taken hostage by her crown.

Is a kingdom really mighty when for a sick and starving child it doesn’t care?

Storm the castle, kill the king!

Even if the word "monarchy" isn't technically used here, my prior conjecture seems pretty relevant. Whatever the king represents, Galactikraken hates it. And we've talked about how fluid symbolism can be.

But why does Galactikraken want to kill the king? I'd quote relevant lines, but that's like half the song. The king deserves death because of how the kingdom suffers under his rule. He says that he's protecting the kingdom, when he's the greatest threat to the people.

The hypocrisy is part of the problem, but for the most part "Storm the Castle" focuses on the "countrymen...drowning in despair". The king isn't bad because of some abstract notion of freedom, or because he's an ugly pig monster, or even because he's a liar. He's bad because his wealth starves the common people.

(Which is part of why I think "Storm the Castle" has the worst animated music video. It focuses on the cruelty of the wolves and the malice of the secret pig demon thing, making the evil more individualized and less systemic. Yeah, the fat pig monster in throne armor makes a cooler fight scene than a cowering aristocrat surrounded by elite guards, but trying to make that part cool undermines the song the video is supposed to support!)

Anyways. The song is literally a call to action, albeit against a fictional/allegorical king. The peasantry (proletariat) need to put aside their petty concerns and unite against the crown (against authority, against plutocracy). This isn't just a matter of political philosophy; we've all got mouths to fucking feed.

The obvious thematic resonance between "Storm the Castle" and "Glory or Gold" is the whole reason this post exists.

Starship Velociraptor

What's rad? Luxury starships Pirates mentioned? Surprisingly not

This song is the most obvious example of Galactikraken just writing songs about cool stuff. Which isn't a criticism, but it's absolutely impossible to ignore after writing about symbolic regicide.

To be balanced: "Starship Velociraptor" is, in part, expressing the same kind of fantasy as "Hyperspeed". The fantasy of zooming around the galaxy in a super-fast starship is a key part of the song.

But the titular starship has comfort, speed, and style; moreover, comfort gets more focus than speed and style more than comfort. The starship isn't "the finest ship in the galaxy" because it's practical, but because it's opulent.

Practically every description we get of the starship focuses on pointless opulence. "Hardwood floors instead of tile," "leather seats," "a fridge that's full of meat," "that holographic suite". Sure, that stuff was written because it rhymes, but most of it rhymes with itself. Galactikraken picked a bunch of cool-sounding stuff that rhymes to describe their cool starship, and most of that stuff is opulence.

I don't want to shame anyone for wanting opulent stuff, but the focus on opulence is remarkable, considering most of the album's more negative perspective on wealth.

His keep ship could shelter hundreds, His gold meat could feed far more. I have just one last question: What are you waiting for?!

It would be one thing if the song was about a bunch of pirates stealing some plutocrat's yacht from under his nose and using it as their flagship, but it's not. It's basically a car ad?

You've got to get it You can buy on credit Our payment plan, you won't regret it, yeah

The song feels deeply consumerist, like an ad manufacturing desire for pointless luxuries. And this consumerism is played straight. I don't like "Best Band in the Universe," but I recognize that Galactikraken was trying to make its hubris the butt of the joke. I don't get that sense from "Starship Velociraptor". It's just an earnest luxury car ad.

The music video is a bit different—perhaps the biggest gap between music and video on the album. Part of that is aesthetic; the animated starship looks practical, tile floors instead of hardwood. But it also plays up the escapism potential of a starship.

Part of this is because the video's central character is an ordinary Earthling who literally escapes her boring office job to board the starship, but part of it is because we see the starship doing stuff. We spend some time focusing on the interior, matching the lyrics; most of the rest of the video is focused on 90's sci-fi anime action. The starship zooms through space, it gets into battles, the central character hangs out with space people on and off the ship. The animation focuses less on the starship as an object than as a place where cool things happen.

Man the Cannons

What's rad? Wooden ships and iron men Pirates mentioned? Kinda

I mean, pirates and pirate iconography aren't mentioned, but who else on the high seas has cannons and swords and boarding actions? Marines, I guess, but that doesn't fit the treasure focus or the anti-authority vibes of the rest of the album.

Anyways. "Man the Cannons" doesn't introduce much new thematic stuff. Ambiguous piracy as a path to freedom, rad treasure, rad swordfights, teamwork makes the dreamwork. ("And if we band together, so it shall be.") And anti-authoritarianism, of course!

Defying law and nation, defying god and king. Through trial and tribulation, we smile and sing.

It works, I don't dislike the song, but after going through most of the album, I have nothing new to say about this song.

Jetpack Race

What's rad? Jetpacks, flight, escapism Pirates mentioned?

You know how I've talked about speed and flight being symbols of freedom? This song all but turns that into text.

A cog in some machine, you're chasing after dopamine, you wish that you could find a way to fly

Despite the upbeat melody and tempo, "Jetpack Race" has the second-bleakest lyrics of any song in Starship Velociraptor. The verses and half of the chorus are talking about the dreary mundane life that the jetpack races are supposed to let you escape from!

You didn't ask for this, but ignorance is bliss. You wish that you were just content to be a drone. You know we're all the same, the world's a joke and life's a game, And even all together, we're alone.

It's easy to miss behind the three-digit BPM and C♯ major key, but that's cynical. Especially that last line, which asserts that the solidarity praised in the rest of the song is an illusion.

