Music Review // Robert Thomas "A River Runs Through"

 

With soft acoustics and a slide guitar, Robert Thomas creates a sound somewhere between folk and country on "A River Runs Through".  This song moves both slower and softer, as we tend to do later in life, and if nothing else it feels like a journey into getting older and possibly even facing death.   This is set against that idea of a river just constantly flowing and so that makes it even more impactful- as you can see the river as being life going on while you are not.

Lyrics lile "My two boys / are now grown men" show that this does take place in the later years of life but then "And we will not pass / this way again" shows that this might really be near the end because this is their last walk out here.   The song continues with lines about Gabriel's horn and I feel like that is religious somehow with the gates of Heaven but I'm not completely sure.  The final words which just make this feel like it's about death to me are: "Take my hand / show me the way / carry me home / free the weight"

The whole idea of being out in nature is also just relaxing and it can give you a sense of peace.  You can just stand by the riverside and have these thoughts you might not otherwise have.  That can open this song up to being rather deep and you can spend time even while you're not listening to it just contemplating things and what they mean.  I also think this song is about death because of the line "I stand alone at the water's edge" and generally we think of greeting death alone as well.

There is defintiely something to be said for the symbolism within this song and the river.  On one hand, you have a song about two children who went to this river with their father and now, in his passing, they can visit it again without him but still remember him- so in a way, he'll always be alive in that river.  At the same time, the river, constantly flowing, is a stern reminder that life continues to go on without us, even long after we are gone.