Terrace / Balcony / Rooftop
The terrace, balcony or rooftop as a raised outdoor space attached to the house, open to the air and set just apart from the rooms inside. It is the spot a private scene plays out in the open: the dancing phantoms on the terrace in loml, where a remembered intimacy lingers like a haunting; the balcony in the summer air of Love Story, where the young lovers meet; the balcony jumped from into the pool in This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, at the height of the careless parties; and the rooftop perch of King of My Heart, Cornelia Street and It's Nice to Have a Friend, where a couple sits out above the world with a drink and no curfew. It belongs with the catalogue's other domestic spaces, but where most of those are interiors, this one sits on the edge between inside and out, and often above it.
The terrace, balcony or rooftop is where private feeling steps just outside the house, into the air but not into the world. Being neither fully indoors nor outdoors, and usually raised above the street, suits whatever it holds: a romance played out in the open, a recklessness performed where others can see, the freedom of being up above it all with no curfew, or an intimacy that survives only as an echo, the dancing still going on but only as phantoms. The height carries its own faint charge, a place you can be seen from below, leap from, or simply look out over the world from, just apart from it.
Appears in 6 songs
“Dancing phantoms on the terrace”
The terrace is the setting for the ghostly memory of the relationship, a domestic space where the couple's past (or imagined) intimacy now exists only as phantom.
“Sat on the roof, you and I”
The rooftop is one of the shared domestic places the speaker fears a breakup will spoil, a raised spot just the two of them once sat out in together.
“Light pink sky up on the roof, sun sinks down, no curfew”
The rooftop holds the tender, low-key intimacy of the song, a raised open-air spot at dusk with no rules and nowhere else to be.
“Jump into the pool from the balcony”
The balcony is the height the partygoers leap from into the pool, a raised platform turned into a stage for careless excess at the parties the speaker later loses.
“Up on the roof with a schoolgirl crush, drinking beer out of plastic cups”
The rooftop is the open-air perch where a giddy early romance plays out, raised above the street with cheap drinks and no one watching.
“On a balcony in summer air”
The balcony sets the young lovers' meeting in the open air, a raised threshold just outside the house where the romance can happen away from the disapproving world below.