Q: Best "pop" song of 2007 (so far)?

A: Speaking of ancient myth, here's my pick for best "pop" (can there really be a such thing as indie pop? isn't that an oxymoron?) song of 2007, so far.

Of Montreal - Heimdalsgate like a Promethean Curse
Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, 2007 [buy it]

It's already been blogged to death, but whatever. Great song! And here's the video:

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Q: What does the song "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse" mean?

Pitchfork suggests it's a tribute to dualistic inspiring/degenerative powers of drugs, such as they relate to the creative process. I see it in a more innocent light: artist Kevin Barnes' appeal to his own brain chemicals as he struggled with depression while composing the album. But I'll leave it to the SongMeanings community to settle the issue (that link also has the lyrics).

Prometheus: Lit a fire under mankind's ass.

As of this moment, promethean curse is not even spefically mentioned in Prometheus' shoddily written Wikipedia entry (might want to ban Zeus' IP address -- just putting that out there). But the curse is a reference to the burdens of consciousness and creativity, as introduced to mankind when Prometheus smuggled us out some fire. Or something like that.

The acquisition of fire in ancient Greek myth is comparable to Eve's noshing on the fruit of the tree of good and evil in Genesis. Both really pissed off the jerk upstairs (Zeus/God). As punishment, the Old Testament God cast Adam and Eve out of the garden, into a cold, cruel, confusing, naked world, where they were forced them to buy new outfits from Banana Republic at full retail; and he made it so women would have to shoot babies out of their vagina. Zeus' punishment was Pandora's box (not a vaginal reference), and led to the same sort of woe and agony and whining.

But does anyone know what "Heimdalsgate" is? "Heimdalsgade" seems to mean something in Dansk -- which would make sense, since Barnes was in Norway when he made the album (as mentioned specifically in "A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger," which begins, I spent the winter on the verge of a total breakdown while living in Norway). Is it a town? A neighborhood? Where are my Scandanavian readers? Do I have Scandanavian readers?

Heimdal: Like Prometheus, bound.

(The other possibility is that "Heimdalsgate" references some unknown scandal surrounding Scott Heimdal, the 27-year-old treasure hunter kidnapped by Colombian guerillas in 1990, and then rescued when the citizens of Peoria raised $60,000, via bake sales and the like, to pay his ransom. But, you know, that wouldn't really make sense.)

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This is part two in my new series on explaining the significance and meaning of notable songs, by which I mean linking repeatedly to Wikipedia, and rambling. The previous entry was Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth."