Low Desert

I think people need it to be more complicated than it is.

"It happened fast, it's over quick A little dust and the engine kicks Did your hands drift down off the wheel? A road-owl hit your windshield? An eyelash or a little bit of sleep? Did time stand still?

It's a car crash in slow motion..

"All the ashtrays cities and the freeway drives Broken casinos and waterslides The 18 wheeler and the payback dives Gravity pulls on the powerlines A jetstream cuts the desert sky, This land could eat a man alive Let's say you'd leave it all behind"

This is the place the crash happened in - possibly as someone made a journey from one trash city to another (My US geography isnt great).

There's a radio tower, it's egging you on - tired and sleepy, you can see a tower in the distance. Just make it to the tower, then sleep. The Dark Tower perhaps?

Back to the place where you never belonged Where the people thrive on their own contempt Whatever meaning is long gone spent If you had to guess or make bet Would you place yourself inside of it? - Do you really want to reach where youre heading, or would you rather veer into on coming traffic?

The mountains yawn. the clouds let out a sigh - Life goes on around you. Old life.

Like most of New Adventures, though probably clearest here, it's about being stuck in a desolate, dead place and wanting to be free. It's a place where survival is possible, but death hangs in the air and the land gives off an ominous foreboding; one should flee, or risk being trapped forever. Describes a desert setting perfectly, and an apt metaphor for a wasted life.

Something really gets me about the last lines of this song "the mountains yawn, the clouds let out a sigh..." As if the world looks on disinterestedly at the struggles of us mere mortals...

Somewhere in the Nevada desert, on the road to Vegas...

The first verse, in all fairness, is literally about a car crash. Surprised noe one has mentioned that...

It is as ripelivejam explained it: about a desolate place. I think it describes the best the album cover photo.

This song always makes me think of Steve Ames driving that Ryder truck in Stephen King's "Desperation" when they hit something driving through the desert. I was most likely listening to this while reading the book since they came out at the same time. I used to think the first line was "What happens fast is over quick". One of R.E.M.'s finest I think.