Handsome Family – Far From Any Road (my interpretation of the lyrics)

From the dusty mesa,
Her looming shadow grows,
Hidden in the branches of the poison creosote.
She twines her spines up slowly,
Towards the boiling sun,
And when I touched her skin,
My fingers ran with blood.


In the hushing dusk, under a swollen silver moon,
I came walking with the wind to watch the cactus bloom.
A strange hunger haunted me, the looming shadows danced.
I fell down to the thorny brush and felt a trembling hand.


When the last light warms the rocks,
And the rattlesnakes unfold,
Mountain cats will come to drag away your bones.


And rise with me forever,
Across the silent sand,
And the stars will be your eyes,
And the wind will be my hands.

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My interpretation

I first heard this song in the opening sequence for the HBO's crime show: "True Detective", and I immediately fell in love with the lyrics; very evocative and haunting. The visuals used in the sequence helped express the feelings of foreboding, helplessness and inevitable tragedy.

As with any other work of art, the meaning of the lyrics is up to the interpretation of the listener. To me, it talks of a man who ventured into the desert looking for the Nightblooming Cereus cactus which produces a short lived bloom at night. It is said that the person who witnesses this rare occurrence is driven mad by the intense experience. 
The man's obsession with the plant makes him disregard the dangers of the desert: the scorching heat, dangerous animals and poisonous plants. The protagonist finally finds the cactus on a hill, growing in a poison creosote bush. The "looming shadow" may hint at the time of day, probably in the afternoon when the sun was already "boiling". He seems to show strong feelings for the plant, especially when he refers to it as "her". He "touched her skin" and the sharp spines made his fingers bleed.

The song then cuts to another protagonist, this time female. She also seems to have travelled far, without any purposeful direction, to find the cactus and watch it bloom. She finally finds it at night, under a full moon. She witnesses the blooming and, now that her long arduous voyage is finally over, she realizes how exhausted and hungry she is. She falls in the creosote bush and there she finds the male protagonist, barely alive. They share a short conversation and each expresses the fear of death which seems inevitable. They stay there together until the desert finally takes them. "The last light warms the rocks" means that more time has passed and the desert animals have come for them, and scattered their remains.

The two protagonists finally sing together. They say how they are now forever part of the desert. Although their life together was brief, the experience that they came in search for has lasted beyond death. They will forever see and feel the desert because they are now part of it.