Afterhours

This, like so many songs by The Sisters of Mercy, is another very sensual one. It deals with the whole idea of love being over in the morning -- "2 o'clock in the morning" -- something also expressed in 'Some Kind Of Stranger'. This also is a precursor to 'Some Kind Of Stranger' with the use of the endearment "angel", in reference, of course, to the girl with whom the singer has eloped with. The concept of dying sexual emotions is furthered by how the singer commands the girl to "Get up off the floor", meaning that she was being sexual submissive to him, and to put her clothes on, since the so called "love" is over. Then again, like so many of their songs, this song contains deeper meaning than just the rather obvious sexual ones. "One more night spent on your mirror" refers to how the singers "lover" is shallow, concerned more about her appearance than personality. "Black Maria" is a British term referring to the police van that transports criminals to jail; here, the way the singer uses it could be interpreted in multiple ways, but I think it's meaning is that the girl is like a Black Maria, carrying the singer away to some sort of psychological prison. "This stuff so strange and lonely England fades away/In your eyes" -- the singer acknowledges that what they had what empty and shallow, yet the outside world seems to disappear in the moment of such intimacy, regardless of how fake and temporary it is in the end. "Ninety-four degrees through the stillness, through the heat/The cars go by on Fifth" -- 94 degrees Fahrenheit is the average internal temperature of the human body, so the singer is essentially referencing the heat emanating from the other person, yet life is still going on outside of this elopement, since while time is frozen to "stillness" for the singer, cars are still moving and people are still going about. And since the love is over and there's nothing left "It's time for us to go/Let's take a ride".