Space Oddities of Past and Present

Wolf Parade and David Bowie. Yes, there are inevitable comparisons, stemming almost completely out of their musical styles and Spencer Krug's yodeling voice. Admittedly, "sounds like David Bowie" is a lazy and regular mark of indie criticism, so it's a bit expected that these boys from British Columbia by way of Montreal (or at least the two frontmen) would be put beside the thin white duke. But I'm not interested in a musical comparison (I do think the comparison is actually merited, but that's another essay), for now I want to consider their positions on space travel.


Yup, space travel.


Here are links to both songs and their lyrics:
Space Oddity - live from Serious Moonlight Tour
Space Oddity Lyrics

Yulia Music Video
Yulia Lyrics


Obviously Bowie has the most famous song about space travel ever. Most people who have no idea who Bowie is probably still recognize Space Oddity. To be frank, this is not one of Bowie's best, but it does provide the framework for which Wolf Parade's Yulia will be created from. Whether Dan Boecker, the guitarist and songwriter of Yulia, is aware of it or not, the song is a kind of nightmare version of Space Oddity, one seen through the socio-political lens of the space race and the cold war.
Bowie was influenced by the space race as well - the reason Space Oddity became such a hit was because it coincided with the lunar landing. Here we are in the late sixties, and although space has become another place where we can compete with our enemies (let's assume the anglo-american perspective here), Bowie sees it as something else. There's a case to be made that the end of Space Oddity is stark and depressing, but I don't buy it. Bowie has always been about theatricality, so why he would have our hero, Major Tom, singing as if he's reached enlightenment when he's actually cold and afraid is beyond me. Bowie has tragic, ironic songs, but you can tell they are such from the tenor of his voice (see "Heroes" or Five Years, for great examples of this). When Tom says "planet earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do," he seems to be at one with the universe. He has said goodbye to his wife, in a way, by telling her he "loves her very much," and now faces the unknown. There's no fear from the fact that he's never coming home, just a serenity as he floats off into the void.
Boeckner reimagines Tom as he speaks to his wife, wondering what he would say if instead of being British (can we assume he is anything else), he is a Russian cosomonaut, probably drafted into an experiment from which he will not return. The song begins not with the preparations for takeoff, but with the denouement - the narrator is already long gone, up among the stars. But the description is in the past tense, "I was up there floating with (the stars)/ and you know that I am gone." This begins morbidly enough, but Boeckner isn't content to merely discuss the plight of a lost spaceman. The last line leading to the chorus tells us the political context of his tragedy - propaganda spills out over the radio. "The devil that you know," the devil that leads the speaker to his death, is playing a patriotic song, not a funeral dirge for its lost son.
The chorus too is indicative of the kind of desperation wants us to see in our hero, (maybe we should call him Major Boris or Major Dimitri). He is literally crying out his lover's name over and over again. This is not some sort of romantic gesture of love, he is screaming for what he has lost.
It is clear in Space Oddity that Tom is meant to come home. "The circuit's dead, there's something wrong," says the man at ground control. Tom's fate is an accident, and it is tragic, to be sure, but he has no one to blame - indeed it appears that he is past blame or any kind of emotion aside from love by the end of the song. Yulia has a culprit for the cosmonaut's death, a switch is flicked at mission control. He is not meant to come home. It is unclear whether he is supposed to be some sort of experiment, or is just left up in space because it would be too much trouble to bring him home, but he is left, howling his lover's name and cursing those down below who have turned their backs on him. The best he can hope for is that they bring his body back, knowing that they will "edit him from history." His last request to Yulia is that she should not lionize him in the press , i.e. join the government in making him a hero and thus shifting the focus of the event away from the fact that they abandoned him (he says "speak of me", not speak of what they've done to me, etc.). Instead she should point to the sky, as a reminder that he is gone. The pointing is a reminder of what has happened, an act running contrary to the propaganda machine described in the first verse.
The final verses of both songs are maybe the most indicative of their conflicting 
points of view on the lost astronaut's position. Take Bowie's lines:


Planet Earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do


And now Boeckner's:


There's nothing out here nothing out here nothing out


While Bowie looks back to the earth, back to the humanity that Tom appears to be transcending, Boeckner's cosmonaut is in the void, caged in a cold nothingness with only fever dreams of home. Tom achieves some kind of transcendence - there's nothing he can do, but he seems perfectly all right with that. Considering Bowie's other songs in the late sixties - notably Karma Man - I think it would be wrong to see the "nothing I can do" as giving up or hopelessness. There's an acceptance in Space Oddity, but there's nothing of the kind in Yulia. Even the song titles evoke this difference - Bowie's clear reference to Space Odyssey, which ends with a character reaching some kind enlightenment, whereas Boeckner is focused on home, on the woman whom his character has been ripped away from. There is "nothing out here" in space, no meaning, no transcendence, only memories of the things he loves. It is an ending that may seem unsuitable for a three minute rock song, but that of course is the genius of it. We are left with our hero howling at the dark, knowing that there's nothing he can do, but that of course is what keeps him howling.


Just a note, the music video I included above really does lay out the song, maybe too much. I think that the power of what Boeckner is saying shouldn't be lost in the overly literal video.