Have to Explode

This song is exactly the liner notes' story.

"We drank store-brand gin with fresh lime juice out of plastic cups or straight from the bottle and we spread ourselves out face-up on the wooden floors. An aerial view of us might have suggested that we'd been knocked out, but what we were doing was staking our claim. Establishing our territories. Making good. Not on the vows we'd made but on the ones we'd really meant."

I just now realized the comment about the Jamaican towels.

Rust colored stains were where they set the towel down when they had sex for the first time on their honeymoon or wedding night and that is the blood stain. Perhaps, the fact that they use something that could potentially have sentimental value as a regular, everyday towel is just another detail about their lives.

Sad in a way that no other song on Tallahassee is sad. Easily the saddest of the entire Alpha series.

In other sad Alpha songs, like No Children, Alpha Rats Nest and Old College Try, there is at least a certain amount of energy; they're fighting and hateful, but in that hate there is at least a certain energy, albeit a dark energy.

Here, there is nothing but the silent, drunken, muted misery of bitter nostalgia. Lost opportunities. Failed promise. Knowing that there was never any other way it could have gone, and so you did it anyway.

Lots of relationships end in ugliness and hate, but at least there is the ability to remember when you once loved each other, that there was HOPE and you chased that hope until the road ran out.

Here, there is nothing but the realization that you've been a couple of corpses since the day you tied the knot. There was never any hope. And that is far worse than simple failure.

@artisan117: I think that line is grouped together with the line immediately preceding it. He's remembering their experiences at the Ritz-Carlton in Jamaica, which was most likely where they honeymooned. The rust colored stains make me think he's referring to their first sexual encounters. Although it was surprising to think of the Alphas as being chaste prior to marriage, it makes sense you consider that both of them feel as though no one else could possibly love them, most likely because no one else ever has. "Name one thing about us two anyone could love."

I think, "Have to Explode," "Old College Try," and "Oceanographer's Choice" were masterfully placed together in that order.

This song, the Alpha male can feel this tension rising inevitably, which finally comes in "Oceanographer's Choice," that is most definitly the explosion. Inbetween the songs we have a calm. "Old College Try" offers a comprimise, in order to try to save themselves from going over the edge. The narrorator's plight doesn't work, thus spousal abuse begins.

'Someone's going to do something someone else will regret I speak in smoke signals and you answer in code The fuse will have to run out sometime Something here will eventually have to explode'

• actually such brilliant lyrics.. i find his voice to be quite harsh in a lot of songs.. but under circumstances it may put me off, but due to the brilliant lyrics, and amazing songs i absolutely adore the mountain goats.

I wonder what the rust colored stains are...I know blood dries that color but There isn't much speculation into what it could be...

They are going through alcohol withdrawl together.

Yes, they are definitely going through withdrawals. And it can make a person pretty irritable, to say the least. Eventually they are going to end up fighting. Or using.