(The) Harvey Danger Database

War Buddies

Recorded

Release history

Credits

Lyrics

Let’s be war buddies
Waist-deep in big muddies
Side by side
I’d be the atheist in your foxhole anytime

Let’s be friendly fire
Body counts are mounting on a bed of barbed wire
Coldly stacked
As soon as the morning light has broken
then we attack
[The darkest fears are never spoken
There’s no colder fact]
If nobody tries too hard to kill you
I got your back

Across the desert
back to brave the burning sand
back to question every effort
undermining your command
If you’ve got guns, well, now’s the time for sticking
Resistance is already forming
The second shot won’t be a warning

Let’s be collateral damage
Looking down your nose like it’s the best you can manage
Just to stand indignity after indignations
The threat of a hostile occupation
The better to form a sovereign nation

Here’s the plan:
Let every man who disagrees
be roughly brought down to his knees
be starved to death, and made to freeze
and sentenced to the gulag
If you’ve got guns, well, now’s the time for sticking
Resistance is already forming
The second shot won’t be a warning

When the tanks roll into Warsaw
will I find you at the front?
Singing into a tape recorder
shouldering the brunt of the attack?
Has it come to that?
Has it come to that?
Has it come to that?
Has it come to that?

Quotes

AMH: “War Buddies” is a great example of Steve Fisk’s influence on the album. Who else would have taken the backing vocal in the last verse and morphed it into the weird electronic, almost string-like sound that sustains to the end of the song? Genius.10A

SCN: I love the way “War Buddies” dresses up in the sheep’s clothing of political songwriting to chart the limitations of intense friendship—it felt like a big risk to use that language in a discursive way, but the intention is the opposite of flip, so in a way it felt like the risk was the reward (and Evan, who was always the first and most important lyric reader; signed off on it in a really affirming way when I sent him the album, which was a weird experience for him anyway, so it passed the crucial test).10A

SCN: My go-to phrase when people ask me what songs are about—the seven people who still occasionally ask me what my work is about—is just: “about the limitations of male friendship, specifically.” The way you can really be there, really be close to somebody, and still totally, totally let them down, totally burn them, totally hurt them. Both sides of the friendship can do that. But really, it is about feeling like you really were there for someone, who had been there for you too, but then just wasn’t there for you anymore. It’s a thing that I’ve experienced with several of my really intense close friendships—all my closest male friendships have always been super complicated and fraught with tension. You know, we’ll go months—or sometimes years—without speaking to each other, and then see each other and it’s like nothing ever changed; really just perfect connection. But then other times, we’ll see each other all the time, and there will be this undercurrent of resentment, and even—it feels like hatred. People are really romantic and sentimental about friendship; I value friendship very much, but it’s not without its pitfalls.AD

SCN: [The last verse] is probably a way of defusing the [war] metaphor a little bit. Because I would say the lyrics are pretty thoroughly committed to the metaphor, and this is a little glimpse that, really, it only looks like a war scene; in fact, it’s a reflection about friendship. Perhaps even between people who play music together.AD

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