“Bread For Your Head”
by Atlantic Rising
2007 song
"Bread For Your Head", first of all, is another of Sky Saxon’s quintessential hippie song titles. The lengthy track, from 2007’s contemplative SOS Radio album, continues the blissed-out floating of "Have You Figured It Out Now?" which leads into it. The topic that his mercurial mental spinner has landed upon this time is food. Over a psychedelic backdrop that sounds like Fire Wall’s goofy "Sha La La La It's A Groovy Thing" played about four times slower, Sky rambles incoherently (but lovingly) about cookies, bread, and pumpkin pie. You know, for the head.
Attached to the music like a stoned barnacle on a cosmic sailboat ride, he frequently slips into a wordless but melodic stretch of “la la la la la”. It selflessly enhances the soft, echoey music, but then the repetitiousness of the voice and the quiet guitar reverberating together draws you further in. By the time Sky is singing discursively about doing the dishes and making the bed, you’re hooked and everything he says starts to sound reasonable. He doesn’t stop there though; "Bread For Your Head" finds him free-associating like even he rarely did (he spends most of the last half calling out to Maria, who is busy feeding dogs “at the end of the road”).
"Bread For Your Head" is madness, but rivetingly inspired.
