Play Crack the Sky

I saw Brand New last night on their Canadian tour and when Jesse introduced this song, he said "This song is about death". The crowd cheered and then he joked "kinda funny to be thanking me for a song about death, isn't it?"

The solemnity of the song makes it easy to see how it's more about the death of a friend more so than a "death" of a relationship. I believe the death he is alluding to is a suicide. I'd say it's about someone who drowned themselves, but that seems a little too obvious.

at first there's the SOS call which right away tells us something terrible is happening or about to happen, then

"Four months at sea 4 months of calm seas to be pounded"

• everything was smooth sailing (haha) but then there was a disturbance out at sea, something that shook up his life/the ship he's on.

"What they call love is a risk / Cause you will always get hit out of nowhere by some wave and end up on your own"

• this tells me that he maybe wasn't in this ship alone but the storm (depression, perhaps) made these waves that stole the other person away from him, by destroying the ship or sending the person steering the ship to be doomed and to drown. The [relation/friend]ship is also damaged (due to the other half being dead) and now Jesse is doomed to sink too.

"Your tongue is a rudder / It steers the whole ship sends your words past your lips / Or keeps them safe behind your teeth"

• This is one of my favourite lines. I think it may represent the other person saying things like "i'm okay" when they weren't or keeping silent. It also points out that the other person is the captain on this ship. The movement of words represents the ship's course:

"But the wrong words will strand you /Come off course while you sleep / Sweep your boat out to sea or dashed to bits on the reefs"

• seeing as their ship, well, fucked, the "wrong words" may have something to do with their outcome - perhaps a fight, or a suicide note? Maybe the other person isolated themselves which resulted in his/her demise.

"And I wished for one more day to give my love and repay debts / But the morning finds our bodies washed up thirty miles west"

• he sees the lighthouse, which is a beacon of hope for him on this boat that may not make it through the storm stirred up by his friend/lover. The captain of the ship didn't see it apparently, because instead of trying to get to the lighthouse it cuts to an image of them both dead, but since Jesse is talking about in retrospect, it can be implied that he ended up surviving, unless his dead being is telling the story (highly improbable).

"They say that the captain stays fast with the ship through still and storm / But this ain't the Dakota and the water is cold / We won't have to fight for long this is the end"

• This part is another one of my favourites. He's saying that the captain isn't supposed to abandon ship and stay with it til the last minute, but this isn't the Dakota - the steamship that crashed into a reef and everyone evacuated the ship casualty-free because it was so close to shore - they're in cold waters that will kill them quickly; they won't have to fight death for much longer. This is the end.

SO THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE SO FAR: a ship stirred by person x, calm seas, a storm out of nowhere and him referencing to ending up alone, the person failing to get them to safety, them stuck in cold water about to die (very titanic-esque) and their bodies washing up on shore. Since he is able to tell this story we must assume that he is alive and person x is dead. Since person x was the captain of the ship, they are to blame for this.

"This story's old but it goes on and on until we disappear / calm me and let me taste the salt you breathed when you were underneath"

• referring to this story and the memory which will exist until they're gone - completely gone, dead and with no memory of them left.

"I am the one who haunts your dreams of mountains sunk below the sea / I spoke the words but never gave a thought to what they all could mean"

• Now, I feel like this part is from person x's point of view - he/she haunts Jesse's dreams of a world underwater. He DID nearly drown so he has dreams/nightmares of that moment and sees person X in them. Person x acknowledges that he or she is the one who sunk the ship by admitting that she/he said things without thinking about the consequence - and we already know that this person's "tongue steers the whole ship".

and then we're back to Jesse's POV "I know that this is what you want" This is evidence that if this song is about death, the death is a suicide. Person X wanted to drown/kill themselves, which is why the calm seas were like the calm before the storm, and person X is said to be stirring the ship. There's an unaddressed reason as to why Jesse survived and why the person intended it to be that way. "A funeral keeps both of us apart"

• if they were both dead, they'd be together (think Romeo and Juliet) but the funeral keeps them apart meaning that one is dead and the other isn't. He wants them to be together which is why the line "Need you like water in my lungs"
• No one needs water in their lungs unless they want to die. Alas, he wants to be with person x who is dead which says that he wouldn't mind dying to be with this person. Need you/need death to be with you/need you like I need death/need you like water in my lungs. It's especially heartbreaking because the person drowned, at least in a metaphorical sense.

I think the tone of this song is a lot like Poison Oak by Bright Eyes. I really don't think it's about a romantic relationship ending, though it's always possible it's about a lover's suicide.