These Arms Are Snakes’ Frederiksen On Odd Album Title

These Arms Are Snakes guitarist Ryan Frederiksen spoke with San Francisco Weekly about the title of their latest effort, ‘Oxeneers or The Lion Sleeps When Its Antelope Go Home’. “Yeah, a lot of people don’t understand it,” Frederiksen admitted. “We were trying to come up with a title that encompassed all of the lyrics, which has this whole story about the struggle and trials of the working life going through it, all these kind of character sketches, and we were originally thinking Auctioneers, but since there’s so many animal references in the lyrics we decided to change it to Oxeneers, because an ox is an animal of labor, right? And therefore …” Frederiksen pauses for just a second, then begins to laugh. “It sounds fu**in’ ridiculous, I know, but an ox is an animal of labor so it lends itself to auctioneers to make Oxeneers and ‘the lion sleeps when its antelope go home’ is a line from the last song, ‘Idaho,’ that basically means the same thing …”