“Otherside of Paradise” by The Revivalists

In “Otherside of Paradise,” The Revivalists, an eight-man band from New Orleans, offers an uplifting call to meet again – on the other side of death. The song begins with an invigorating refrain from a group of backup gospel singers, harmonizing “Oh, oh.” It then launches into the chorus:

If my senses fail

Meet me on the other side of paradise

Free from complications

Of our sense of time

The Revivalists at Stubb’s Austin
Credit: John Feinberg

While the singer suggests that he’s approaching the end of his life, he hasn’t lost hope. Indeed, he suggests that once our sense of time no longer limits us, our experience may even improve. This sentiment recalls the words of philosopher Carl Sagan, in a 1980 interview with Rolling Stone: “Common sense works fine for the universe we’re used to, for time scales of decades, for a space between a tenth of a millimeter and a few thousand kilometers, and for speeds much less than the speed of light. Once we leave those domains of human experience, there’s no reason to expect the laws of nature to continue to obey our expectations, since our expectations are dependent on a limited set of experiences.”

In the first verse, “Otherside of Paradise” acknowledges the difficulty that many humans face in a challenging world:

I’ve been hot winged and hoodwinked and dead on my feet

The sound and the fury remain over me

And all of the footprints that fall in a line

Were our common ancestors wandering hills in the night

Many people feel deceived, or “hoodwinked,” by the way society has taught them to view life. Some feel they’re just plodding along, and struggle to find a sense of meaning. The song references Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” whose title character said, “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more. It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury / Signifying nothing.”

The image of ancestors wandering hills in the dark, leaving a line of footprints, also elicits a sense of being lost – a sentiment that continues in the second and final verse.

“Otherside of Paradise” is the first track on The Revivalists’ fourth and most recent album, “Take Good Care.” As lead singer David Shaw states on the band’s web page, “Making the new music has been a bit of a cathartic process for me – just to get some of these feelings out, lose myself in the art, and become someone else. Songwriting is the great escape.”

The song evokes this sense of escape by recognizing the possibility of release through death. Still, the haunting nature of the chorus’ final lines suggest that while death is nothing to fear, seeking it out is never an answer:

Fill my windless sail

With broken echoes of a never ending life

Whispered conversations

Twisted faces in the clouds

You can watch The Revivalists perform “Otherside of Paradise” in the video below.