Arguing with Thermometers

This is just my interpretation of this song. The beauty of interesting songs such as this is the various different meanings they have to different individuals.

This song always has the power to make me reflect on the way we live today, the title in itself speaks volumes! Obviously a thermometer measures temperature - something which is said to rise with global warming/destruction of the ozone layer which will have devastating effects to many aspects of life as we know it today. I picture a battle between humans wanting and using energy but worrying about the effects it will have on the environment and therefore to all of on earth, but it is something of which we are all guilty. The music, Enter Shikari have put in some thought-provoking sound effects and tunes which depict the subject matter perfectly: stereotypical news style music at the start, water dripping (this reminds me of the concept of fracking), it's also quite erratic and violent in places. There are tunes not dissimilar to warning alarms, the bass and drums reflect a digging motion and it is somewhat mysterious - do we know the true effects of what we're doing? Then there's the music video, (if you haven't seen it, WATCH IT!) whereby the band appear as news reporters/recorders in a studio, but they depict environmental destruction as bluntly as it is.

The first line "This is an expedition, into the Arctic tundra!" is somewhat ironic because explorers, such as Shackleton visited the Antarctic in expeditions to discover previously uncharted territory but today, we visit these vulnerable landscapes to reap what is left of the earth. (Hence "Shackleton is rolling in his grave"). Throughout the song, the lyrics link back to science and how we are going against everything it has warned us about. Shikari go as far as to compare and make worse of mankind's use of energy as "petty crimes" and worsen it to addiction to class A drugs, which is not untrue, (perhaps ironic again but..) environmental crime is committed and we are all guilty of (the misuse of) energy sources, whereas we are not all addicts to class A drugs.

"You know there's oil in the ice! You know there's oil in my eyes!" - this line is interesting because it emphasises how vulnerable both human (eyes) and the ice caps are to this destruction and pollution that is taking place, we are literally in the same boat! It also conjures up imagery of crying and therefore imposes a sense of guilt on ALL humans, further highlighted by the following line of the song: "You know there's blood on my hands!.. We're all addicted!"

The next verse depicts both the disbelief (that I too felt when I first started learning more) and that there alternatives to the current methods of obtaining electricity and power for human consumption, but society is violent and power-hungry/greedy: "So lemme get this straight; as we witness the ice-caps melt, instead of being inspired into changing our ways, we're gonna invest into military hardware to fight for the remaining oil that's left beneath the ice!"

We then go into an almost comical line, whereby Shikari belittle people responsible for allowing such things as Fracking and fossil fuel extraction to go ahead, when supplies obviously won't last forever and for that reason, we NEED to find alternatives: "But what happens when it's all gone! You haven't thought this through, have you boys!" The use of the term "boys", "maniac" and "psychotic outlook" highlights this, suggesting they are inexperienced and immature, lack farsightedness, seek immediate gratification, question who should be in charge and that they are incapable of making such important decisions if this is the best response they can come up with between them - "Back to the drawing board boys" again reflects this. In the final two lines, Shikari warn of what will happen as a result if these methods of energy extraction continue: "Accept nothing short of complete reversal", not dissimilar to Newton's third law of motion; "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction", here I picture images of mother nature fighting back to restore the world to it's natural state which man has "planted his flag" in - this also conjures up imagery of virgin and vulnerable land being 'raped' by modern man's intervention. The song is finished with the line "Dig deep!", perhaps reverse psychology or irony, thus highlighting that the message couldn't be clearer to us, yet we're not doing enough about it, in fact the exact opposite.