For me, the most meaningful line is "Running a race that can't be won, you'll feel like you came in last." The ordinary life that Authority wants you to live is a scam that can't be run, that does its best to make you feel responsible for your failures, no matter how untrue that is. That's why we hoist up the Jolly Roger...or put on a jetpack, I guess.

10,000 Light Years

What's rad? I dunno, pining? Pirates mentioned? Via synonyms like "outlaw" and "privateer". (Bah, privateers are pirate sell-outs.)

If "Hyperspeed" is a spaceship song with love song undertones, "10,000 Light Years" is a love song with spaceship undertones. Being aromantic, I do not understand why all y'all allos would like being lonely and wishing you weren't light-millennia from the stranger you got a crush on.

But I do understand themes, and some of the familiar ones pop up through the romantic(?) longing. Like the bit where Galactikraken mentions "sign[ing] my life away off-world". Ultimately, the conflict in this song is caused by the same thing as in most Starship Velociraptor songs.

Our own enemy within, drowning us in despair. The crown, authority, plutocracy. The forces demanding that we sweat and bleed, then call it freedom.

It's also worth noting that the tempo and key are more mournful than most of the album, which makes the last song feel less aberrant.

Final Frontier

What's rad? Not. Us. Pirates mentioned? No

For our home we destroyed, so we sail onto the void For an undiscovered system far from here. If the wind takes our sails, if we live to tell the tale, For the end of Mother Earth is drawing near.

To wherever the wind may take us, Lady Luck, just don't forsake us. If we're ready or not, this is our judgement day.

But who can trust us once they learn why we're adrift, If we can't even trust ourselves? We are but insects, undeserving of their gifts. We all deserve to burn in hell.

Yeah, that beats "Jetpack Race".

"Final Frontier" is a powerful song, and it's stronger for the obvious contrast with the rest of the album. The worst emotions the other songs tried to evoke were romantic nostalgia and righteous fury. "Final Frontier" is nothing but despair and shame.

Does it fit with the themes of Starship Velociraptor?

Well, it has nautical metaphors and space as escapism (of a sort), so there's some recurring motifs.

Our greed and vanity have brought this final shame...

Ah, yes. Plutocracy.

The "burning bed our fathers made" is global warming, pollution, mining runoff, the Holocene extinction, a thousand other little ways that "the crown" fucks over the planet to extract every nugget of gold, literal and metaphorical.

This is what happens if we obey authority, if we don't defy law or nation, if we just chase after dopamine until it's too late. This is the future if we don't kill the king.

Exiled humanity and all of us to blame

We all deserve to burn in hell

I don't know how I feel about this.

Is "Final Frontier" condemning every man and woman on this planet, holding them all responsible for what we've done, because it's ignorant of humanity's power dynamics? Because it doesn't notice or care about parts of the "burning bed" that only burn marginalized humans and not forests?

Or is it holding us responsible for the king's greed and vanity because we didn't stop him? Because we didn't rise, stand, and fight? Because we didn't work hard and persevere? Because we rejected the pirate's life?

Is that right? Is it wrong? I don't know. But that's what the song says.

Weaving the Threads

Let's start with the symbol I've referenced the most. The crown, the sun(?), authority, law and nation, god and king, plutocracy. The bourgeoisie, the men who control the world's wealth and power, using that control to profit off the blood, sweat, and tears of the proletariat.

And then there are pirates. They're only directly mentioned in a fraction of songs, way fewer than I assumed before I actually counted. What do the pirates represent? They're the highest form of treason: Questioning authority. The pirates first seek their own freedom against the tyranny of authority, and then rise in rebellion share that freedom with others. It's all very One Piece.

When you realize what the pirates represent—freedom and rebellion—you start to hear it in all but one of the album's songs. They are speed, they are escapism, they are space itself. They get you off the brakes, they storm the castle, they defeat the sun. You even hear it through the consumerist haze of "Starship Velocity," in the freedom of owning a starship.

This political purity is marred a bit by idolizing the space pirate lifestyle alongside what it represents, idolizing the violence of swordfights and the luxury of space travel and the individualism of whatever's going on in "Jetpack Race".

But the pirate's life is consistently framed as cool because it breaks the rules, because it resists authority. Everything the album frames as rad is connected to anti-authority pirates, directly or through association. And it's everywhere in Starship Velociraptor...

...except "Final Frontier".

The entire album builds up the symbol of the pirate, of freedom and revolution. And then it shows us the world where the pirates lost, or where they never existed. A world where the king ruled until the world was no more.

...

Maybe I'm just projecting my own political beliefs onto an abstract text. Maybe a Nazi or Libertarian could interpret these songs in a way that fits their worldviews. But this is what Starship Velociraptor means to me.

It's a lonely night in hell above this broken privateer, Running a race that can't be won, you'll feel like you came in last. Is a kingdom really mighty when for a sick and starving child it doesn't care? They ask us why we must reply with violence. So let me take you for a ride. 'Cause you clearly have good taste Nothing that we can't achieve, if we only just believe. Your eyes can tell you know you need Takе your freedom, claim your right, For the end of Mother Earth is drawing near. Man the cannons, draw your sword. You're gonna kill that fuckin' guy! Defeat the sun tonight!

#galactikraken #jonathan young #starship velociraptor #themes #music

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