"Fast car" is kind of a continuation of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run." It has all the clawing your way to a better life, but in this case the protagonist never makes it with her love; in fact she is dragged back down by him.
There is still an amazing amount of hope and will in the lyrics; and the lyrics themselve rank and easy five. If only music was stronger it would be one of those great radio songs that you hear once a week 20 years after it was released. The imagery is almost tear-jerking ("City lights lay out before us", "Speeds so fast felt like I was drunk"), and the idea of starting from nothing and just driving and working and denigrating yourself for a chance at being just above poverty, then losing in the end is just painful and inspiring at the same time.
We sent out the SOS call
It was a quarter past 4 in the morning
When the storm broke our second anchor line
Four months at sea 4 months of calm seas to be pounded
In the shallows off the tip of montauk point
They call them rogues they travel fast and alone
One hundred foot faces of God's good ocean gone wrong
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
The hole in the hull defied the crews attempts to bail us out
And flooded the engines and radio and half buried bow
Your tongue is a rudder
It steers the whole ships sends your words past your lips
Or keeps them safe behind your teeth
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
The vessel groans the ocean pressures its frame
Off the port I see the lighthouse through the sleet and the rain
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
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 story's old but it goes on and on until we disappear
Calm me and let me taste the salt you breathed while you were underneath
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
I know this is what you want
A funeral keeps both of us apart
You know that you are not alone
Need you like water in my lungs
This is the end
It was a quarter past 4 in the morning
When the storm broke our second anchor line
Four months at sea 4 months of calm seas to be pounded
In the shallows off the tip of montauk point
They call them rogues they travel fast and alone
One hundred foot faces of God's good ocean gone wrong
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
The hole in the hull defied the crews attempts to bail us out
And flooded the engines and radio and half buried bow
Your tongue is a rudder
It steers the whole ships sends your words past your lips
Or keeps them safe behind your teeth
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
The vessel groans the ocean pressures its frame
Off the port I see the lighthouse through the sleet and the rain
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
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 story's old but it goes on and on until we disappear
Calm me and let me taste the salt you breathed while you were underneath
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
I know this is what you want
A funeral keeps both of us apart
You know that you are not alone
Need you like water in my lungs
This is the end
Lyrics submitted by BrandNew1208, edited by Deafcat
Play Crack the Sky Lyrics as written by Jesse Lacey
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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I think this song is a metaphor for Jesse Lacey's grandfather's death after a battle with cancer. I can imagine the "sos call a quarter past 4 in the morning" being the terrible call a family gets when it's time to get to the hospital and say the last good bye ("this is the end.") Even with "four months of calm seas" it still seems "out of nowhere" and he sees his grandfather as the "lighthouse" of his family and he's so aware of everything he's ever said to him and wants "one more day to give my love and repay debts."
My Papa died 9 years ago tomorrow, and this song just hit me that way, from what I've learned of Jesse's influences and my own life.