"Fast car" is kind of a continuation of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run." It has all the clawing your way to a better life, but in this case the protagonist never makes it with her love; in fact she is dragged back down by him.
There is still an amazing amount of hope and will in the lyrics; and the lyrics themselve rank and easy five. If only music was stronger it would be one of those great radio songs that you hear once a week 20 years after it was released. The imagery is almost tear-jerking ("City lights lay out before us", "Speeds so fast felt like I was drunk"), and the idea of starting from nothing and just driving and working and denigrating yourself for a chance at being just above poverty, then losing in the end is just painful and inspiring at the same time.
What do Seoul and Sudan have in common?
Both start with an S
Deep as a virus
Little Mary, little Mary
From scratchless I ascend
Stamps tongue--swabbed
now embark for the Ivory Coast
chiming like mouse bells
BAM BAM BAM BAM
BAM BAM BAM BAM
at the birth of a vermin Holy Ghost
Stars led to sky
lash led to eye
herpes to clit
then stopped
Expect
I'm carried by lanterns
Expect
I will follow the aerosol patterns
Immunity
won't feed on the bodies
Bones closing
too soon at the tips
won't feed on the bodies
From the fat black crocodile on the sand bar
Can't swallow it then bury it
From the voice flooded semen clotting to paste
Can't swallow it then bury it
And the jigger raps pits
darkness long
Jigger raps pits
BAM BAM BAM BAM
BAM BAM BAM BAM
Shoes lead to shine splicing to swine
Strain after strain after strain after strain
Immunity
Immunity
Through the dormant wards and nurseries
a flugleman moves
In the lung smeared slides and corridors
a flugleman moves
And his tune rises on the harvest clouds of dust
Trading the wah-wah's for
BAM BAM BAM BAM
BAM BAM BAM BAM
Stars led to sky
toe led to thigh
tumor to breast
then stopped
Both start with an S
Deep as a virus
Little Mary, little Mary
From scratchless I ascend
Stamps tongue--swabbed
now embark for the Ivory Coast
chiming like mouse bells
BAM BAM BAM BAM
BAM BAM BAM BAM
at the birth of a vermin Holy Ghost
Stars led to sky
lash led to eye
herpes to clit
then stopped
Expect
I'm carried by lanterns
Expect
I will follow the aerosol patterns
Immunity
won't feed on the bodies
Bones closing
too soon at the tips
won't feed on the bodies
From the fat black crocodile on the sand bar
Can't swallow it then bury it
From the voice flooded semen clotting to paste
Can't swallow it then bury it
And the jigger raps pits
darkness long
Jigger raps pits
BAM BAM BAM BAM
BAM BAM BAM BAM
Shoes lead to shine splicing to swine
Strain after strain after strain after strain
Immunity
Immunity
Through the dormant wards and nurseries
a flugleman moves
In the lung smeared slides and corridors
a flugleman moves
And his tune rises on the harvest clouds of dust
Trading the wah-wah's for
BAM BAM BAM BAM
BAM BAM BAM BAM
Stars led to sky
toe led to thigh
tumor to breast
then stopped
Lyrics submitted by oswaldtherabbit
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Fast Car
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I think much like another song “Anti-Matter” (that's also on the same album as this song), this one is also is inspired by a horrifying van crash the band experienced on Nov 3, 2022. This, much like the other track, sounds like it's an extension what they shared while huddled in the wreckage, as they helped frontman Garrett Russell stem the bleeding from his head wound while he was under the temporary effects of a concussion. The track speaks of where the mind goes at the most desperate & desolate of times, when it just about slips away to all but disconnect itself, and the aftermath.
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Page
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I know that Walker has said this is a really difficult song to get, but I think I've got a bit about what he's getting at. Douglas Hofstadter wrote a book called "I Am A Strange Loop" which was an idea of what "the self" is; as he reasoned it, the self is the result of the mind looking in on itself infinitely, responding to and categorising its own changes. If you imagine that Walker thinks of the self in the same way (he's said that this song is about the self), the overall theme of these lyrics makes quite a lot of sense - he's comparing the way diseases react to stimuli and change infinitely to the way the mind can change infinitely as it views its own processes at continually increasing abstractions. And indeed he links the created form of humans to how they in turn respond to these diseases (herpes to clit, tumour to breast), as though the process of infection and evolution and immunity that take place in an epidemic are like the processes of a gigantic mind. It's still a really obscure song, but I get the feeling that's what he's going for; "Strain after strain after strain" is basically a colourful way of describing Hofstadter's concept of the self.