Everything Beautiful Is Far Away

I love the half-spoken words here. You can really see this man walking steadily on the lakes shore, a tear in his eye, mumbling something to himself, and disappearing beneath the surface cos its his only way out.

I'd say that there's quite a suicidal trend in this song. I guess he's just too far away from everything he loves and he's just letting go. He finally burns the photos and just disappears under the surface. Anyone else realize that the image of the lake from this song appears on the cover of Sumday?

I always thought this song was making some allusion to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Obviously, the mentioning of the cave is what first gave me that idea. But the lines

he'd seen plenty of mirages and imaginery visitors up until then so he wasn`t sure what to think when he saw swans

and

and the pictures of his loved ones that he drew on the wall of the cave had finally faded.

really, really remind me of how in Plato's allegory, the people only could see the shadows of real p eople and things reflected onto the walls of the cave, and so thought those images were the real thing. then, when the man was let out into the real world, he didn't know what to make of all the actual real things he saw. I haven't read the allegory in a couple of years so i don't remember all of it and am not sure how the rest of the song fits in, but I definatley think there's evidence that this song is related in someway.

"Nobody does nostalgia like these guys." Well, I would challenge that with Boards of Canada's 'Music Has the Right to Children' or 'A Beautiful Place Out in the Country'.

Other than that, I agree that it is similar to 'Miner at the Dial-a-view', but for a different reason. Lyrically, they remind me of sci-fi short stories from the early-to-mid 1900's. Specifically, they remind me of Ray Bradbury's 'The Illustrated Man' or 'The Martian Chronicles'. The songs feel like they could have come right out of those books. Actually, they do make me feel nostalgic in that way, but not really in the homesickness way that you describe, although that is what the song is about, in part.
I like how the lyric "everything beautiful is far away" can be read in several ways. In the context of the song, I see it as meaning the stranded space traveler, his mind deteriorating from a long period of isolation, decides to set out on what he probably knows to be a final voyage, to chase the distant, mysterious lake. Understanding his situation, that there is no hope for rescue, and there is no point in trying to fight his delusions, he finally surrenders to them, convincing himself that he finds them beautiful by repeating the phrase like a mantra.

I've always felt this brilliant song (in particular its title) is an ironic look at the old chestnuts of "the grass is always greener on the other side", and "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone".

In a literal sense, our protagonist is a space traveller who travelled to a far away planet, in the hope of finding something more wonderful than he could ever see on Earth. The shuttle crashed on the far away planet, leaving him trapped.

After many years (literal or figuratively? could just feel like this) trapped here, all he wishes for is to be back on Earth - now realising how beautiful the simple things, like watching swans on a lake, really were - especially compared to a grey and uninhabited planet. And, of course, his family, who he probably never really appreciated & realised how much he needed until he was light years away from them.

There clearly isn't a real lake on the planet - it's a mirage. I think the previous comment around Plato's Cave allegory also ties in with this - as it's been so long since he has actually seen anybody/anything else, he's lost his mind and can't distinguish that the lake isn't real (even though he's never seen it before!).

It's open to debate whether proceeding to the lake is a suicidal/defeatist thought as suggested, it could simply be interpreted as heading for the mirage in the belief it's really there.

I love the imagery in this song, I have a lot of friends who think that the town where they lived is the cause of all of their problems - so leave town for a bigger city/country, thinking it will solve everything. Of course, it very rarely works out like this. They are essentially the protagonist in this song.

This song, as well as a few other of Grandaddy's spacier tunes (Nonphenomenal Lineage?) reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan. I wonder if Jason's read it... I bet he'd like it.

Definately one of the best on their solid Under the Western Freeway. There's something so normal about this song that I absolutely love. The opening line, "He just finished eating dinner", is a perfect statement to open up a song about a man stuck by himself on a distant planet. The fact that the song is so relatable while being somewhat sarcastic is just great writing, period.

I believe this song is basically about what I believe to be Grandaddy's main underlying theme in their music throughout the years: Nostalgia. Nobody does nostalgia like these guys. Nobody.

I like to think of this one as a companion song to "Miner at the Dial-a-view", a masterpiece of homesickness if there ever was one.

Come on...

"back on earth" ... "uninhabited terrain" ... "shuttle had crashed"

Is it not obvious that he's stranded on another planet? This song is about the last day(s) of an astronaut lost in space, I came here to see if anyone wanted to make some presumptions about which planet he or she might be on, i'd like to think it's Mars just because it seems to be a visually compelling fit.

I wonder if the shuttle that crashed was the one that departed in Laughing Stock?

"Nonphenomenal Lineage" is this character being told he's exiled from Earth because he's not good enough. "Laughing Stock" is both an allusion to the experience of listening to music (Laughing Stock's album Talk Talk?) and part of the narrative of this character being loaded onto a shuttle to be outcast. And "Everything Beautiful" is this character being lonely and missing Earth, seeing things (psychotic depression?) and eventually losing it and walking toward the white lake mirage